Check out the Kid’s Gardening website for ideas to make gardening moments to share with your kids or grandkids. The Parents’ Primer is the Family Resource Room feature for this month. From the site: “find out how to engage your children in outdoor explorations that cultivate their love of plants, gardening, and the environment.” The first resource of the Parent’s Primer is age expectations for what kids get out of ‘gardening’ depending on their age group. Just as Michelle Obama created the White House Garden with school children, you could have your own special garden to share with your favorite kids. Interesting aside: Two bee hives will be part of the organic White House Garden plan!
Gardening Moments With Your Kids
May 16, 2009
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Nature Activities, Places to Explore | Tagged: child, children, Children's Garden, family, fun, garden, gardening, grandchild, grandma, grandpa, grandparent, Green Hour, kids, nature, Youth Gardens | 
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Order Grandpa, Do It! I Do It, Too! In Time For Father’s Day!
May 13, 2009Grandpa, Do It! I Do It, Too now has the Look Inside! feature on Amazon! Order now for Father’s Day! It is perfect for grandpas! Austin and Grandpa Ron play around the house and outside in the dirt, play at the river and the seashore, watch big trains and play with little trains, rest and fall asleep after a big day of new adventures together. It really is cute.
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Great Smoky Mountains National Park
May 12, 2009The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is celebrating its 75th anniversary of its opening in 1934 with all kinds of special events. Of course there is the normal hiking, horseback riding and bicycle riding and other outdoor activities as well! It is the most visited of all the national parks. Jerry Shriver had an awesome article Power to the people’s park in the May 8, 2009 USA Today paper.
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Kids Active In Nature – Lehigh Gap Nature Center
May 6, 2009The Audubon Magazine is one of the most beautiful magazines I get. I just read the Citizen Science article in the May-June 2009 Audubon on Whiz Kids by Susan Cosier and photographed by Chip Simmons. Eastern Pennsylvania kids help collect butterflies, moths, bees and flies for real, hands-on scientific research at the >Lehigh Gap Nature Center. Nature is so important for our well-being. Birding is a great way to get kids interested in science and to learn scientific methodology. It is a great article. Now that I’ve teased you, click on this link to get more….
This all folded into another article in the same Audubon magazine on a Guide to Birding Trails (Part 3 of a series). This link sends you to a list of birding guides on the Audubon website. You can probably find a birding trail for your area of the country there.
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Quail Botanical Gardens – Chocolate Festival
May 2, 2009The Quail Botanical Gardens is located in Encinitas, CA, just twenty minutes north of San Diego. There is a special Children’s Garden (The Seeds of Wonder) that opened to the public in April, 2003, as the West Coast’s first interactive children’s garden. Other gardens, covering over 35 acres of exhibits, include rare bamboo groves, desert gardens, a tropical rainforest, California native plants, Mediterranean climate landscapes, the Undersea Succulent Garden, the new Mexican Garden, Landscaping for Fire Safety, a subtropical fruit garden and a Miniature Railroad with a 1920-1930 local Southern California layout.
On Saturday, May 9, there is a Chocolate Festival with children’s activities, chocolate tastings, cooking demonstrations and Mother’s Day gifts.
On Saturday, June 13, from Noon to 4 PM the Public Grand Opening of the Hamilton Children’s Garden will take place. There is no admission fee.
Ongoing Programs from the website:
Ongoing programs complimenting the new children’s garden are rotated periodically. Most are geared toward children ages 18 months through 6 years old, although all ages are welcome. Ongoing programs are free with regular garden admission and pre-registration is not required unless otherwise noted.
Programs for Preschoolers:
2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th Tuesday: Tales and Tunes 10:30am – 12 noon
Children and their caregivers participate in stories and songs at 10:30 – 11:00. Play in the garden and pot plants to take home 10am – Noon.
Every Wednesday: Garden Arts and Crafts 10 AM – Noon
Children may participate in a variety of arts and crafts at 10:00 – 11:30. There will also be plant potting and other fun activities.
1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th Thursdays: Plants, Wings, and Crawly Things 10 AM – Noon
Children will discover the plants and bugs that live in our garden. Preschoolers will participate in special science activities from 10:00 – 11am.
2nd Friday of each Month: Friday Fun! 10 AM – Noon.
Children may pot a plant and play in the garden… Presented in cooperation with the San Diego County Department of Agriculture, Weights and Measures.
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Bishop Mule Days
April 30, 2009When we plan our Memorial Day weekend trips between Reno and LA we always take into consideration the traffic for Bishop’s Mule Days Celebration. This year will be the 40th annual celebration on May 19-24 at the Tri-County Fairgrounds in Bishop, CA. This year four-time Grammy nominee and former CMA Horizon Award winner Joe Nichols will be featured at the 2009 Bishop Mule Days Thursday night concert.
From the Mule Days website: “Highlights of the Celebration include the Thursday night concert, featuring Country Music stars, the longest running non-motorized parade on Saturday morning, Steer roping and penning, an event normally reserved for quarter horses, and the Packer’s Scramble – the wildest, nosiest and funniest event of the weekend.
There are also barbecues, country dances and an arts & crafts show. All taking place at the foot of the beautiful Eastern Sierra. “
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Saguaro National Park
April 29, 2009The Saguaro National Park outside of Tucson, AZ, is a majestic place to hike around. The tall – and very old – Sagauro cacti reach for the sky and you feel so very small – and young – in comparison! So many outdoor activities are available to do: hiking, biking, camping, birding, horseback riding, and wild flower seeking ( in the spring ). Grandpa Ron and I really enjoyed the park.
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Activities in the Sierra Nevada
April 28, 2009There are all sorts of activities to do in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The Virtual Sierra Nevada website is quite exhaustive: gold panning, hiking, skiing, biking, horseback riding, backpacking, kayaking, river rafting and more. Then there is lots of sightseeing as well – Yes, there are LOTS of little towns: Reno (biggest little), Truckee, Virginia City, Lake Tahoe, Mammoth, Bishop, … and beautiful parks like Yosemite, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, oh, I’ll get myself in trouble by trying to list them all and forgetting some so I’ll stop while I’m ahead…..check out the linked websites!!
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Columbia River Gorge
April 26, 2009The Columbia River Gorge is beautiful any time that you visit! Multnomah Falls is probably the most famous of all the waterfalls on the route and the second highest (620 ft) year-round running waterfall in the US, but Grandpa Ron and I enjoyed finding them all. I took lots of pictures. We even brought Gigi, Cyndi, Bella and Austin to see some of them. It is well worth doing!
Quoted from www.bestgorge.com:
“The Columbia River Gorge is a spectacular river canyon cutting the only sea-level route through the Cascade Mountain Range. The Gorge is 80 miles long and up to 4,000 feet deep with the north canyon walls in Washington State and the south canyon walls in Oregon State.”
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Oregon Garden
April 24, 2009Austin, Bella and Madison enjoyed looking at the birds, insects, koi, frogs and squirrels at the Oregon Garden in Silverton, OR. There are several themed gardens to wander through. So, maybe kids would do fine at the Hortense Miller Garden or other garden spots if mom and dad, or grandma and grandpa, would point out creatures of interest while they enjoy looking at all the plants in the gardens. The Oregon Garden has a special Children’s Garden to play in. Trees are shaped like dinosaurs. There’s a troll house to visit. The kids can also do an adventure hunt for a prize at the end of their visit. Doing the hunt kept them very busy and they learned some new things, too!
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MyGrandmaSue 