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Catch A Fish Out Of Water: A Party Game

Posted Jul 19, 10 - Filed Under children's activities (recycled materials), party: Circus, reuse fishing pole, reuse lamp or other lighting | 2 Comments 

I saw kids playing this lampshade fishing game at a summer cookout. They were having a great time. Of course I had to make one; plus put my own spin on it. You should too.

Set up:

Get an old fishing pole. Use a string or some fishing line to attach your lampshade. Use stuff from your garage or find objects second-hand. You will want the string/ line to hold the lampshade so the shade hangs down at the right level. Test it out to make sure. You will also need goggles that have been altered so you can’t see through them, a blindfold or nothing (if player keeps his or her eyes closed). When we play this again at our next party, I’m going to add funny (crazy) eye pictures to cover the goggle eyes. That will make it even funnier to watch. I’m thinking red and black Swirly eyes.

To Play:

Each player has a turn and will be timed. The person who can get the lampshade on their head the fastest is the winner. What makes this hard to do is the fact that the player can’t see the lampshade. Also, the player can only use one hand. (The other hand must stay down: you can’t touch the lampshade with your free hand!)  It isn’t as easy as it sounds. The shade swings around and usually bumps against the player’s head a bunch of times.

This is a great party game because it is rather amusing for watchers and challenging for players. Make sure you have a camera nearby.

This is one of the games played at my daughter’s circus (Cirque du Soleil) birthday party. Try this at a family picnic, kid’s party, cookout or whenever. It’s even fun for the grownups.

What made this nest? Brown Thrasher Nest and Eggs

Posted Jul 10, 10 - Filed Under Nature: plant and animal identification | Leave a Comment 

Brown Thrasher Toxostoma rufum

How fun: a pair of Brown Thrashers decided to make a nest in my yard (June 2010)! We found the nest hidden in a tangle of grape vines. Later we discovered three eggs inside the nest. According to Wikipedia, both parents take turns incubating the eggs. We often saw the mom or dad in the nest. We were very hopeful at the prospect of baby birds but when we returned from vacation sadly the nest was empty.

What made this nest? I’m going to post pictures of bird eggs and nests in order to help others identify nests or bird eggs that they find.

This nest was made mostly of small twigs and dried leaves in a tangle of grape vines in a yard in Southern Maryland. It was about five feet off the ground.

I’m briefly holding this egg in my hand so you can see relative size.

The brown thrasher is still commonly found in its range but its numbers have declined in some places due to habitat loss.

Land Snails: How To Care For Your Newly Found Pet

Posted Jul 6, 10 - Filed Under Nature: plant and animal identification, children's activities (recycled materials), garden (gardening info and eco-friendly project ideas), reuse elastic bands, reuse glass bottles/ jars, use for vegetable scraps | 2 Comments 

Teach kids how to care for the simple needs of a land snail. Locally found snails don’t cost anything to keep and don’t require a big commitment. They can be kept until the novelty wears off and then released back into the wild. Keeping a pet snail (however temporary) will give kids an opportunity to learn about it. Watch closely when they eat. You can’t see its mouth but you can see how the food is munched bit by bit. They use a radula to file bits of food into its mouth. A radula is like a tongue with teeth. Cool, I know. The land snail pictured here is interesting to watch. It has eyes at the tip of its antennas (the top pair) and the bottom pair is used for feeling and smelling. Best of all you can watch your snail slime its way around using only one muscular foot.

I live on the East coast of the United States so this is a common land snail around here.

If your snail starts to dry out, it will close itself inside its shell and wait for conditions to improve before venturing out again. This state of inactivity is called estivation. They can seal the opening with a sheet of a clear substance that looks like dried egg whites.

If you plan to keep your snail for more than a week or so, you will need to add a source of calcium to the snail’s enclosure. For this you can add a piece of plain chalk or a piece of cuttlebone.

This is Snailie the land snail. You might just find your next pet in your flower garden.

Set-up:

A glass container works well. I found this vintage jar in the woods at an old unofficial trash dump. All that remained of the dump was glass and large metal items. I thought this jar was cool so I took it home. Do they still make jars like this?

A piece of cheese cloth or breathable fabric. You don’t want your pet snail getting lost in your house.

An elastic band. Save and reuse elastic bands that come off vegetables like broccoli and asparagus.

Daily care:

Wash jar. Don’t forget to take the snail out of the jar first!

Replace damp paper towel.

Add food: a leaf of lettuce (not iceberg), a piece of your apple core, spinach, carrot, or a raw potato slice. You are sure to find some yummy vegetable scraps left-over from dinner preparation. The food scraps shouldn’t be rotten however. Take out any food that gets moldy.

Keep your snail out of direct sunlight. You don’t want it to get too hot or dry.

As a child I had a vivarium set up with plants and a pet snail or two. If you choose to set up a vivarium (terrarium), make sure you choose plants that like a moist environment. Also add potting soil, plants, a log and some dried leaves to mimic it’s natural environment. Keep the soil damp.

Note: avoid chlorinated water, avoid washing your container with soap (or at least make sure you rinse really well).

4th Of July Centerpiece Made From Recycled Materials

Posted Jul 3, 10 - Filed Under children's crafts (recycled materials), crafts (recycled materials), holiday crafts: 4th of July (recycled stuff), reuse chopsticks, reuse twist ties | 2 Comments 

Happy 4th of July everyone!

Looking for an easy craft to decorate for this patriotic holiday? Here is a super easy craft that is red, white and blue- and “green” too. The swirls make you think of fireworks.

Save the twist ties off lettuce or other vegetables. In this instance you will want to use the ones that are red, white and/ or blue. Make tight curly cues by winding around a pencil and make larger curls freehand. Twist one end to the top of a clean saved chopstick (saved from last year’s outings). You can glue in place. Arrange your sticks in something you already have: an interesting jar could be nice.

Box House For Pet Rat

Posted Jun 29, 10 - Filed Under children's activities (recycled materials), children's crafts (recycled materials), reuse boxes | Leave a Comment 

Meet my daughter’s pet rat named Kitty.

Entertain your pet rat with a multi-story playhouse. Rats are curious little things and are very smart. Keep your pet rat busy with houses you can make yourself out of salvaged boxes.

To make:

Find boxes that will fit inside your enclosure. Use them to create the playhouse especially for your rat. Don’t be sad if it gets chewed up or soiled. Just make a new one. Changing up your rat’s environment will make your rat happy.

Don’t forget to hide food around for your rat to find.

Here is a very simple home for a rat made out of a tissue box.

Before Kitty had her own home, my daughter liked to share her doll house.

Here are a few shots I took. Hope you enjoy them!

Hope you enjoyed my little story about a rat.

It’s environmentally friendly to share your toys. Right!?

Make A Playhouse Box Tower For Your Cat

Posted Jun 29, 10 - Filed Under children's crafts (recycled materials), crafts (recycled materials), reuse boxes | 1 Comment 

Make something fun for your cat and have fun doing it. My husband and kids made this box tower playhouse for our then young cat. It has many levels, two observation decks and plenty of interior places to explore.

To Make:

Gather boxes. Cut holes. Tape together. I could give you step by step instructions for making this box tower but that would take away half the fun of it. Be creative with your design.

Our box tower has holes at the base for the cat to enter. The stacked boxes have holes in the top of one box and through the bottom of the box above so our cat could climb higher. Windows were added. The most important part is the observation deck. Cats like to have a place to perch up high.

Green Southern Maryland: A Local Source For All Things Green

Posted Jun 29, 10 - Filed Under links, local environmentalism (doing our part) | Leave a Comment 

Do you live in Maryland? If so Check out GreenSoMd.com. My husband made this useful site. Want to volunteer your time to a local environmental group, join others on a kayak trip, or live more sustainably? GreenSoMD.com is a great place to find out what is happening in our community.

Think Globally, Act Locally!

Green Southern Maryland

Green Southern Maryland promotes environmental awareness within the Southern Maryland region of Calvert, Charles, and St. Mary’s counties by providing environmental news, a calendar of events, a directory of green organizations and businesses, discussion forums and more.

Make A Micro Pond Observatory For Learning And Fun: Damselfly Observation

Posted Jun 12, 10 - Filed Under Nature: plant and animal identification, children's activities (recycled materials), seasonal: spring, seasonal: summer | Leave a Comment 

In this photo is a damselfly larvae (arrow points to it) and to its left is a salamander larvae (more on it in another post).

How interesting to discover the world living in pond water. When I scooped up some pond water and brought it home for observation, I didn’t know that there was a damselfly larvae in it; we just wanted pond water full of tiny aquatic insects to feed our salamander larvae (more on this salamander larvae later). We were delighted when it crawled out of the water and soon emerged as an adult damselfly.

To make your micro pond you need only to find a container, gather some pond water, and add a stick and/or rock. We used a large glass cookie jar. We broke the top sometime back; it is 10.5 inches height and about 9 inches across (see picture). But you can use what you have or can find; think outside the box. Use an extra large pickle jar (ask for one at a sandwich shop; that’s what I did), find a secondhand fish bowl (not hard to find at thrift stores), or use a large glass carafe from a coffee maker (one that the coffee maker itself is broken but not the carafe).

The idea is to keep your micro-pond around long enough to allow things to grow. We plan to keep ours for most of the summer or until our frogs metamorphose. Some frogs like bull frogs and sometimes green frogs hibernate at the bottom of ponds and therefore will not finish metamorphosing until the following summer. Bull frogs will sometimes take 3 years. If tadpoles don’t complete their metamorphosis, we will let them go before the fall (more about keeping tadpoles in another post). To keep the critters in your micro- pond alive you must add new pond water to it every week. Take out some of the old water at this time. Basically, the tiny things swimming around are food for the larger things. 

According to this website: http://www.dnr.state.md.us/bay/cblife/insects/damselflies.html, larvae feed on other insects and small invertebrates while adult damselflies feed on mosquitoes and other flying insects.

The three “tails” at the back are called the caudal lamellae. These are the insect’s gills.

The skin that the insect leaves behind after turning into a winged adult damselfly is called an exuvia.

Here is a snapshot of the adult damselfly. You will want to put a screen across the top of your pond if you suspect a damselfly larvae will be emerging soon. I was unprepared and this guy got away in my house.

More about this soon.

Explore A Stream: You Might Discover Lampreys

Posted May 23, 10 - Filed Under children's activities (recycled materials), seasonal: spring | Leave a Comment 

In an earlier post I misidentified this lamprey as an American Eel. I’d like to make the correction here.

On a hike along a stream (Maryland USA / March 2010) we found several brook lampreys swimming around. There are three species of lampreys in Maryland: Sea Lamprey, Least Brook Lamprey, and American Brook Lamprey. This one is a Least Brook Lamprey or an American Brook Lamprey. Both or these brook lampreys are non-parasitic. Sea lampreys use their disk shaped mouth to attach themselves to fish and drink their bodily fluids and blood. Brook lampreys do no do this. I believe we came across some lampreys spawning. After they spawn they die soon afterward.

You can find some interesting things out there!

Use An Old Fame To Frame A Picture Before It Is Even Taken

Posted May 17, 10 - Filed Under children's activities (recycled materials), crafts (recycled materials), party décor (recycle and upcycle), reuse frames, picture | Leave a Comment 

I found an old and ugly fame. It needed to be glued in a few spots but nothing a little Gorilla glue and some clamps couldn’t fix. I gave it a light sanding and used left-over pant from another project to give it a clean look and that’s it.

It feels good to give new life to something unwanted. It’s a pretty cool photo prop now!

By the way, the thrift store is a great place to look for costumes of any sort.

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