23Nov 2023 by catbird
Crystalizing Frost Paint for the Frost Moon

Crystalizing Frost Paint for the Frost Moon

Craft Project, Frost Moon, Full Moon, Learning, Nature Art, Play, Winter
November is the time that the really frosty mornings start for us. The Assiniboine and Creek people call this moon the Frost Moon, the Anishnaabeg and Passamaquoddy call it the Freezing Moon, and the Algonquin tribes call it the Much White Frost on Grass Moon. The Abenaki refer to the Freezing River Maker Moon, and the Arapaho people call it the When the Rivers Start to Freeze Moon. This is a great time to explore outside and look for different types of frost. I always seem to find myself taking pictures of leaves that look like they are dusted with icing sugar. If you have old wondows like us you'll start to see beautiful feathers of frost form on them in the morning. There are even "frost flowers" that is…
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10Oct 2023 by catbird
Decomposer Hike

Decomposer Hike

Autumn, Hike Ideas, Learning, Samhain
One of our favorite activities any time of year, but especially Fall, is turning over logs to look for decomposers. Decomposers are an organism, especially a soil bacterium, fungus, or invertebrate, that decomposes (breaks down) organic material. They play a critical role in the flow of energy through an ecosystem. They break apart dead organisms into simpler inorganic materials, making nutrients available to primary producers (like plants!.) Maybe that doesn't sound exciting, but decomposers are an incredibly important part of life-- without them, dead leaves, dead insects, and animals would just pile up everywhere. Imagine what the world would look like! You can do this in your backyard or on a hike in the woods, once you start looking decomposers are everywhere and it's fun to see what different types you can find and identify with…
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04Sep 2023 by catbird
Spore Prints

Spore Prints

Autumn, Autumn Equinox, Craft Project, Learning, Nature Art, Nature Collection, Nature Journaling
Spore prints are useful tools for identifying mushrooms you find, they also make lovely ephemeral artwork. Fall is a fantastic time to search for mushrooms, it feels like the woods are covered in them this time of year. (And lawns too for that matter.) The "print" part of the spore print is the spores that dropped from the mushroom. The different colors aren't just nice to look at, but a key way to identify mushrooms that look similar. The green prints in this post are from chlorophyllum molybdites common name "the vomiter." As the common name indicates this is absolutely not a mushroom you want to eat, but it looks very similar to others that are edible. Never, ever eat a mushroom without confirmation from an expert. Back to the…
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13Aug 2023 by catbird
Solar Balloons

Solar Balloons

Craft Project, Learning, Play, Recycled Materials, Summer
We always struggle a bit with the dog days of summer-- its hot and humid and no one really wants to do anything. That coupled with the sinking "summer is ending soon" feeling that I always get this time of year always seems to make me cranky in august. So instead of sitting around we decided to break out some simple projects that benefit from sweltering heat- the first of which was this solar balloon. What is a solar balloon anyway? "A solar balloon is a balloon that gains buoyancy when the air inside is heated by solar radiation, usually with the help of black or dark balloon material. The heated air inside the solar balloon expands and has lower density than the surrounding air. As such, a solar balloon is similar to a hot air balloon. Usage…
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23Jul 2023 by catbird
Full Moon Names & Phenology

Full Moon Names & Phenology

Full Moon, Full Moon Names, Learning
If you were to look up names for the thirteen full moons in a year, you would almost certainly discover a fairly standardized list. The source of this list is almost always the Farmers’ Almanac, which popularized its “full moon names” in the 1930s. In turn, the most likely original source for the Almanac’s list is an earlier list entitled “Indian Month Names,” which was published in 1918 by Daniel Carter Beard in his The American Boys’ Book of Signs, Signals, and Symbols, for use by the Boy Scouts of America. Nearly every list of full moon names you find will have a vague description of the origin of the names as “American Indian,” with little or no explanation. (To their credit, the Farmers’ Almanac has recently updated their descriptions…
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04Jun 2023 by catbird
Botanical Bioplastic Sun Catchers

Botanical Bioplastic Sun Catchers

Craft Project, Learning, Nature Art, Play, Summer Solstice
The Summer Solstice is a perfect time to make sun catchers-- light is abundant and long lasting. Every year I try to think up a new way of making a fun sun catcher that will look beautiful gleaming in a summer window and celebrate the season. This year we used a material that's been on my list forever-- bioplastic. Bioplastic is "a plastic derived from biological substances rather than from petroleum, many types of which are biodegradable." So in for this project we use gelatin to make a plastic that is completely biodegradable and not harmful to the environment, but is string and rigid the way traditional plastic is. We used natural plant colorants to dye our bioplastic. Botanical Bioplastic Sun Catchers My favorite of the sun catchers we made this…
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30May 2023 by catbird
Telling Time with the Sun

Telling Time with the Sun

Learning, Play, Summer Solstice
One of the most interesting ways that humans have used the sun over the years is to tell time. You'll find two projects that focus on creative ways of telling time in my Summer Solstice book, but here are two more ways you can explore this idea. Make a Sundial Shadows are the shortest they will be all year on the Summer Solstice which makes it a practical and fun time to make a sundial. You'll need something to serve as the "gnomon" which is the the piece that casts the shadow, and then you'll need something to record the position of the shadow every hour on the hour. We are using rocks here, but you can use whatever you want/ have available. Materials: rocks (or some other object of…
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16Apr 2023 by catbird
Recycling Bin Drawing Machines

Recycling Bin Drawing Machines

Craft Project, Earth Day, Learning, Play, Recycled Materials
This is a great clean out the recycling bin type of project- you can use just about anything. The only thing you really need are dollar store electric toothbrushes, and if you plan ahead you could use an old electric toothbrush that really was destined for the trash. The toothbrushes are a simple way to get a motor for your drawing machine. If you are working with older children, you can also build more complex motors from electrical components, but the toothbrush does the job nicely. So what is a drawing machine and why would you want to build one? In contemporary art, a drawing machine is defined as any sort of apparatus that assists or replaces a human in drawing. Artists have lots of reason for making drawing machines,…
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14Apr 2023 by catbird
Tube Knitting with Plarn

Tube Knitting with Plarn

Craft Project, Earth Day, Learning, Nature Art, Play, Recycled Materials
What you ask is plarn? It's a combination of the words yarn and plastic, so it's essentially "yarn" made from discarded plastic grocery bags. Those plastic grocery bags are a scourge on the environment, they always seem to find their way into woods and waterways, where they are often mistaken for food by wildlife. One of the things we like to do to celebrate Earth Day is to make use of materials that are traditionally discarded and/or littering natural areas. This can be from trash collected during clean ups (my first first public sculpture when I was in high school were giant trees made from trash collected during a big clean up!) or trash from your home and school that you can divert from the landfill and make something useful…
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