About a month before school let’s out, parents start receiving correspondence to help bridge the summer gap. We’re given papers, emails, blog posts, Pinterest images, all of it. While the littles are homeschooled, I still like finding things for them to do over the summer that isn’t as structured as homeschool is during the school year. I look to things to be a bit easier for us, so that we can do more last-minute things, or nothing at all if we choose to. Call it my summer vacation as well, even with the planning that I may do in August. I love that this month though, we have Wild Creature Wednesdays to help us out a bit.
PBS Kids has a Summer Safari that’s going on this month, and on Wild Creature Wednesdays, the WILD KRATTS will be premiering 2 new episodes each week of the month. Last week Wednesday, they showed their brand new movie WILD KRATTS: Back In Creature Time that the trifecta loved. Starting tomorrow, they will enjoy seeing the two new episodes and discussing creature powers among themselves. The week before last we visited Brookfield Zoo for a preview of a brand new exhibit and the ladybug was disappointed to find out that they wouldn’t be including the zoo on their tour this year. I have a feeling that she will be okay since we are now members of the zoo and can go anytime we want. Smart thinking on mom’s part this year.
While we were camping (another blog post that I owe to you all – one of these days) in Palatine a couple of weekends ago, the kids were able to stretch their creature knowledge with one of the Park rangers who brought animal hides in for the children to check out. The kids were super excited to know so many of the animals, AND to show off their knowledge of what they ate, and what kinds of habitats they lived in. I wish that I could take credit for this, but it really is their love of WILD KRATTS and the great way that they share the information to make it pleasant for children.
Right now, we currently have a Swallowtail Butterfly in chrysalis in our kitchen because the kids didn’t want it to get eaten by a bird – like the first one did. So we’ll wait for it to emerge, and then release it into our garden. I think that shows like this are important because instead of wanting to ignore the butterfly, they wanted to see the entire process. You can’t imagine how excited they were when we discovered the baby caterpillars in their first instar. Each day they would run outside to check the carrots (where the swallowtail were hanging out) to see if there was any change in the size or color of the caterpillars. The fact that there is self guided learning going on makes me happy, and let’s me know that we’re going to be just fine.
Especially with the help of WILD KRATTS