Goshen First Fridays: Rain Barrel Auction!

Friday night we went to Goshen First Fridays! When the weather is nice, there are lots of people there. The city, downtown businesses, and other community groups work hard to make this a great night out.

So, nature, you ask?
There were plenty of natural chalk drawings by children. I saw a few of the ever popular sun. I like to draw this one too!

National Get Outdoors Day!

To see a news review of our festivities check out this link!

What to do with all those strawberries?

Of course, we have eaten PLENTY of strawberries since we went picking earlier this week Yoder's UPick. However, we still had PLENTY more! I've always liked the taste of strawberry freezer jam, so thought we'd make more of this. It is very fresh tasting, though some say it is a little runny.

We washed and hulled our strawberries, cutting them in half or so. Then we started mashing. The recipe on the back of the Freezer Jam Fruit Pectin said to use a pound (4 cups mashed).

Nurturing Acorns: Water Play!

We had our last session of Nurturing Acorns at Woodlawn Nature Center for the season this last week. We were studying the water cycle and decided to have a little outdoor H2O fun outside during the beautiful weather! I was gone for the beginning part, but came back to find the children ENGAGED in this:

Science Sleuths: Fish

Monday, we headed out to Ox Bow Park after going strawberry picking so the older boys could attend Science Sleuths through Elkhart County Parks. There was only one class and this was a BIG group. As we waited for others to arrive, it was interesting to see the naturally occurring activities between all the children.

A group started throwing a ball to each other. We almost always have a few balls in the van--they've helped so much to have impromptu outdoor recreational activities.

Strawberry Picking

This morning we made it out for the first day of the Strawberry Upick season at Yoder's in Goshen! We have not been here before. The only address we could find was 15th Street in Goshen. I still don't have a better address, but we hashed out a few more directions in our Elkhart Moms and Tots group. Go south on State Road 15 though Goshen, past the library and South Side Soda Shop until you find College Avenue on the left. Turn left. Look for 15th Street on the right (several blocks down the road). Yoder's is on the right, across the street from Greencroft.

Congdon Park and a Little Treasure Hunt

The last day of school . . . the cousins were sleeping over and we wanted to go do something! The kids mostly wanted to go to Shanklin Park in Goshen, which is a fun fortress type park. We went and had a grand time running and playing. The cottonwood seeds were swirling all around! While we were just "at the park" it was a great time to explore seed dispersal too.