Backyard Science & Creative Play

Reese & I made a pretty cool discovery on our front door this week. I thought there was a mud dobber nest attached to the front door, so I took a pencil and planned to knock it down. Reese was behind me watching, because I wanted him to get a view of the larvae or whatever might be inside the nest!

As I knocked the three-chambered mud nest off the door, out poured ALL these spiders. What made it even more creepy was that they weren't dead! Oh no, they were paralyzed by the mud dobber, & were just slowly moving their legs...all of them...probably 30 spiders stuffed into this nest as food for the growing larvae. Reese, of course, thought it was really cool, & used his pirate sword to attack the nest too.

It made for interesting conversation about why the Mommy Dobber put the spiders in there. I first thought it was a spider nest of some sort (?) but after seeing a vareity of spider types, it was obvious what they were doing in there. Probably one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time. The fact that all the spiders were still alive, just paralyzed, was so interesting! Below is the nest I knocked down. You can see a really pretty green spider among the brown varieties.

Here's Reese at playgroup on Monday. This group of friends has been gathering for almost 2 years now for weekly playdates...they had fun in the sandbox & sprinklers this day.

Reese's version of playing Horseshoes:


Reese has a big basket of hats that make creative play fun! This day, he was Captain Jack Sparrow & he said Mommy was Barbosa (from Pirates of the Caribbean), and he was using his flashlight to find bad guys.

This little red cowboy hat came with a Halloween costume he wore as a baby! But he loves it & his new cowboy guns make for lots of fun Cowboy play.

Reese loves, loves, loves to help cook in the kitchen. I was making a Chicken Pot Pie, and while cooking I took a phone call. I got tickled as Reese took over the flour cannister & pie plate to make what he called a "Blueberry Pie." By the time he was done, he had emptied (spoon by spoon) the entire 5lb canister of flour into the pie plate, & had spent lots of time patting the flour down. It was pretty impressive to hear him tell me the steps in making his pie. My first instinct was to stop him from one, making a big mess, and two, wasting the flour. But I stopped myself, & let him have his creative fun. After all, flour is cheap, clean up is easy, & creative times like this are priceless!!!!

Captain Independent making his own "toast". Lots of olive oil butter, then he requested peanut butter & jelly on top of that. I passed on sharing that dish, but he thought it was great!