Give A Kid A Camera

And watch their observational skills soar!

In this day and age of digital madness it's so hard to get kids outside, engaging with the natural world around them.

But add in a little piece of technology and they might just be immersed for hours!

Give them a camera so they can record what they observe.

We recently spent some time on a local island and whilst they had to share the one spare camera we have, all three kids got into some serious nature photography.

They spent an incredible amount of time wandering, engaged, observing and capturing what they saw.

My teen is teaching himself the manual settings, with a few pointers from mum and dad, when he asks. The younger two are content with the automatic setting.

I have so many images to sort through and those are the ones just from the kids. Far too many to share them all with you, but here's a few.

The following four images were taken by our 15 year old.

Love how my teen captured this. Starfish were everywhere on low tide, along the shoreline and they look fabulous in the sunset.

So ok, not exactly a nature shot but playing around with the light and his little brother during a glorious Moreton Island sunset.

You can't visit Moreton and not watch the sun set over the famous wrecks.

He was even lucky enough to capture this guy whilst we were out on the water.

The next five images were taken by my 12 year old.

She was enraptured with the starfish. There are several images of them taken by her.

Playing around with her little brother. She had my camera for this one.

Of course the obligatory, toes with a starfish photo simply must make an appearance.

These guys get battered around by the surf and many of them get flipped from crashing waves. Their undersides though are mesmerising to look at it.

She also managed to snap the only crab photo of the entire trip!

Our 8 year old barely went anywhere without the camera hanging from his neck. Consequently I now have a plethora of images that he took. The following nine are all from him.

We were so lucky to pass by a pod of dolphins on our way over to the island. They were quick and he was lucky to even grab this shot.

This sunset he snapped directly out in front of our villa. What a beauty!

Behind us was a smallish tropical rainforest inspired garden, which he spent a bit of time in.

This little guy sat and posed for him for ages.

And because everyone else was doing it, he thought he should too!

Once again there are heaps of starfish photo's, but I particularly like this one.

A view through the glass bottom boat.

This little guy was found sitting in the trees just out the front of our room.

Once again in the garden at the back of our room.

Taking these truly helped each of them to observe so much more than if they would have done by simply walking around. I hope to get some of these added to our hand drawn nature journals soon.

If you would like to see more of what we got up to on the island please follow along with our family adventure blog.

Happy Homeschooling,
Kylie

Ex Tropical Cyclone Debbie Aftermath

We recently experienced one of the worst natural disasters our local area has seen in a very long time. I personally have no memory of anything ever hitting our area as hard as this.

In less than 30 hours our area had 890 mm of rain dropped on us. No wonder it had nowhere to go.

We though, are the lucky ones and whilst being placed on a possible evacuation list was mightily scary our only real threat was that of surrounding roads being cut off.

And cut off they were and still are. The above three images are from a road that we use almost daily. The sheer force of the water is simply unimaginable.

This is a major bridge and thoroughfare for our area and we cross this bridge at least once a week. It is an area of the river that floods regularly, but that happens way down below the bridge, across the old original bridge that is much closer to the actual river flow height.

This newer bridge is several metres higher than the flow of the river and has received extensive structural damage.

For water to bend a light pole is simply mind blowing.

The kids could not believe their eyes and this was absolutely hands down the best way to show them the reasons why they never ever enter flood water or try to cross a bridge that is covered with flood water.

We simply have no idea what is under that water and whether the bridge is even actually still there, as happened a few kilometers from us.

So whilst we certainly didn't want to experience a natural distaster on this scale and my heart breaks for everyone that has been so severely affected by this, it truly is education at it's best.

Eyes glued to the weather radar, watching the cyclone, tracking it's moves, discussing the eye and then watching how it breaks up as it heads south.

Then sitting through the torrential rain, only to wake and see the worst flooding we've seen right across the road from us.

Nature's fury right there in all its glory.

The vast majority of the time flooding creates nothing but havoc and devastation but every so often it creates a beautiful scene and the stillness of what appeared to simply be a lake was quite beautiful, except that it was covering a road, had entered several houses in this area and took lives, both animal and human.

Simply heartbreaking.

Outdoor Hour: Fungi & Printable Note Book Pages

The Outdoor Hour challenge this month was Lichen, Moss & Fungi. With all of the rain we've had here this year we didn't even need to leave our yard to hunt down and discover an array of fungi.

Once we started looking I couldn't believe my eyes with all of the different varieties right here in our own back yard. The kids were pretty excited running here, there and everywhere looking for fungi. I could here shouts, "I've found a different one over here!"

I wanted a record of our time spent looking more closely at the fungi but didn't want to turn this into a chore, so I put together a very simple notebooking page for the kids to illustrate the fungi of their choice.

Everyone agreed on water colours for this exercise. Lego Lover (11) chose a single stand alone specimen.

From the Fairy Princess, 8.

Little Surfer Dude, 4.

We also completed a second page with the all of the photographs taken during the backyard fungi hunt.

After Fungi we were on a bit of a roll and notebooked some of our backyard flowers and birds. I'm sharing these simple notebook pages over at my box storage.

Download the note book pages by clicking here.

I'm linking this post up to the Outdoor hour Challenge over at Handbook of Nature Study.

Katoomba Scenic World

Yay the Blue Mountains! This is one place I have wanted to visit for a long time. Scenic World has got to be one the best ways to see the fabulous sights of the Blue Mountains.



First stop, the Skyway. With it’s glass bottom to either take in the sights of the gorge below or maybe scare yourself half to death, this cable way spans right across the gorge.

At 270 metres it is the highest skyway in Australia.



It certainly offers stunning views of the famous Three Sisters.



The Katoomba Falls




and of course the greater Blue Mountains area.




The Blue Mountains are 10 times older than the Grand Canyon and the mountain in the centre, Mount Solitary, is the same size as Uluru.



Looking back at Echo Point Lookout from the Skyway. This is definitely one of the highest lookouts I have ever had the opportunity to visit.



A perfect example of erosion, a large portion of the cliff has simply collapsed, leaving this piece sitting precariously on the edge.



The Scenic Railway, don’t worry about Lego Lover, he isn’t about to have a panic attack, he simply didn’t hear me say me ‘photo’.



The original railway car, The Mountain Devil, was built by the Katoomba Coal Mine to replace the coal skip that had been used to transport passengers on weekends.

At 52 degrees this is the steepest railway in the world and let me tell you, it’s a pretty eerie feeling heading deep into the dark forest at such a steep decent!




Once at the bottom the Scenic Walkway is available to explore. At 2.4 kilometres it is the longest boardwalk in the southern hemisphere.



There is no need to walk the entire length though if you do not wish. There are several options of walk times available, depending on how energetic you are feeling.



The early stages of the boardwalk meander past replicas from Katoomba’s coal mining era. Fairy Princess, our little horse lover, was quick to jump up on top.



Including a glimpse inside the coal mine itself.



To get back up to the top we needed to jump on the cableway. This is massive, holding 84 people it is the largest cableway in Australia.

The Blue Mountains is a gorgeous part of Australia and well worth a much longer visit than what we were able to do this time around.



Fee: $70 for a family pass
Time to allow: 1.5 – 2hours, dependent on lengths of walks, could spend 4+ hours here
Parking: We left the motorhome at the front of the caravan park and walked a short 5 minute, but very pretty bush walk