Summer Sky: Learning as I go

"Family bagging night" at the local food bank.

A couple of months ago, my friend, Marissa, clued our family in to a terrific way that children as young as two can help give back to the community.  We call it "family bagging night" at the local food bank, and last night, we finally were able to participate.

 

If your community food bank doesn't have one, maybe you could be the first to suggest it.  Ours is run by the Arlington Food Assistance Center ("AFAC") on the second Monday of each month.

Their system is simple but ingenious:

First, they gather large paper grocery bags and count them out.

Next, they set up 3 food stations with 5 crates of canned food each.  The food-filled crates are set on top of empty overturned crates, at just the right height for a child to reach in and grab a can. The crates each hold a different type of food:  tonight, it was two kinds of beans, a starchy vegetable, two kinds of green vegetables, and chicken broth.

 

Then they turn the kids loose. Even toddlers--there were some young threes in the bunch--can take one can from each crate, place it in the bag, and move on down the row until the bag has the right number of food cans. Then (heavy though the bags are) they carefully walk the bags over to high shelves where grownups quickly line them up in neat rows until the shelves can hold no more. 

We filled 400 bags last night, and the kids did about 90% of the bagging work.  Within two days, the bags will have been given away to local families in need, and the process will start over with a different group of baggers.

 

 

 

 

I've been on the lookout, as I'm sure many parents are, for ways that our small children can give back to the community, beyond watching the grownups do it. To the brilliant minds that came up with this idea first, wherever you are, our family thanks you for giving us this opportunity to share.

On a hill at the Mall, and in the garden.

Tomorrow is one of the seasonal Washington, D.C. events that we look forward to all year: the annual Kite Festival hosted by the Smithsonian, held at the Washington Monument and along the Mall. It's part of the Cherry Blossom Festival and it can get kind of crazy, with folks driving in to see the cherry trees blooming around the Tidal Basin, tourists visiting the museums, and hundreds (thousands?) of kites filling the sky.  Here's a photo I took in April 2007, not on kite festival day (in case you're looking for them in the pic), but to give you an idea of why we keep going back:

 

I want to try to take lots of photos, but juggling two small kids and three kites might make holding a camera, um, difficult.

There's been lots of kite making going on over here, although I'm not quite ready to show anything, but it's been fun and the kids are enjoying it too.  Here are some photos of the process:

 

The other event I'm looking forward to this weekend--that I look forward to all year--is the opening of DeBaggio's Herb Farm.  I received the catalog yesterday--just in time for opening day, which is also tomorrow.

I think we'll wait a day or two to go to the farm so it's a little more relaxing and we can take our time. Plus, I need a chance to dig into the catalog and ponder what to buy. I'm also planning a little herb garden for our co-op preschool, and that calls for curling up in a comfy chair with the catalog and a cup of tea.

Hope you have some fun plans for the weekend, too.

Parade recap.

As I mentioned, we went to the St. Patrick's Day parade yesterday and the weather was perfect. It clouded over but that kept it from being too sunny (70 degree weather in March! wacky!).

Before I get into that, a quick word: tomorrrow is the second Monday of the month, and that means family bagging night at AFAC (Arlington Food Assistance Center, our local food bank). From their website:

YOUNG FAMILIES:  Join us for Family Bagging night, the second Monday of each month.  Ideal for families with children up to 9 years of age.  Children as young as three can drop a can in a bag!  No registration necessary.  6:30 prompt start at AFAC, 2708 S. Nelson Street.

Without further ado, here are some photos of a great parade--the kids had a fab time.  I took a couple of 'green week' photos as well (how could I not?) and they're thrown in the mix. 

 

Pre-parade lunch--the kids watch the crowds gather.

 

 

 

On King Street, waiting for the parade to start.

 

 

 

Beginning of the parade.

 

 

Lots of classic cars and dignitaries--this car was probably the oldest.

 

 

 

There were marching bands and reenactors from every era.

 

 

 

Gotta have the Shriners in their little cars!

 

 

Several area Irish dancing groups attended--E could hardly wait to see them.

 

 

 

Green alert! With bagpipes. Lots of those, too.

 

 

 

More green--N watching out for classic cars.

 

 

And LOTS of dogs from start to finish! Irish wolfhounds here.

Hope you can make it to family bagging night if you're in Arlington--we will have to miss due to a prior commitment but hope to come soon.

Anybody home?

  

I can hear plenty of birds, but I haven't seen any of them.

For those slow on the uptake (me), this weekend is the Great Backyard Bird Count ("GBBC"), and today is the last day to participate. D's father knew about it, and E's class at preschool is participating, and I should have mentioned it here sooner. Anyhoo.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology asks bird watchers all over the U.S. and Canada to count birds for them this weekend. They want you to look for birds in a particular area for a minimum of 15 minutes. You can do it as many times as you like over the course of Feb. 13-16. Then you enter the information online at their website: zip code; how many observers participated; weather conditions for detecting birds; location type (yard, farm, etc.); habitats; and the highest number of birds of each species you saw together at any one time.

So far this morning, despite a glorious blue sky, and much sitting still on the front porch, that number would be: zero. As I said, we can hear some beautiful singing, but we haven't been able to clap eyes on a single (!) bird.

 

We even took to peering through second-story windows at trees several lots away, ready to dash out and photograph the evidence if we didn't scare it away first. But no luck.

I am consoling myself on several fronts: the hammer pounding and saw buzzing from the home addition across the street is incessant. I can't hear it in the house, but outside it's pretty loud. The birds are probably staying clear. (We are house-bound today for various reasons or we'd find a more peaceful place to look for birds.)

Another source of consolation: Project [Bird] FeederWatch on the Cornell Lab's website. Signup closes at the end of February and observation ends April 3 (it began the second Saturday in November, and runs for 21 weeks). We have a feeder, so we are all set! Project FeederWatch is similar to the GBBC except that you choose and schedule your count days in advance and it extends over a longer period.

Yet another bit of comfort:

  

We love our Backyard Birdsong Guide. The guides, published by, you guessed it, the Cornell bird lab, cover various regions and species. Ours is the "backyard" version for Eastern and Central North America, and allows us to hear the songs, calls, and chirps of 75 birds. (Not that we will ever be privileged enough to see, let alone hear, a loon in our backyard.) The kids adore this book along with their Golden Guide on birds.

And my last solace: a sweet little bird house to hang on a tree (pictured in the first photo). In our area, birds start looking for homes "in earnest" at the end of February, beginning of March. So even if we don't see a bird all day, we can still feel close to them.

Just as I started to post this, four large crows suddenly appeared, flying up and down the street and briefly landing in our yard (but not staying long enough to pose). Lots of loud caws. Well, maybe the day is young!

Looking further forward.

The list of fun things to do quickly accumulates in Washington, D.C. as early as mid-February, with all types of annual events cramming into our calendar.

First, I have to mention a wonderful resource for parents in the D.C. metro area, including Arlington where we live, and that is the Our Kids website. (Please note: I've created a separate section for links to local websites, blogs, and resources in the right-hand column of the blog, including a link to the Our Kids site.) What makes that website so useful for parents is that the information can be searched by many different categories, including outdoor activities, indoor activities, performing arts, and educational events. You can also plug in specific dates, and also search by event type, price, and age group. Which is a good thing, because there are so many different events on there that a list of all of them would be too overwhelming.

So, what would we have been doing today if the kids weren't at granny's?

Presidential Family Fun Day at the National Portrait Gallery looked like fun indeed. "Fife-and-drum music, period dance, dramatic storytelling, Victorian valentines, an interactive self-guide, and several special guests are just some of the activities scheduled for this Presidents Day holiday weekend extravaganza."

But what I wish we could have attended was Presidential Cupcakes, at the Smithsonian's American Art Museum. If you couldn't go personally, you could watch live via the Internet here (they said it would last until 5 pm but they continued the webcast well past that).  Zilly Rosen, an artist, spent the afternoon today creating "A New Birth of Freedom, a double portrait of Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama made from more than 5,600 cupcakes." As soon as the portrait was finished, you could watch them start to divvy them up! Here's a screencap:

 

Zilly must have been miked up for the video and you can hear her thanking everyone and saying, "This has been an amazing experience," and people telling her the cupcakes are delicious. (I could also hear her saying she was saving the cupcake with Obama's mole for NPR!) Wish we were there!

But, this post was NOT supposed to be about today, or about things we missed, but rather Looking Further Forward. That is a link I added *under* the Looking forward feature (see column to the left) that opens a separate page, where I'm listing events that won't occur until the end of March, April, or even further down the road. To name a few: The Kite Festival at the Washington Monument, Free Concerts at the Jefferson Memorial during the Cherry Blossom Festival, The Azalea Walk at the National Arboretum, and Marguerite Kelly's talk (she's a wonderful parenting columnist for the Washington Post) at a local cooperative preschool. Here's a photo to dream about:

 

Looking forward

Today I also wanted to highlight my Looking Forward list on this blog. Here you will find public activities in which you, too, can participate. Most will be family-friendly (babysitters being expensive, and our kiddos being young), but occasionally I will throw in something for grownups. Like Molly's book signing.

I wanted to post about every activity in the list right now because I am excited about them all, but I will exercise restraint and only post about one more. That would be the first one on the list (chronologically), our upcoming visit to see southern flying squirrels in their natural habitat. If I understand the park ranger in this video correctly, these animals are quite common to the Washington, D.C. area, they are just nocturnal and shy. 

Every December through March, Long Branch Nature Center in Arlington has a flying squirrel program that starts around sunset where you can see a flying squirrel up close and then, possibly watch them in action as they glide from tree to tree (as you can see at the end of the short video). You do have to register in advance, but the fee is nominal. This year we finally are going to do it and after we go I'll share our experience here.

I can't say enough good things about the nature centers, not just in Arlington County but also surrounding areas (D.C., Montgomery County, Fairfax County, and Alexandria in my own experience). I will post about some in the future. 

In Arlington County, a good bet to find nature center programs is to sign up for The Snag, a quarterly newsletter which you can get sent to you online (or on paper for $5 annually).

 

If you have kids five and under in the area, be sure to sign up for the one-page The Snag for Wee Ones, which has programs just for toddlers and preschoolers. They read a book, do a craft, and typically walk around the grounds of the nature center exploring. Last fall we went to a wonderful program all about animal camouflage, and the kids had a scavenger hunt in the woods that was a hit. FYI, Registration for the entire next quarter (March through May) starts 8 a.m. February 18.