Living things

The bunnies crack me up at this age.

We get these in the summer- we call them emerald beetles, but really I have no idea what they are. 

Meet Sally, the suburban chicken. She always gets first choice of the compost- what she and the bunnies don't eat goes into the compost- barely anything!

This is Snowball.  His dad is lop-eared and his mom has upright ears, so often one of his will be up and the other down.  The thing I love about having bunnies is that they eat lots of our veggie and fruit scraps and their manure is 'green' which means it can be added directly to the garden.  I have lots of little helpers feed the tops of strawberries to the bunnies and even gather poop.  I removed all the bottoms of the cages so the droppings fall directly onto the earth.  This really helps with the oder.  Then I simply rake the poop up into a dustpan and disperse into the garden.  This way there is not washing of the cage pan or any of the really 'yucky'  part!

Again, I like the action of the cycles.  i don't go into a lot of scientific info with the little ones about this but they get a real tangible experience of eating strawberries, feeding the tops to the bunnies, taking the bunny poop and feeding it back to the strawberry plants.  Usually around 5 years old they begin to make the correlation themselves, which often sounds something like, "That's funny that the bunnies eat the strawberries and then they poop and the strawberries eat the poop with the strawberries in it so it's like strawberries eating strawberries."  I am one of those firm believers in the old adage about whenever we teach a child something we deprive them of the process of discovery.  We've gotten so focused on 'teaching moments' in recent generations that often those magical moments of discovery are stolen from our children.  Children that talk and dress like mini adults are seen as 'adorable' by mainstream media and often imitated by many modern families.  I find this to be true in the US more than anywhere else.  Even in other European countries a more 'childish' dress and attitude is still favored for the very young.  It's rare to see a baby in jeans and a trendy t-shirt.  Even in the last 5 years there's been a significant push of 'teen' clothing for babies and toddlers in particular in the US.  What marketers won't do for a buck!