Wildlife Gardening

I know, three posts in less than 12 hours.  We've been doing a lot.  Plus, I got a new phone with a camera better than the one I had.  Lastly, I need to document everything because Eli is now of reporting age.  Consider this our curriculum journal.  Please bear with me...
We got a book called Wildlife Gardening by Martyn Cox awhile back.  It always seems that my kids "discover" books weeks or even months after they make their way onto the bookshelves.  I digress...
Eli loved this book.  He loved it so much that he left it out in the rain one night.  I had to buy another.  Now, before you begin the lesson on spoiling and learning lessons...he's five and he really did love the book.  And I loved how much he loved the book.  He carried it around with him everywhere - the car, the bathroom...outside.  He wanted to do every project in the book immediately.  Then, it got wet and I couldn't even separate the pages.  I tried drying it and, well, it was awful.  So, I ordered another copy and it came today.  Eli was off to build a frog and toad home (page 56).  Then he wanted to build the pond (page 14).  Sure, we'll build the pond today.  He'd been asking about the pond for about 2 weeks before the book got soaked.  We discovered a plastic bin that I had put weeds in to die off before I threw them in the compost pile.  The bin was full of water...and larvae.  Now we could do pond dipping (page 52)!  We found mosquito larvae and some other larvae.  I have no idea what they are...except just iggy. 


Dip #1  A fly got stuck.  Poor little guy...



Dip #2  Mosquito and unidentified larvae.  They were see through...maybe crane flies or midges?



Dip #3  The dark one in the upper left-hand corner is a mosquito larvae.

This "pond" was not what Eli had in mind - he wanted to reproduce the pictures in the book.  I dug the hole, of course, because the spot he chose was littered with poison ivy roots.  Plus, it ended up being a foot and a half deep, a foot and a half wide and three feet long - about.  I didn't actually measure.  It took us about an hour and a half from start to finish.  The boys worked hard transplanting flowers and grass, gathering stones and sand.  Odin even helped to lug water across the yard.  What a trooper. 


The beginning...




A hard working Odin.





I had to throw it in...




Tonka really makes those trucks tough.





Admiring their own handy work...

I really like this book.  I also really like the team work my boys showed and their enthusiasm for creating.  While digging, Eli said, "I've been thinking about this a lot for a while - are people litter?  Like, does the Earth think that people walking around it are Earth's litter?"  I love that boy.