Take your Pick

Kids love to pick things.  (Take noses for example!)  Head out into the backyard with your kids and see what you can find to pick.  Don’t assume that you need a beautiful cottage style garden for this kind of activity.  Flowers are lovely, but most yards have other things to offer too.

My daughter had a delightful time in the garden filling a basket with macadamia nuts.  She collected them from the ground, investigating the way the outer casing came away from each one to reveal the hard shell.  She picked them from the tree, amazed at how many she had been oblivious to until she looked hard for them.  She counted them.  She rolled them.  She made patterns on the ground with them.  She made her own fun with them, and all I had to do was give her a basket and say, “Let’s see what we can find to pick in our yard!”

Only thing is, now I have to find something to do with them all.  Anyone know how to roast macadamia nuts?  I’m thinking about macadamia choc chip bickies.  Mmmm…

Ok, so you might not have a macadamia tree in your yard (especially if you don’t live in Queensland).  Any plant will do!  Pick fruit.  Pick flowers.  Pick leaves.  Pick clover.  Pick up twigs.  Pick up feathers.  Just spend an hour outside exploring together.  God’s got a whole science centre outside your back door for free, if you’re interested in showing it to your kids.