An Evening at the Beach

We had plans to meet up with friends late in the day and the head to the beach.  We figured since we were going to be home all morning we'd get a bit of schoolwork done.  

We weren't planning on starting our day with a nature lesson but we had an unexpected visitor; a heron was on our beach.  

We often see a great blue heron around the lake but I think our house it just too noisy for the bird to come near.  

We observed that his "knees" bend backward like the Emu's.  We were able to really compare his height to the toys the boys had left hanging around.  We  even (not so luckily) got to see him poop on our dock.  The boys thought it was both funny and gross!  Then he took flight and wow! are his wings ever big. 

 Ian and Alec each did one more lesson in their math workbooks.  I may have to skip around a bit with Alec who seemed a bit disgusted that "kindergartners could do this!"

Not really thinking much of it I explained that every new school year always starts with a month long review of what was learned the previous year.  He looked at me and said "mom, this is a second grade book though not first grade!"

 I had totally forgotten that I had bought him more advanced material and already he's complaining it's still not challenging enough.

The older two boys read silently to themselves for a bit and I asked them to  update their reading logs since we hadn't done that in a while either.

Evan kept himself occupied with a sea life interactive toy.  He told me he could learn a lot about sea animals by playing with it and he's right.  It not only tells you the names of the animals but many facts about each one such as it's habitat, average height and weight, the gestation period, etc.

He also pulled out our story reader and listened to a Scooby- Doo story.
     
We headed out to do errands and have lunch with a few family members before heading to the beach.  During lunch Alec kept himself occupied building with half and half containers.  His pyramid got to be pretty high too.  He was so proud of himself he made me take a picture.

I am always one of those people who heads out first thing in the morning for a day trip but we were going with some friends of ours who wait until after their youngest son has his afternoon nap before heading to the beach and staying for dinner.

I thought that sounded like a lot of fun.

We don't get to the beach often and rarely go at night so it was a nice change of routine for us.  We went to a new beach (well new to us!) and it was really neat.  It's right next to the departure point for the ferry and we watched the big boats coming and going.

We let the boys play in the water for a bit and I was nervous when I realized none of my kids have any fear of the ocean or the waves.  I think Alec would have swam all the way out the buoys if I hadn't started yelling his name and told him that was far enough.  He wanted his goggles so he could swim all around.

I had to explain that oceans aren't like lakes and you can't just swim around.  I emphasized that when they're in the water without an adult right next to them they have to make sure they can touch at all times.

It was a bit better after that and after a while we went walking on the beach to collect shells and I'm so glad we did!

A whole crab (completely intact) had washed up on shore at some point during the day so we really got to study that up close.

We also found a few mermaids purse's (or shark eggs! As Alec yelled out), a complete unopened mussel shell, many different varieties of seaweed (one of which was attached to what we believe was a hermit crab shell!).

It was great and the boys brought home tons of shells to add to their collections.

We had a snack on the beach and watched the sail boats, fishing boats with their nets out in the water and rigging out to the side, and the ferries.  Evan noticed that not all seagulls are the same color, he even noticed some had different colored spots on their beaks, and was real excited to see they had webbed feet like a duck.

The boys all worked together to dig in the sand and make a long river.  They played in the water, went boogie boarding and watched two men kite surfing (or kite boarding).  The boys were really enraptured by this.

It was something new to us and it was really neat to watch them jump out of the water and do flips on their boards.

We had dinner and then walking around on the rocks to search for some more shells and perhaps a starfish or two.

The tide was definitely coming in and the waves were getting bigger.   As much as I love the beach by the end of the day the grit, salt and sand really start to annoy me and I was ready to head home.

 I thought they'd sleep on the way home since it was so late and they'd had a long day playing but they all managed to stay awake.  They told stories and jokes and played an alphabet animal game.

It was a wonderful evening at the beach!

Linking up with: