Planting flower bulbs is the easiest family planting activity ever!
When the temperatures are in the fifties and sixties and the days get shorter, our hibernating tendencies start to kick in. You can fight this with invigorating outdoor activities like walking, biking, and playing sports outside.
And guess what? If the ground is not frozen, there is still planting to be done! November is my time to put in bulbs that will come up in the spring, Yes, we’re talking about delayed gratification; it takes months for the bulbs you plant in November to emerge from the ground or from outdoor flower pots. But when they do, your investment of time, energy, and hope will be well worth it. I already know what will happen when those tiny green tips start peeking through the snow in early spring. My kids will race into the house yelling, “Mom, the flowers are coming up!” What a lovely way to inject some excitement into the cold weather.
Why not take the kids over to their grandparents’ house (or an aunt, uncle, or family friend’s house) for a bulb-planting party? It’s a wonderful gift you will enjoy twice. First, it’s a fun excuse for a family visit that includes outdoor time; and second, when the bulbs come up in the spring, you can take the kids back to check on them.
Of course, one of the best things about November is Thanksgiving! Backyards and local parks are the perfect place to go “shopping” for holiday decor. And it gets people out of the house on Thanksgiving Day. Have each guest make his or her own place card out of natural objects they find outside. My five-year-old made a stunning place card with a giant leaf, a hummingbird’s nest, a flower seed head, acorns, and a rock. It was fun to see what Grandma, Grandpa, and other family members did with their Thanksgiving Day findings too.
I like to plant my bulbs after Halloween, when there aren’t as many activities competing for my family’s time. Here are three options for planting your spring-blooming bulbs:
The first Sunday in November marks the time to adjust clocks back one hour, gaining an extra hour of sleep (if your kids actually sleep in). While you’ll most likely be waking up in the dark, you get to watch the sunrise. What a wonderful way to start the day with your family. Look up when the sun will rise and plan to see it together. Older kids can start tracking when the sun rises and sets over the next month as daylight is gradually shorter and shorter until December 21, the day with the least amount of light.
In mid-fall (and other seasons too) watch for flowering plants whose blooms have dried and produced seeds. Invite your kids to collect the seeds, dropping them into individual paper envelopes and labeling each envelope so you’ll remember what’s in it. In the spring and summer (and even fall for some perennials), pull out the envelopes and plant those seeds outside. There is something magical about harvesting your own seeds. It’s also a great gift for someone or a way to save money on seeds the following year! Any seeds not harvested can be left on dried flower heads as food for the birds.
Bats, frogs, snakes, and bears find places to hide out all winter, but you don’t! According to www.SaskSchools.ca, skunks, badgers, raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, and beavers are “Nappers and Snackers,” finding a warm place for winter, but still active at times for food. Look around and see if you can spot animals getting ready for winter: squirrels making warm nests high in trees and collecting nuts, holes in logs where animals may live, you may even notice that birds are getting more plump in preparation for winter.
It’s that time again! Head to the nursery as a family and see what is on sale for you to add to your garden. Garden accessories? A favorite shrub or tree (for example, your state tree)? Don’t forget to look for berry bushes and fruit trees too.
Head to your local airport to watch the amazing choreography of airplanes taking off and landing. November is a great time to do this, since it gets you out of the house. A small regional airport may be closer to home and get you closer to the planes. Bring a ball or kite with you for some off-season fun. Your airport fieldtrip may even serve as a launching point for stopping by the playground on the way home.
Dormancy is a plant’s method of hibernating for the winter; leaves die back and the plant sleeps and sprouts again when the weather warms up. For example, where I live the grass is dormant in winter; my perennials are too. Deciduous trees and shrubs lose their leaves. Evergreens, such as pines, may lose some leaves or needles, although they quickly return. Go outside and notice what flowers, shrubs, and trees are going to sleep for winter, storing energy to return next spring.
Pick a patch of woods, then go outside with a yardstick to measure the height of the layer of fallen leaves. Pick two to five days on your calendar over the next three months to measure again the height of leaf layer in the same spot. Is the layer of leaves smaller? If so, the leaf layer has likely started to decompose. Each time you measure, clear away some leaves to look at the soil underneath the leaf pile. Note your child’s observations in the notebook; maybe even take some photos. Over time, does the soil look darker and richer as the leaf pile decomposes?
Make believe that you need to mark your trail through the leaves. What will you use? Rocks? A string? Popcorn? Peanuts? All the balls in your closet? Create a trail, mark it, and follow your trail back. Don’t forget to put away the string or balls when you’re done! The popcorn or peanuts can be left as a snack for the squirrels or birds.
Kids are brilliant at making up countless renditions of tag; there could probably be a whole book on the subject of tag alone. A family of three children, ages five to ten, brought Ghost in the Graveyard to my attention. For the first game, someone is picked as the “ghost,” and that player hides. Those left count to ten from base and then go look for the ghost. When one of you sees the person who is it, you yell, “Ghost!” and try to run back to base without being tagged by the ghost. If you are tagged before hitting base, you become the ghost and the game begins again.
Invite your child’s best friend to the playground and they can act out their favorite book, TV program, or movie on the play set. When my mother was a child, she loved to pretend she was Peter Pan with her friends, and they would use the jungle gym as their fairy world. Your kids can do the same as they pretend to be their favorite characters.
Take a small box, such as the cardboard wrapping for a bar of soap. Make sure both ends are taped shut and remove one side of the box. Go outside and mix up some dirt with water to make thick mud and put it in the box. Press objects, such as shells, rocks, leaves, or sticks into the mud and bring the boxes with mud inside to dry. When mud is dry, you can remove the objects to reveal your “fossil,” the imprint of your object.
My five-year-old cousin Reagan introduced me to “Pickle,” which he plays in the summer at baseball camp. As it gets colder, it’s a great way to stay active instead of being inside. There are two bases about ten to twelve feet apart (I like using a Frisbee or stick to mark each base). A person stands on each base and one person has a ball. The third person, in the middle, tries to tag either base without getting tagged by the ball in the hands of the basemen.
Once my bulbs are planted, it’s time for some garden cleanup. You can leave dried flower heads for the birds to eat the seeds. Once the seeds are gone, cut perennials down to the ground. Remove leaves collected at the base of trees and shrubs. Refresh mulch if desired and spread an organic, granular fertilizer, such as Milorganite. Dried leaves can go into the compost; woody stems can be left out, as they won’t decompose as quickly. Want more year-round gardening tips? You can always reference my easy-to-follow trio of gardening guides: Bloom Calendar, Growing Vegetables, and Landscape Design (www.rebeccaplants.com).
We are familiar with looking for shapes in the clouds; what do you see in the stars? You don’t have to know the constellations for this game. Just bundle up and pick a spot in the evening to lay a warm blanket on the ground. Look up at the sky and connect the dots with your fingers to point out to each other the shapes, letters, or numbers you see.
A beaver lives in water, but you don’t need water for this pretend game. Use your imagination to create a beaver dam out of sticks. Stack your sticks high just like a beaver to form a dam, but remember to leave an opening at the bottom for the beaver to come and go! A beaver blocks a stream with sticks, and a pond forms behind the dam. If your child wants to pretend to be the beaver, you can create a much larger home of fallen branches, perhaps over a cardboard box with an opening cut out for an entry and exit.
Now that the leaves are down, do you see bird’s nests in trees? See if you can build a bird’s nest with what you find outside: tall dried grass woven together, bits of string, small twigs, maybe even mud. Want to learn about real nests and the birds in your backyard? Join the National Zoo in their Neighborhood Nestwatch program. Learn more at NationalZoo.si.edu.
Invite the neighborhood kids over for hot cocoa and warm cider, s’mores, and popcorn. While the kids are enjoying the snacks, they can play charades outside. Write down on cards ten things, such as animals, that the kids could act out silently that the other children could guess. For example, a cat, dog, bear, bird, worm, snake, rabbit, bat, squirrel, woodpecker, and turtle.
Camouflage is helpful to animals at different times of the year. Look at how the foliage has changed; what type of camouflage helps animals the most now? For example, if grass and brush are now dormant and brown and beige, which animals are harder to see? Squirrels? Bunnies? Deer?
My dad loved playing the “Initial Game” in the car on long trips; it’s a great activity for walks too or anytime you’re outside together and need something to do. The person who goes first says the initials of the person she is thinking of, and the other player(s) can ask questions about the person that require a yes or no answer. For example, the answer to “RPC” would be Rebecca P. Cohen. For younger children, you can play with just the first initial of someone’s name and make the sound of that letter.
A wonderful tradition for Thanksgiving is to create a stepping stone each year for the garden. It’s easy with a stepping stone kit from a craft store. I find making one stepping stone at a time with everyone pitching in on the decorating easier than worrying about multiple sets of curing concrete. Write the date with a hand print from each of the kids and their names. You can even bring a bit of nature with a leaf print or a mosaic of small, flat rocks.
When is your weather due for a temperature at or below thirty-two degrees? Maybe you’ve already had it. Wake up in the morning and look outside; are there ice crystals on the grass? My younger son loves to put on his boots and coat and run outside with a shovel and make a path or letters in the frost. You could follow each other’s footprints too!
The same relay games that we think of for summer would be fun for a day of family time at Thanksgiving. For example, two people each thread a ribbon through a paper plate that is worn on top of their head. They race to a chair with cotton balls in a bowl, spoon cotton balls on their plates, and race back to the start. The person with the most cotton balls left on their plate wins! What about a two-team race where each person puts on an oversized hat, shirt, necktie, and sunglasses, then removes them for the next person to put on? The team that gets through each player putting on and taking off the four pieces of clothing first wins!
There are fun ways to mimic wildlife outside. For example, wrap tape around your thumb and index finger and be a raccoon trying to hunt for food. Hold chopsticks (with a rubber band around the end or a kids’ plastic chopstick helper) to be a praying mantis. Draw a line in chalk on the sidewalk and balance like a squirrel. Curl up like a pill bug. Search for tiny holes in dead logs where woodpeckers might look for insects.
Rugby? Cricket? Soccer? Dominos? Chess? What game is new to you that you could learn with your child and have fun together? Are there neighbors that know how to play this game? Ask for help and find a way to learn outside at this time of year.
In addition to natural décor for the table, there are many ways to incorporate nature into your special day with friends and family. For example, set up a game of kickball for the kids or a scavenger hunt to find objects from nature (e.g., sticks, rocks, acorns, worms, and pinecones). For those not cooking, Rebecca Plants Curiosity Cards are a fun way to pass the time with a favorite relative on the porch. And of course, don’t forget to take a stroll after your meal!
Some celebrate the day after Thanksgiving with shopping. How about working off holiday calories with a family activity instead? Jump rope, bike, fish, hike, play football, or sign up for a family fun run. Or engage in an outdoor activity in between your shopping. Go to an outdoor mall and enjoy the fresh air in between ducking in stores.
Find out when the sun is setting and time how long it takes until you see the first star. Then make a wish! Record your observation in a journal and repeat this experiment for several days. See if you notice a pattern in how long it takes between the sunset and when the first star appears.
My cousin’s daughter Mary taught me a trick from summer camp. When you are enjoying a camp fire, cover one eye and stare at the fire for five to ten minutes. Then uncover the one eye and quickly cover the other to look into the dark distance. It seems like you are seeing with night vision goggles!
There is one month left in the calendar year. Are you able to get outside for a bit every day? What would make it easier for you? Look back at the list of activities from this and previous months and decide on your favorites; go do one right now! And look ahead—share with one another what you want to make sure you do outside before the end of the year.