Keep A Nature Box

It's ironic that the Philippines is filled with natural wonders but Manila is a dump.  We don't have much "nature" in the city so I took inspiration from Montessori and made room for a permanent "nature box" on our shelves.

We keep whatever strikes our fancy when we're outdoors.  Which outside our house just means this:

And this is a neighbor's frontage too, not even ours!

Our nature box changes many times, mostly when we can squeeze in a "nature walk" around the village.

Leaves + caterpillar + black pebble

Adding coral + scallop shell + smooth beach pebble after our Bicol trip

While it's just nice to have around, I'm also trying to develop the naturalistic intelligence in her.  This was one of Ladybug Girl's intelligences that tested with 'limitless possibilities' in the Innate Intelligence test.  

So we like to keep adding to our real life collection when we can ...

Pressing flowers from Lola's garden in Tagaytay

And then use the contents to do some "drawing"...

And some observing...

Of course, also some creating of art to display the rewards of our walks.

Inspired by this, we used a box lid and white glue to set our leaves and flowers.  The glue dries in two days, and the flowers stay preserved for a few more days after that.

(2 days later)

The highlight of our collection so far has been this:

I found this moth in my t-shirt drawer.  (I don't know how it got there, none of my shirts have holes!)

She touched the wings and jerked in surprise - it had the softest wings even though its body was all stiff!

Here is her drawing of our little moth.
This was back in June and her drawing progress was starting to show.

Just last week we tried to bring home live bugs this time, but all died before they made their chrysalis.

Poor little ones.  I think we made them a death trap.

And one time she put a very solid booger in the box.  I blame her father entirely.

But let's see: nature are things that God made.  Does a booger count??