School summer trip today. It was raining heavily when we arrived, and the plan was to be outdoors all day… I was with the tinies, 4 and 5 year-olds.
Here is an accidental shot of three of my companions for the day:
Wet day feet
Luckily the rain eased off a bit for our bug hunt in the meadow. We found LOTS of huge slugs – and only one child in the group wouldn’t go near them, all the rest happily collected them on plastic spoons (renamed ‘creature catchers’ for the day, for health and safety reasons…). Maybe it’s good that I didn’t take a picture of the slugs.
There were loads of lovely meadow flowers – buttercups, knapweed, yellow rattle and bird’s-foot trefoil, all a bit bowed by the rain, but still beautiful. The children were given sweep nets, and caught a good range of insects, despite the dampness. I think this is probably a Peacock butterfly caterpillar. Very spiny.
Peacock butterfly caterpillar – probably
We also fed the ducks and swans (and nobody in our group fell in), and had a scavenger hunt in the woods. All in all, a good day out.
Slow and steady 
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June 29, 2013 at 8:00 am
You`re doing great work helping the kids avoid slug phobia. It`s such a shame when people-usually women-end up being terrified of little critters. I`m happy to let them be-as long as they`re not in my house!
Good luck tomorrow in the 5 km!
June 29, 2013 at 8:39 am
The funny bit is that both my daughters are totally slug phobic, and one of them is terrified of woodlice. That’s probably from having them drop into her hair in our old shed when she was tiny, so I suppose it’s not so surprising. I couldn’t bear slugs, flies or blackfly (on broad beans – ugh!) as a child , so maybe there’s hope for them yet, even though they’re already in their twenties.
Not at all sure about the 5k – just hoping the atmosphere pulls me along, and I don’t end up walking the whole thing! Weather looks good anyway, nicely overcast.