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Baby Food Jar Camping Candle Lantern

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Jeff from Gear Report made this quick yet functional camping candle lantern out of a baby food jar and guitar string.

He suggests you use them for gift giving because “nothing says you care like a used baby food jar and some old guitar string”. Ha.

You could always jazz it up with paint. A few bright ladybugs might be cute or fish for an angler. That would actually make a good Father’s Day present that children could create. Supply a few back up tea lights and he’s good to go fishing  in the evening.

Weaving the wire around the jar and creating the handle makes it a handy little lantern to have on hand. I haven’t had babies around in awhile and for that reason I might stick with tin cans and canning jars.

See Jeff’s article called Camping homemade DIY candle lantern for the full tutorial.

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Lesson Plans – Moss and Lichen Unit Study

I guess moss and lichen are more things that you see in the spring than in the summer, but there are some deep shady parts of our yard that stay mossy all year, and summer is a fine time to look for plants that like to live in shady, wet areas.

Raising Up Wild Things has a really pretty set of printables to use for a moss and lichen unit study.

And just in case you’re like me and don’t really know the difference, moss is a plant that grows in damp wooded areas, while lichen is a combination of fungus and algae that live together. Lichen can live in different environments but are often found in places where you would find moss, too.

The printable includes drawings of some common moss such as sphagnum moss and wood moss, as well as common lichen shapes (crusty, leafy and shrubby). There are good sized images you can print out and laminate to use to compare to specimens you find when you are exploring nature.

There’s also a forest floor coloring page and a printable journaling page where kids can write or draw their observations and there are a few questions older kids can answer.

You can use these when you go on a walk in the woods (or the back yard) to talk about what you are seeing, or combine them with other resources to talk about things that live in the forest. Check them out at Raising Up Wild Things.

This PDF from the Morton Arboretum has a bunch of pictures of different kinds of moss and where to find them, which could also be helpful in your studies. Learn more about lichen, including what they are and what they are not, in this article from the US Forest Service.

[Photo: Raising Up Wild Things]