Hello, Spring

I wanted to try out a fun nature study I saw at Barbara's site. The idea is to section off a square of land and study all of the nature you can see in that one space. We had two wonderfully warm days last week, and I could not wait to get outside. I set up a space and told the kids to investigate it. It is amazing how much nature can be found in one little space. They saw clover, mini flowers, rocks, worms, nettles, grass, and a pine cone.




They had fun with this and even dug down to see what was under the grass. They quickly got distracted by worms and off they went to find more. At least they kept the worms outside this time. LOL!

Over the weekend, we took an early morning walk on a nature trail nearby. We came prepared to do a bit of a river study but found all of the unique formations of the trees to be more exciting. 





Little Red Riding Hood found the number 17 in two sticks. She was very pleased with them.

We walked about 2 miles of this trail. It was starting to rain and some were getting tired, so we left the rest of the trail for another day.


We went down to the river for a little bit to skip stones. My dh can skip a stone all the way across the river to the other bank. He is teaching the kids how to do it, too. Tom Sawyer and Timothy both can make their stones skip about three times. It is all in finding the perfect stone and flexing your wrist just the right way. At least, that is what the boys say. I was more interested in making sure that I did not fall through any crevices in the rocks and meet up with a sleeping snake. Tim, our naturalist son, told us that this was a perfect location for snakes, and we were probably surrounded by dozens of sleeping snakes. YUCK! Whose idea was it to come out on a nature walk anyway? LOL!  I hope you all have a blessed week and get outside.

Blessings, Dawn

Our Latest Nature Walk

This week's outdoor challenge was to go back and look at the tree we are following this year. Our tree (an Oak) had many brown leaves still on it. We were really surprised to see leaves still on it considering all of the high winds we get around here. The kids studied their fall drawings and added winter drawings in their nature journals. They also did some bark rubbings. We are going to go back with a pruning shear and get a branch that we can put into water and try to get the buds to bloom. 



We also went on a wonderful nature walk at a local waterfall. The ice around the water fall was actually blue. I had to go research why that was and found out that, basically, ice acts as a filter. If it is thin, all of the light hits the ice and reflects white; but if if is really thick, then visible light gets absorbed into the ice, with yellow and red at the beginning of the spectrum, and blue is what remains to be seen.* See footnote for more detailed explanation. Very cool. This is one of the things I really love about homeschooling! All of us are learning something new.






The stairs were so slippery and still covered with ice.  You really cannot see how blue the ice was in these pictures.  It was really neat to see.

On this same adventure, we also went to our local fish hatchery.  It was so much fun to feed the trout and learn about their life cycle.  If we had brought more quarters for fish food, the kids could have stayed there all day.



Little Red Riding Hood fed one fish pellet at a time. She would carefully pick out a special fish and try to feed it. Not an easy feat when there are hundreds of trout trying to get one fish pellet.

Blessings, Dawn

*The color is caused by the absorption of both red and yellow light (leaving light at the blue end of the visible light spectrum). From the surface, snow and ice present a uniformly white face. This is because almost all of the visible light striking the snow or ice surface is reflected back, without any preference for a single color within the visible spectrum. The situation is different for light that is not reflected, but penetrates or is transmitted into the snow. As this light travels into the snow or ice, the ice grains scatter a large amount of light. If the light is to travel over any distance it must survive many such scattering events. In other words, it must keep scattering and not be absorbed. If it is only a centimeter thick, all the light makes it through; if it is a meter thick, mostly blue light makes it through, and that is what we see.





 

Winter Nature Walk

We went on a nature winter walk this weekend with Daddy. It took some bravery since it was only 21 degrees outside (not including the wind chill). Brrrrr!!! While on our walk, we decided to try to find some cattails to see what they looked like during the winter time. 

We went to our local wetland park. The kids were so excited to see iced over bodies of water (even if it was 9 inch deep wetlands~lol). Before long they were walking on the ice with Daddy in the lead.
They found dog and bird tracks in the snow.  They had fun taking pictures of the tracks.

After a bit of looking, we found the cattails. The kids checked their nature journals and were surprised to see how much they had changed. 

They were all fluffy and the seeds were blowing away in the wind.  My most impulsive child picked one of the cattails, so of course we had to take it home and study it.


When we got home, we explored our cattail in more detail. That one impulsive child (again) encouraged our study by pulling some of the fuzz out of the cattail. Before long we had it floating all through the air. What a scientific mess!

Blessings, Dawn

Trees ~ Outdoor Challenge

We have enjoyed several nature walks around the neighborhood, collecting leaves and observing the change in season. We found an Oak tree as our tree to follow for a year and watch all the changes it goes through.


While taking our nature walks, we found this book to be particularly good for early readers.  It is easy to use to identify common trees. 


Here are some interesting shots that our children took of the neighborhood foliage.

The kids thought this bark looked like a face!


Tom Sawyer misplaced the adult tree identification book, so we cannot identify these strange pods. Hopefully, we will identify them soon. In the meantime, anybody out there know what this is?

Tom Sawyer insisted on stopping every few feet and drawing anything that was NOT a tree. Here he is drawing a picture of a stick. He is our budding artist, after all. 

The kids have been complaining that we have not decorated for fall. So we took the leaves back to our house and did crafts with them. We did the traditional crayon rubbings and pressing leaves between wax paper. 
While we were at it,  we made a table centerpiece with fabric leaves, pumpkins, and apples.
And decorated our own home-grown pumpkin that weighed in at 68 pounds !!
Blessings, Dawn 

Outdoor Challenge ~ Cattails

We finally found some cattails. They are in our local bird sanctuary, so it will be easy to follow them for a year now that we've found them. The kids really wanted to touch them but they were too far away for us to reach, as well as being on protected ground. I will have to keep my eye out for some they can feel.


Here is a picture of my sweet boy trying to climb a tree to reach the cattails.




Here are the children and my drawings of cattails.  Going clockwise~ Tom Sawyer (7), Me, Little Red Riding Hood (5), and Goldilocks (8).

Blessings, Dawn

Outdoor Challenge ~ Pumpkins

We are doing the Outdoor Hour Challenge  with Harmony Art Mom this year. Challenge number 6 is pumpkins. We used some of the lessons from the Handbook of Nature Study on pumpkins. Our pumpkins are doing so well! We only had two plants come up out of the eight we planted, so we were a bit concerned that they would not give us a crop. However, we currently have six nice sized pumpkins! The children have really enjoyed watching the growth. It seems like the pumpkin patch gets closer to the play gym every day! The kids are waiting for the play gym to be consumed by the plant. Below are pictures of the pumpkins' progress and the kids' nature journals.

Blessings, Dawn