Last year we studied dandelions as part of the spring series but this year I wanted to make sure that we are all on the look-out for our Queen Anne’s Lace. This is a plant that we started observing last summer and then continued through autumn and then winter.
Here are the links to those challenges:
Summer Study: Queen Anne’s Lace
Autumn Study: Queen Anne’s Lace
Winter Study: Queen Anne’s Lace (free bonus notebook page)
Inside Preparation Work:
- If you studied Queen Anne’s Lace in the past, you may wish to pull out the completed notebook pages to remind yourself of the appearance and location of your Queen Anne’s Lace.
- Read pages 542-545 in the Handbook of Nature Study (Lesson 148). Glean some new points about this interesting plant that is considered a weed by many people.
- Remind yourself what Queen Anne’s Lace looks like by using the accompanying notebook page or the Handbook of Nature Study. More information can be found here: eNature or the USDA.
Outdoor Hour Time:
For this challenge go back to your Queen Anne’s Lace patch and make some springtime observations. If this is your first season of observing Queen Anne’s Lace, you may need to wait until the flowers bloom before finding your own patch. Still take your 15 minutes outdoors and find any wildflower that you can observe in your yard or neighborhood.
Follow-Up Activity:
Spend a few minutes talking about your outdoor time. Did you see some Queen Anne’s Lace? Did your child have any questions about things that they found interesting during your outdoor time? Use this time to complete a nature journal entry or you can use the Spring Queen Anne’s Lace Notebook Page available HERE.
Planning Ahead!
Here is a link to a Squidoo page that shows exactly how to color your Queen Anne’s Lace with food coloring. I love this idea and we will be doing this over the summer. You may wish to add it to your seasonal activities: Queen Anne’ Lace
You may also be interested in my Spring Nature Study Ebooks!
I can’t wait to see some spring flowers and weeds! The crocus’ were just starting to come up around the island where my parents live. Poor things are getting covered with 6-12 inches of heavy, wet snow today! I’ll have to save Queen Anne’s Lace for May!
Jessy
Oh! Planning ahead to coloring Queen Anne’s lace brings happy memories of my childhood!
I think we might have to hold off on this challenge for a bit, but we will take a look and see if we can find some Queen Anne’s Lace where I remember some from last summer…we’ll see. Maybe we’ll have to pick something else for this week.
We had a bast this week 🙂
We set out to our Cattail spot to catch up, ended up finding frog eggs, queen anne’s lace and cattails. We’ve spent the morning looking at the Fruit/Seeds, little tiny bugs in the flower and having fun with the static electricity of tape that allows it to pick up seeds. Fun day! I’ll blog about it this week.
Found some lace in a known spot then had fun looking at the park!
We don’t have Queen Anne’s Lace here in our desert environment but I thought you might like to see some desert blooms (they don’t last long so I have to snap em while I can!)
We decided to start our spring weather observations instead this week: http://thegettys.blogspot.com/2011/04/science-thursday-nature-study-weather.html
Once we can, we’ll observe some Queen Anne’s Lace 🙂
It was fun to find the QAL this Spring, we didin’t really know what we were lookin for last year. Our road crews do a fine job chopping down the vegetation on the roads, but we found a spot that they missed!
Since we see Dogwood trees and azaleas blooming everywhere we look these days, we selected the Dogwood tree for our nature study this week. We’re looking forward to studying Queen Anne’s Lace another week, when we can find some!
I just love Queen Anne’s Lace. There is a clump of it that comes up in one flower bed, and that has crept into the lawn. I try to keep it neat so my husband doesn’t mow it off! If it ever stops raining here (!), we will begin the Queen Anne’s Lace Challenge. Thanks for pulling this all together!
We started the Queen Anne’s Lace Yearlong Study last week — we had to brave the world’s largest bumper crop of mosquitoes, but we did it for science and nature study!
We put a plant in water on the kitchen table, and Malik studies it every day when he eats.