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Posted on November 6, 2022December 8, 2023 by Tricia Hodges — Leave a comment

A Winter Tree Study For Your Homeschool

Enjoy a beautiful winter tree study for your homeschool. Learn about evergreen trees as part of your winter season nature studies and make beautiful memories together this Christmas!

Enjoy an evergreen winter tree study for your homeschool as part of your winter season nature studies and make beautiful memories together this Christmas!

The Beauty of The Season With Evergreen Trees

As we approach Christmas, one of the evergreen trees, the spruce, becomes an important symbol in our Christmas celebrations and winter traditions.

But just why have evergreen trees, be they spruce, pine or fir, become such an intrinsic part of Christmas? What are all of the types of Christmas trees? A little peek through time reveals some interesting facts about this winter tree.

A Christmas Tree for The Animals event! Enjoy an evergreen winter tree study for your homeschool as part of your winter season nature studies and make beautiful memories together this Christmas!

A Christmas Tree for the Animals – An Event for the Whole Family!

Receive the full Spruce Tree study filled with fun learning by Outdoor Hour Challenge hostess, Shirley Vels. Sign up for our special Christmas Tree for the Animals Event! Spruce Tree Nature Study included!

Sign up below and receive the replay of this wonderful holiday event!

Plus a wonderful tutorial on decorating an outdoor tree for the animals, a craft creating an outdoor ornament for your tree, O Christmas Tree hymn study and accompanying composer study too! Joyful Art, Nature and Music for Your Christmas Homeschool

Winter Tree Nature Study For Kids

There are so many ways to enjoy a winter tree study with your family. Here are a few options you can use for your homeschool:

Pine Trees and Pine Cones

Let’s jump into exploring pine trees and pine cones in nature! This homeschool nature study has everything you need to start learning about pine trees and pine cones. This Outdoor Hour Challenge is based on the Winter Wednesday curriculum which is available to our members but you can follow along regardless using this post as a bit of a guide. In the Winter Wednesday curriculum you will have access to notebooking pages and a host more ideas and links.

Hemlock Tree

This dense and graceful tree with its drooping branches of soft needles casts such a heavy shadow that not much can live beneath it. This is a Homeschool Nature Study membership tree study and is also available the Autumn Outdoor Hour Challenge curriculum.

Winter Tree Silhouettes

We are going to be on the lookout for interesting winter tree silhouettes in our own yard and neighbourhood.

Winter Tree Twigs

A fun Homeschool Nature Study membership Outdoor Hour Challenge that includes forcing blooms from a winter tree twig.

Winter Tree Study

Use these simple suggestions from The Handbook of Nature Study and spend a few minutes outside or observing a winter tree or evergreen through a window.

My Tree is a Living World

What a fun way to learn about the trees for each season. Such a simple homeschool nature study with beautiful results. This printable for members is a fun way to observe then record all of the living things you observe in your tree.

Red and Green Homeschool Nature Study

Red and Green Outdoor Hour Challenge – this is a fun way to notice red and green in nature. Get started with these ideas.

Additional Resources For Winter Nature Study

In Homeschool Nature Study membership, you can also find a study of the Hemlock Tree in the Autumn course and Evergreens in My Yard study and journal page in the Trees course. Each season includes a new tree study.

Here are a few more resources you will love:

Everything You Need for the Great Backyard Bird Count
FREE Winter Sample of Homeschool Nature Study Membership – with simple ways to study nature this winter, taking a ‘using your senses’ walk, studying animals in winter, taking a first day of winter walk and more!
Homeschooling Through the Holidays: A Christmas Tree Study for Kids

Winter is such a wonderful time for homeschool nature study! Won’t you join us? In Homeschool Nature Study membership, each challenge gives you step by step instructions to get started with simple weekly nature study ideas whatever season you are in! This may just be what your homeschool week needs.

Be inspired. Be encouraged. Get outdoors!

Tricia and her family fell in love with the Handbook of Nature Study and the accompanying Outdoor Hour Challenges early in their homeschooling. The simplicity and ease of the weekly outdoor hour challenges brought joy to their homeschool and opened their eyes to the world right out their own back door! She shares the art and heart of homeschooling at You ARE an ARTiST and Your Best Homeschool plus her favorite curricula at The Curriculum Choice.

Posted on December 11, 2018 by Barb — Leave a comment

Winter Tree Study – Our Ponderosa Pines!

“Of all pines, this one gives forth the finest music to the winds.” John Muir

Our local forest is populated with predominately two different pines: the lodge pole and the ponderosa. Of the two, the ponderosa is my favorite! When the forest is cleared, either by man or fire, the ponderosa pines are so beautifully placed just like in a park. They give each other enough room to grow and flourish. Their colorful bark is highlighted especially with snow on the ground. We decided it was about time we took a closer look at this special tree.

In the winter season, with a proper frosting of snow, the ponderosa pine is like the quintessential pine of your imagination. It grows with a beautifully colored straight trunk with limbs reaching out at just the right intervals. Plus the needles are long and bundled and the cones are just the right size for holding in the palm of your hand.

ponderosa pine cones at tahoe — Image from my archives – Fun day at Tahoe

I remember learning that little trick to identifying the cones….palm size = ponderosa.

So, using our field guide, we set out to learn some new facts about the ponderosa pine. What an incredibly important tree here in Oregon! Not just for lumber but also as a part of the habitat for many birds and animals.

La Pine State Park big tree — Big Ponderosa Pine at La Pine State Park, Oregon

We just happen to have the largest ponderosa pine in Oregon not far from our house and it’s a pleasant stroll out into the forest to see it.

I love the habitat of the ponderosa pine and the creatures that live there. Some of my favorite family times hiking have been under these amazing trees not just here in Oregon but in California, Utah, and Nevada.

You can read our ponderosa pine cone study here: Ponderosa Pine Cone. You can download the printable notebook page here: Winter Cone Study.

If you would like to complete your own winter tree study this year, you can click the button below for suggestions using the Handbook of Nature Study.

“At least one pine tree should be studied in the field. Any species will do, but the white pine is the most interesting.”
Handbook of Nature Study, page 674

Do you have a pine to study this season?

Here are two books I own and love. Please note they are Amazon.com affiliate links.

Posted on October 29, 2014 by Barb — 4 Comments

Autumn Tree Study – California Style

Here in California we do not have a witch hazel to study up close. We decided to do a more general tree study and take a trip to the U.C. Davis Arboretum since it is just an hour drive from our home. For those that are not familiar with arboretums, they are botanical gardens devoted to trees. This particular arboretum has a three and half mile loop you can walk adjacent to Putah Creek.

Just a note: In doing some researching even after I wrote the Autumn Nature Study Continues ebook, I discovered that the sweetgum tree is in the same family as the witch hazel (Hamamelidaceae). Although it isn’t a late fall bloomer like witch hazel, we do enjoy our sweetgum trees and their autumn color. I will be creating a page in my nature journal for this tree instead of the witch hazel.

Back to our arboretum visit…

In several sections there are walkways on both sides of the creek with picturesque bridges connecting the two sides. On the afternoon we visited, there were few people and it was calming to stroll along taking in the beautiful surroundings.

Each section of the arboretum has a theme, a collection of trees from various parts of the world like Australia or South America. My favorite area was the Redwood Grove where there were many coast redwoods and sequoia trees planted like a small forest. There were benches and picnic tables at which there were people sitting and enjoying a quiet afternoon. I wish I could share with you the delightful aroma of the warm redwoods in the sun.

Many of the trees had small signs that gave you their name, family, and native habitat. I always like to know what I am looking at so this added to my enjoyment of the walk. The valley oaks are plentiful in this area and there were some majestic specimens to enjoy with their large sometimes colorful leaves and acorns scattered all around the trunks.

This made a perfect habitat for lots and lots of squirrels. Watch out for squirrels darting across the trail or sitting in trees above and chattering at you as you walk.

Here’s an image looking up at the valley oak…we wondered how old these trees were.

We truly enjoyed this afternoon at the arboretum. Not only the trees, but the ducks and turtles in the water. From the bridges you could get a clear view of the many Western pond turtles that were swimming and basking on this particular day.

I always find it interesting to take a few close ups of the ground in different places. Here are two of my images from our walk.

Can you tell it is autumn? Look at all those acorns!

Finally, I collected a few leaves to sketch into my nature journal….love the colors all together!

We continue to have warm sunny weather and we are trying to take advantage of the opportunity to enjoy walks to note the autumn trees.

Have you taken an autumn tree walk yet?

Posted on October 17, 2014 by Barb — Leave a comment

Outdoor Hour Challenge – Witch Hazel Tree Study

Inside Preparation Work:

Read the section in the Handbook of Nature Study on Witch Hazel found on pages 686-689(Lesson 190).
Find out if you have Witch Hazel as a native plant in your area by viewing this map: USDA Witch Hazel
Here is a video to help you identify a Witch Hazel in autumn Youtube video: Fall Blooming Witch Hazel
Here is an image of the seeds of a Witch Hazel. This blog entry has some amazing images of the Witch Hazel.
Advanced Study: Read these online articles for more in-depth information about the Witch Hazel: Witch Hazel and Witch Hazel.

Outdoor Hour Time:

Use your outdoor time this week to look at fall trees, looking in particular for the yellow strap-like flowers and nuts of the Witch Hazel. It might be fun to also include a Fall Nature Walk Scavenger Hunt using this printable from Hearts and Trees.
Take along your nature journals to sketch the Witch Hazel flower into your nature journal.
Advanced students: Make sure to look for the Witch Hazel nuts and find the seeds if possible. If possible, collect a few of the nuts to take home to discover just how far the seeds will fly once the nut opens up.

Follow-Up Activity:

Create a nature journal entry all about the Witch Hazel. Here are some things to include (or you can use the notebook page in the ebook:

Color and texture of the bark
Leaves, if any are present, noting the color.
Flower (see page 688 in the Handbook of Nature Study for a nice diagram of the flower)
Date of your observations and the location
Draw the Witch Hazel nut. Write how you think the seeds are thrown so far from the tree.

Advanced Study: Complete the notebooking page in the ebook using a field guide or the internet resources above.

Join us for this series of challenges every week here on the Handbook of Nature Study. If you want to purchase the Autumn Nature Study Continues ebook so you can follow along with all the notebooking pages, coloring pages, and subject images, you can join the Ultimate or Journey Membership Levels. See the Join Us page for complete information. Also, you can view the Autumn Nature Study Continues content list on the announcement page.

You can also submit any Outdoor Hour Challenge blog entry from October to the next edition of the Outdoor Hour Challenge Blog Carnival by sending the link directly to me by 10/29/14. Harmonyfinearts@yahoo.com

Save

Posted on October 26, 2012 by Barb — 1 Comment

Outdoor Hour Challenge- Four Seasons Tree Study Photo Project

Outdoor Hour Challenge:
The benefits of a year long tree study cannot be measured. Getting to know a tree season by season allows your family to take nature study to a new level by observing a tree in its complete annual cycle of growing. Use the links below to complete your tree study. Mark your calendar to remind you to complete a tree study in each season for the next year. After that, pick another tree and start all over again. Think of all the trees you will know by the time your children are grown up and on their own. This would be a wonderful gift to give your children.

Autumn (Autumn 2010 Ebook)
Winter (Winter 2010 Ebook)
Spring (Spring 2010 Ebook)
Summer (Summer 2010 Ebook)

You may also like to read this entry for additional simple ideas to get you started:
For the Love of Trees

Four Seasons Tree Photo Project:
To accompany this challenge, print these notebook page for your nature journal and attach a photo of your tree in each season.
>Four Seasons Tree Photo Project Notebook Page: One page for each season’s observations and a photo or sketch.

Getting Started Suggestion:
You can complete Challenge #3 Now is the Time to Draw along with this Four Seasons Tree Study. Pick something from your tree to draw in your nature journal.

If you need an explanation of how the Outdoor Hour Challenge is going to work from this day forward, please read this entry:
Nature Study Using the Outdoor Hour Challenge – How to Steps and Explanation.

Our family loves this beautiful picture book that combines gorgeous paintings of a tree in all seasons along with questions to help you really see how a tree looks differently throughout the year. I highly recommend this book from my personal library.

Posted on October 19, 2012 by Barb — 2 Comments

Outdoor Hour Challenge: Using Your Words with Tree Study

Outdoor Hour Challenge:
Ready for a simple nature study challenge this week? Let’s use Challenge #2 Using Your Words to enjoy our outdoor time as we notice trees in our own backyard and neighborhood. Spend your fifteen minutes observing a tree up close and then follow up with some words. Your children can share their special words orally and then write them down if they wish.

Poetry and Nature Study Activity:
This week the challenge is to record your special words about trees in poem form for your nature journal.

Tree Poetry:Use this notebook page to record the words from your outdoor time. Choose one or more of the suggestions to get you started with your very own poem.

Getting Started Suggestion:
This week’s challenge comes directly from Challenge #2 Using Your Words. If you own the ebook, then you have a custom notebook page you can print to use in your nature notebook.

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Barb — Leave a comment

Outdoor Hour Challenge: Tree Study Grid

Outdoor Hour Challenge:
This week we will be using the Tree Study Grid from the October 2012 Newsletter. Print the grid out, cut it to include in your nature journal, and then take a few minutes during your week to complete some of the suggested activities. If you haven’t subscribed to the blog yet, you can do so now and you will receive the newsletter link in the next entry.

Printable Activity Notebook Page:
This week the challenge extra is a free printable activity notebook page.

My Tree Is A Living World: Record all the living things you find in the tree you observe. Remember to look high, low, on the bark, on the leaves, in the crown, and on the branches. If you don’t know what something is, record a description and then look it up after you return home.

Getting Started Suggestion:
If you already own this ebook, this week’s challenge would be a great addition to Challenge #6: Starting a Collection. Read the challenge for simple ideas to get you started with a nature collection. You could focus this month on collecting things related to trees.

Pictured above is our very casual collection of tree related items and misc natural objects. There are seeds, acorns, nuts, peeled tree bark, galls, leaves, moss, and a few small twigs. These sit right on top of our nature table.

Posted on June 19, 2012 by Barb — Leave a comment

Summer Tree Study – Following Up on Cottonwoods

This week we were determined to complete our Cottonwood Tree Study as part of the Outdoor Hour Challenge. It is hard to get motivated when it is really hot outside but we persevered….most of our study was indoors anyway so we had no real excuse. Once we started it was very enjoyable, gleaning much from our reading in the Handbook of Nature Study and then direct observation.

Our neighbor had a cottonwood tree in their front yard until a few years ago when they cut it down to make room for some other landscaping. I remember there were certain times of years I did enjoy having that tree next door. It was MESSY. The “cotton” would cover our deck and yard as it blew over in our direction.

So without a specimen nearby, we had to travel across town to view another cottonwood tree that I noticed along the edge of a big field. It really is a very pretty tree with a nice shape and growing sort of tall. The trunk is easy to recognize once you know what to look for.

We had the chance to observe a cottonwood tree when we visited Anna Comstock’s cabin in New York last May. I gathered a bit of cotton to include in my nature journal. I wrapped it up in a paper towel and folded into the front of my journal for safe keeping. We took the opportunity with this challenge to examine the cotton closely.

We examined the seeds with our magnifying lens and it was truly amazing to see the structure of this catkin with its seeds.

“The little pointed pods open into two or more valves and set free the seeds, which are provided with a fluff of pappus to sail them off on the breeze; so many of the seeds develop that every object in the neighborhood is covered with their fuzz…” Handbook of Nature Study, page 656

Pappus was a new word to us so we looked it up. A pappus is the flower-like structure on the top of the akene. (Remember your dandelion study?) You can see a variety of kinds of pappus on this website: Who’s Your Pappus? I also found information at the bottom of this page on Backyard Nature. I need to add the word to my journal entry so I don’t forget it.

So here is my journal after I finished with it. I found an envelope (glassine envelopes for scrapbooks) for the cottonwood seed fluff sample and the pressed flower that I had collected from the woods. I watercolored around the edges to give it some color and used my metallic gel pens to make a title. I printed a photo of the cottonwood cotton since it is a part of the memory of that early morning walk that I will treasure for a long time to come.

We are going to go back to our local cottonwood tree and take photos for the Summer Photo Challenge and as a guide for our watercolor project for the week. Mr. B is working on his notebook page from the More Nature Study Book 4 challenge using his field guide for the cottonwood tree. We think ours is a Black Cottonwood so he is doing the research on that species for his challenge.

Another great tree challenge to add to our nature journals…hope to see some of your trees in the upcoming Outdoor Hour Challenge Blog Carnival. Remember that every entry into the June Newsletter carnival is an entry to win the Your Backyard Monarch Butterfly DVD and Study Guide. Last day to submit your entries is June 29, 2012.

Don’t forget the Great American Backyard Campout!
And my Camping With Kids link-up from yesterday.

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Barb — 10 Comments

Our Tree Study – Sitka Spruce in Oregon

Jedediah Smith Redwoods – Boy Scout Tree Trail June 2011

Our camping trip to the Oregon Coast was glorious. The weather was perfect without even a sprinkle or a cold day! We enjoyed sunshine, sand, and trees all up and down the southern coast of Oregon. Although I could fill a complete post with our adventures, I want to focus on our tree study that was completed right in our campsite.

We were prepared with some notebook pages and a field guide so this was not only an easy study, it was informative and interesting. The campground had a brochure that discussed the common plants and trees to be found so it was our starting point. We read through the brochure and decided to focus our tree study on the Sitka Spruce. Turns out our campsite was surrounded by them!

We looked up the identifying marks of the spruce as well as looked at the images of the needles, the cone, and the trunk. We discovered that the Sitka Spruce is found along the fog belt of the coast of North America.

They are not quite as tall as the Coast Redwoods we experienced most of the week but they are still very tall trees. The photo above is my husband showing how large the base of this Coast Redwood is on one of our hikes. These trees make you feel small and insignificant. We would hike along and one of these ancient ones would come into view and it would make you stop dead in your tracks. Breathtaking.

Even though the Sitka Spruce is not in the HNS, we looked up the information for the Norway Spruce and used the suggestions in Lesson 186 to learn more about spruces in general. We observed the needles, the cones, the bark, the shape of the tree, the roots like buttresses, and the way the limbs droop.

NotebookingPages.com – Nature Study Set. I like to embellish mine a bit with colored pencils.

Somehow I misplaced the photos I took for our study so now I am glad that we did the sketches on the notebook pages for our journals. We enjoyed our simple vacation nature study….one of many we did on this trip.

Here are some other things we observed and read about: harbor seals, trillium, fuchsia, gumboot chiton (sea creature in the tidepools), Winter wrens, huckleberries, and owls. There is a story to every nature study we did and if I had time I would relate them all but for this entry I will stick to our tree study.

Here is the best shot I have of the Sitka Spruces around our campsite. We could have spent our week focusing on the many plants, birds, and trees of this place and not run out of interesting things to think about. Eating and sleeping under the spruces made our study even more meaningful.

Okay, do you love my new tent? It is 6 1/2 feet tall and even my really tall husband and boys can stand up inside it without rubbing their heads on the ceiling. I love the hinged door too! This was our first outing with it and I think it is going to serve us for a long time.

Just a pretty shot I took one night while we were out for a sunset walk…the moon was incredible the whole time we were camping, a natural nightlight.

So there you go…our vacation tree study. Wish every tree study could be this up close and personal.

Well maybe not that up close….my boys have decided Planking is rather a fun activity.

Posted on January 18, 2011 by Barb — 12 Comments

Our Winter Tree Study: Nothing Short of a Miracle

We started our birch tree year-long study back in October. (You can read it HERE.) I remember saying to one of the boys that soon the leaves would all be gone and we would be able to see the shape of the tree’s trunk and branches better. Well, time has flown by and here we are standing in the backyard looking at just those very things.

Words that are going in our nature journals: bare, thin, flexible, drooping, catkins, white.

This tree is so different in shape than our other year-long tree studies done with the silver maple and the tulip poplar. The bark on the trunk is different and the seeds are totally different. I anticipate that we are going to learn quite a bit about trees just taking a few minutes each season to observe this tree.

We wanted to take a closer look at the catkins from the tree so we brought a few inside to the table. I bumped one of the catkins and the seeds went everywhere. You can see the partial catkin in the photo above and how the seeds are attached to make it look somewhat like a little dangling cone but it is not really like a cone at all. It is a well organized bunch of winged seeds that are in the shape of a cone. We have seen finches land on the catkins and hang upside down as they nibble their treat.

After much manipulation of lights and magnifying lenses, my son and I were able to capture the seed in an image for you. Truly amazing!

Mr. B sketched the seed for me in my journal and I added color and the captions after we did the research. So much to learn about seeds and how they are part of the life cycle of a tree. I know in my head what seeds are but when you stop to think about the miracle of a complete tree growing from this one small hard to see with the naked eye structure…well, it causes me to sit and be amazed at our wonderful Creator. It is nothing short of a miracle.

It actually reminds me of this quote that I ran across and wrote down to save.

“Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.”
Blaise Pascal

My Encouragement to You
If you haven’t had a chance to start, begin now during the winter. Charlotte Mason in her writings suggests choosing trees in winter to observe and compare. She says to wait until spring to identify the trees when the leaves and blossoms appear.

“Children should be made early intimate with the trees, too; should pick out half a dozen trees, oak, elm, ash, beech, in their winter nakedness, and take these to be their year-long friends. In the winter, they will observe the light tresses of the birch, the knotted arms of the oak, the sturdy growth of the sycamore. They may wait to learn the names of the trees until the leaves come.”

Charlotte Mason, Vol.1 page 52

There are some simple ideas outlined in Winter Series Challenge #2 or you can just pick a tree and observe, perhaps taking a photo or making a simple journal entry. Don’t hesitate to jump in now!

See this entry for a description. Sample HERE.

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