Spring Weather is a welcome change for many of us around the world. The longer days and warmer temperatures give more time for outdoor activities. We have seen a variety of weather conditions in our neighborhood including more snow, hail, and then back to sunny days again.
This week you can click over the the Spring Weather Challenge for the specifics of this challenge.
Here are some suggestions:
Have your children describe any clouds they see in the sky.
Notice how hard the wind is blowing by how things are moving: leaves rustling, trees bending, etc.
Notice the wind’s direction. Where is it coming from?
Describe the temperature of the air and/or look it up on a thermometer.
Notice any precipitation that you may have this week: sprinkles, rain, mist, sleet, snow, fog, hail.
Follow up can include the notebook page from the Spring Ebook, the freeSeasonal Weather PDF, or an entry in your own nature journal. You can also print out this activity and use it to identify clouds that you observe in your nature study: Cloud Key.
You may also be interested in my Spring Nature Study Ebooks!
After much observation, we think that these are Queen Anne’s Lace leaves growing in the other grasses.
The theme of this last week’s Outdoor Hour Challenge was a real challenge for many of you. Even in our family we had to think hard about where we might see some Queen Anne’s Lace growing at this time of the year. We looked in two different spots and although we found the brown, dried, hard stalks from last year, we were never sure we were looking at new Queen Anne’s Lace sprouts.
Were we still successful?
The real question should be…. Did we enjoy ourselves and did we learn something?
Absolutely.
Mule’s Ears and Blue Dicks are starting to bloom!
First of all the goal of *any* Outdoor Hour Challenge is to get outside and we did that with flying colors. The afternoon turned warm and we decided to take a long walk to look for our target plant.
The first California poppies we have seen this year!
Second, we had to really look closely to find our patch and then to look around to see if we could identify the Queen Anne’s Lace by its leaves. They were rather hard to spot but in the process of trying to correctly identify the Queen Anne’s Lace we were able to compare the leaves to several other near-by plants. This close observation would have never happened if we were not trying to complete the challenge. In fact, we had to take two walks to double check the leaves since after a little initial research we decided the first time we were looking at California poppy leaves and not Queen Anne’s Lace. We will still not be totally sure that what we photographed is Queen Anne’s Lace until we go back when it is blooming….something to look forward to in a few months.
Finally, this was the last of the year-long studies of this plant and it was satisfying to know that we had followed this plant through a complete calendar year, four seasons. We learned also that this plant is a biennial which gave us a little more understanding of it’s life cycle. It gave us a more full picture of the natural history of this wildflower and a better understanding of its place in our habitat. See last summer’s entry HERE.
We are looking forward to seeing the happy white clusters of flowers with their red spot in the center soon. Last summer we nicknamed the season the “Season of the Queen Anne’s Lace” because there was a bumper crop. It will be interesting to see how it fairs this year after such wild winter and now spring weather.
My best advice to any of you who don’t think you have Queen Anne’s Lace to observe this season, find something else to focus on this week and I would welcome your link in Mr. Linky. Here is a wonderful look at a family that did just that: Kristen at Broom and Crown.
Today we had more snow…hard to believe but it was just a dusting and now the sun is out and it is melting. My poor garden doesn’t know what to think!
We had a pretty exciting month as far as the number of different varieties of birds to report for the month of March 2011.
The most outstanding find was our new hawk visitor that comes quite a few times a week now to both the backyard and the front yard. He visits the trees and sits there for periods of time before swooping down to actually chase some of our feeder birds away. He isn’t very large and we think we have identified him as a Red shouldered hawk or a Coopers Hawk. He is featured in the photo above. He was sitting in the tree in the early morning sun and was flaring his feathers out as he looked at me watching him. Thanks for the photo Mr. Hawk!
March 2011 Birds – 31
Birds seen at our feeder or in our yard:
American crow
Red shouldered hawk
Turkey vultures
Western scrub jays
Common raven
European starlings
Oak titmouse
Cedar waxwings
Canada geese
Mourning doves
Norther flicker
Dark-eyed juncos
White-crowned sparrows
White-breasted nuthatches
Acorn woodpecker
Nuttall’s woodpecker
Spotted towhee
California towhee
House finches
House sparrows
Lesser goldfinches
American robins
These were seen outside our yard:
Anna’s hummingbird
Rock doves
Snowy egret
Brewer’s blackbirds
Steller’s jay
California gull
Mallard ducks
Red-wing blackbirds
Red-tail hawk
You can find free bird related notebooking pages at the following links: NotebookingPages.com – Free Pages (scroll down)
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.
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!
It is spring! For most of us we are starting to see the beginnings of a greener world with warmer temperatures and more outdoor activity. The poll on my Spring Squidoo lens shows that most readers experience the first signs of spring in the month of March. I know that the participants of the Outdoor Hour Challenge have been taking advantage of the spring weather and this blog carnival gives you lots of spring time inspiration.
I wanted to feature this entry and make sure to let you know about a special thank you I received from Angie (Pebblekeeper). What better way to start off this edition of the carnival!
I love hosting the Outdoor Hour Challenges each week and this carnival is a fun way to keep you all in touch, as a way to build a community. Thank you for all your effort and support of nature study in your families. It is noticed.
Our Plum Tree – Leaves are coming on fast this week with the little sunshine we experienced. Plum jelly in the making.
I have started reading An Oregon Cottage and she has a great gardening/home blog that hosts a Tuesday Garden Party meme.I thought this week I would join up and share with all of you what is going on in my garden right now as spring starts to burst forth.
My garden is definitely not a winter garden. I don’t do much more than throw out a few lettuce and carrot seeds in the late fall and those have long been harvested. My boys planted snap peas this past autumn but some critter of the night came and munched them down to the ground. I accept that I live in a habitat that offers yummy treats to my fellow creatures so I took the peas in stride.
Our Walnut Tree – Perhaps the squirrels will leave us some this year. 🙂
I think the theme of this post is going to be the PROMISE of a summer garden and fall harvest since that is what I observed as I toured around yesterday.
Our garlic chives are starting to grow again…can’t wait.
The oregano is filling in and hints at the summer pizza and sauces to come…of course, I had to nip a few leaves just to smell as I walked around the boxes.
My son’s strawberry box is greening up nicely as well. We are going to be adding a new strawberry box as soon as we can get through mud to built it. (see the last photo for a photo of the location)
This should tell you how badly I need to tend to the garden after a long winter. These onions are popping up despite being mixed in with the mullein and the dusty miller. I know I am not going to get to this part of the garden for at least a couple of weeks….just being honest.
So as long as I’m being honest, here is what the state of most of our garden boxes at this very moment. Very sad and in need of a good weeding before we can even think about getting something new planted. The saddest part is that if I put my mind to it, I could have this tidied up in an afternoon.
Moving away from the vegetable garden and onto the flower boxes is a little bit more cheerful. The tulips are just beginning to give us a hint of their deep purple blooms to come. I love my little tulip patch and look forward to watercoloring the flowers once they start to really shine.
The chrysanthemums that I planted last year look like they made it through the winter nicely. I look forward to seeing their happy little faces in a few months. This box has coneflowers as well so this spot has flowers long into the autumn once it gets started. I decided a long time ago that I needed to include a couple of flower boxes along with the vegetables because it cheers me up to see the color when I look out the window. Food for the soul.
This wallflower has been a great plant in our garden for the last two years. I actually saw some bees buzzing in it too! Happy bees.
Here are some guys who came uninvited to my garden! My son spotted these whoppers in the back of the bed and of course I had to take a photo.
Now for the exciting part of the post!
See that fresh garden territory? I finally convinced my husband that this “lawn” was using up valuable garden space and very expensive water (rates just increased again!). We are trying out a few possible configurations to build some raised boxes with one center block bed to hold something artsy. Any ideas are welcome. It usually gets summer sun mid-morning to late afternoon so probably about six+ hours altogether.
So there ends my garden survey for this first week in the spring season. I am truly looking forward to the change of the season.
Jami’s Tuesday Garden Party meme is open from Tuesday to Thursday so there is still time for you to jump in and participate!
I already hinted about our cattail spot….the one that was cut down and cleaned out. We were a little disappointed but not discouraged. We have two others places to check but one has so much water right now because we have had heavy rains. Eight inches from Thursday to this morning….crazy wet! The boys were upset about the cattails being cut down but there is hope if you look at the photo below.
We are going to watch this spot to see if those little baby cattails will fill in the creek area like they were before. It will be interesting to see how long it takes to have another batch of cattails to observe. If you haven’t seen Creation Wiki yet, give this LINK a try to read more about cattails.
We came across something that was interesting. Our retaining wall had started to fall over and Mr. A helped me fix it but in the process we realized the problem was caused by a system of vole tunnels directly underneath the cement blocks. The wall is right near the birdfeeder (find the green in the photo and then you will see the post) and the voles are tunneling up underneath…in fact there was a hole earlier in the year that came up directly under the hanging feeder and the spilled seed just went down the hole, a very convenient set-up for the vole. Not sure how to solve the problem but we got the wall back up and we will see how long it lasts.
How about a couple pretty images to end this entry?
We have had quite a variety of birds at our feeders during the month of March…lots of Lesser goldfinches, even in the cold snowy weather we had last week.I am keeping a list of our birds observed for the month to post on Heather’s Tweet and See.
They are one of my favorite feeder birds right now and I cannot stop taking photos of them.
We are going to have an on-going study of cattails again this year because I think we can glean some new information for our nature journals.One thing we will research is how they reproduce and how the seeds are spread…..which we sort of know a little about already but we want to have some concrete facts to include in a future journal entry.
Hope you have a chance to check out your cattails soon!
Start thinking about observing your spring time cattails. We were horrified to discover that one of our cattail spots had been cut down and cleaned out! It is funny how you become attached to a place once you have learned about the plants, animals, and trees that live there. We are going to watch to see if the cattails come back.
Inside Preparation Work:
Read pages 500-502 in the Handbook of Nature Study if you have not done so before. It might also be beneficial to read it again this season and highlight the parts that contain information about the leaves of the cattail plant. We will be focusing this season on where the cattail grows and what the leaves look like as they grow up from the plant. Prepare yourself for this week’s outdoor time by reading #1, #2, #4, and #5 suggestions for study on page 502.
(In the free version of the Handbook of Nature Study, the cattail section starts on page 551. If you are using the free version from HomeschoolFreebies, you need to look in Plants and Trees, page 65)
Outdoor Hour Time:
Enjoy your outdoor time this week at your cattail spot. If you have been participating in the year-long cattail study since last autumn, you will know just where to look for cattails. Use the suggestions from the Handbook of Nature Study to talk a little about the habitat where your cattails are growing.
Some Suggestions for a Spring Cattail Study
How wide a strip of land do the cattails cover?
Are they near a stream, brook, or pond?
Observe the kind of soil where your cattails grow.
How are the leaves arranged-growing opposite or alternating?
Describe the leaves’ texture, color, shape.
Have your child make as many observations as they can during your outdoor time of the cattail. (Keep it fun.)
Follow-Up Activity:
Make sure to allow some time after your outdoor hour to discuss any subjects that your child finds interesting. Encourage the completion of a nature journal entry recording your observation of your cattails. You can use the notebook page included in the Spring Series ebook or a blank page in your journal.
Make sure to encourage your child to sketch the cattail leaves. Also try to include a little of the habitat that your cattails are growing in during this season. Include in your sketch any insects, birds, or animals that you observed near your cattails during your outdoor time. Here is a link for more information on Broad Leaf Cattails.
Here is a Spring Nature Walk Worksheet for you to use with your family. If you had trouble with this download last week, try again this week!
“Out in this, God’s beautiful world, there is everything waiting to heal lacerated nerves, to strengthen tired muscles, to please and content the soul that is torn to shreds with duty and care.”
“Nature-study should be so much a part of the child’s thought and interest that it will naturally form a though core for other subjects quite unconsciously on his part.”
“Out-of-door-life takes the child afield and keeps him in the open air, which not only helps him physically and occupies his mind with sane subjects, but keeps him out of mischief.”
Fiddlenecks are just starting to bloom.
“In nature-study the work begins with any plant or creature which chances to interest the pupil.”
Saxifrage is blooming in full force.
“Thus by beginning with the child in nature-study we take him to the laboratory of the wood or garden, the roadside or the field, and his materials are the wild flowers or the weeds, or the insects that visit the goldenrod or the bird that sings in the maple tree, or the woodchuck whistling in the pasture.”
All quotes are from the Handbook of Nature Study in the introductory pages. All photos are from today’s lunchtime hike.
My blog entries over the last few weeks have shown what wonderful spring weather we have been enjoying. This week we had snow, heavy rain, and high winds. In between storms we would rush outdoors to drink in the sunshine and get some fresh air. The daffodils are still blooming, several vases full at a time which contributes to my good mood.
Our signs of spring have been popping up all around us and I made a personal list of things to study in the next few weeks, some with the Handbook of Nature Study and some with my field guide.
1. Dogwood (Handbook of Nature Study page 680)
2. Spotted Towhees-Where do they nest?
3. Red Shouldered Hawk
4. Iris (Handbook of Nature Study page 571)
5. Hair Cap Moss (Handbook of Nature Study page 709)
Our new dogwood tree (planted last fall) is beginning to show signs of life. We purchased it when it had lost its leaves already so we are anxious to see it leaf out and blossom too.
Our forsythia continues to spread its own yellowy sunshine in our yard, providing shelter to the sparrows and towhees that sit on its boughs.
The buds on this tree are ready to burst open and seem to be waiting for just the right moment.
Mr. A’s tulip bed shows signs of life this week and on careful examination you can actually see the flower buds forming. Now that says spring!
Last year I featured this flower in my signs of spring post and I didn’t know what it was called. I have since done my homework to discover its name because I wanted to plant some more in a different area of the yard since it is such a great bloomer. It is Laurustinus – Spring Beauty. I actually found some to purchase at our Home Depot last week and four new plants are happily placed by Mr. A over on the other end of the yard now.
How quickly our weather changes this time of year! We went from sunshine to rain and then to two inches of snow in a matter of hours. Now today it is back to rain again with periods of snow showers that wash away with the next wave of rain.
The daffodils still add color to our yard even with the snow coming down. I picked quite a few and brought them inside so it feels like spring at least on the inside of the house.
The birds were not deterred by the snow and they gathered at the bird feeding station. We all sat and watched the birds flying in and out as the snowflakes came down all around. They sheltered under the nearby lavender and would pop out to flutter up and take a few nibbles.
So there you go…a wide range of spring weather and lots of promises for a future summer of color and goodness.
Looking forward to seeing your signs of spring this week!
