Can it truly be the last season of our year-long cattail study? This year has really gone by fast. I can remember the autumn study we completed for our cattails and how we noted so many interesting new things about them for the first time. The advice in the Handbook of Nature Study to study plants and trees over an entire year, watching in each season is one that we have learned so much from in our family.
We have now spent a complete round the circle observation of a patch of cattails just around the corner from our house. We drive by several times a week and each time I notice the cattails and how they change with the season.
After looking back on our previous entries, our cattails in summer look pretty much the same as our cattails in autumn. The biggest changes were from winter to spring.
The habitat was definitely wetter in the spring and the other vegetation was tall, thick, and green. Now the surrounding area filled in with berries and thistles. We realized that there is a path that some sort of animal has made to get down to the little creek, probably a mule deer. There is a family of deer that live along this stretch of the road and we see them several times a week. Fall Study
We used our senses but the thing that impressed us the most was how smooth and long the leaves were. We noticed upon looking closer at the arrangement of the leaves and how they are attached to the stalk. Somehow we missed that observation in the other seasons. We tried to remove a leaf from the stalk and we were not successful. Usually someone has a knife in their pocket (that is what happens when you have boys) but not this time. We had to go back another time to get a sample to observe closely.
There were birds all around the cattails but not directly on them. The boys think the birds were attracted to the thistles, berries, and water that were available in the area that the cattails grew in big clumps. In the spring we had heard all kinds of insects in this area and now it was silent. We were hoping to see some frogs too, or at least hear them on this outing but it was very quiet.
I love these year-long studies that give us time and incentive to watch a common plant more closely.
I have been trying all week to find time to post an entry sharing a little of our time in Yosemite last week. We had a great camping trip under the big trees and hiking was glorious. There were crowds of people in the valley but once you made a little effort to get on the trail, there were quiet and open spaces to enjoy with only a few other people to share the path.
Our camping was made exciting by the visit of a black bear. Two campsites away they left out some food and the bear was quick to find a tasty meal of peanuts and chips. We were up early and making our way to the restroom and back when I spotted what I thought was a bear in the campsite. I did not have my glasses on and it was still early and dark. My husband assured me it was a bear.
We made some noise and eventually grabbed some pots and pans to bang together to scare the bear away from the campsite. There is a meadow and wild space behind the campground and the bear eventually made its way off into the trees…not until after he tried to climb a tree. When he stood up he was taller than my 6′ tall husband. We never felt in danger but we know that once a bear gets accustomed to people food that they become a nuisance and the rangers have to take action. (Sorry for the blurry photos but it was really early morning and I just had my point and shoot.)
We had two great hikes during our visit. The first was to McGurks Meadow which is off Glacier Point Road. It is the perfect time of year to visit the meadow to view the wildflowers. I can’t keep up with my boys anymore. They take off ahead of me but our family has come up with a way to stay together…a family whistle. They need to be able to hear me whistle and whistle back or they are too far ahead.
The most abundant wildflower blooming was the Indian Paintbrush.
The corn lilies were starting to bloom as well. We saw loads of butterflies and when we stopped to sit on a log to rest, a tree frog jumped right up next to us.
Our second hike of the week was up to May Lake which is a High Sierra Camp. You can hike up there and spend the night in tent cabins or bring your own tent. We just went for the day. Believe it or not, there is a trail there across the granite.
Here is some more of what the terrain looks like as you hike up to the lake. The lake itself is at about 9,200 feet in elevation. I can feel it in my lungs as we hike up at that altitude. I hike a lot but in combination with the heat and the altitude, it slows me down.
On this particular day, there were two separate mule teams coming down from the High Sierra Camp. They bring the trash and stuff down the mountain and then after resupplying the packs, they head back up. They seem so sure of their footing even on the granite slabs.
The lake itself is not very big but so sparkling clear and cold…you just want to sit and enjoy the view for awhile before exploring around the edge. Here my son gives his dad a helping hand up after our time resting.
Here I am on the trip down the mountain. Not very glamorous but it keeps the sun off this freckle face.
The boys still have enough energy to do a little rock scrambling on the way down. They love this stuff and I think they need to do this sort of thing in order to grow up healthy and happy.
Our last day was spent in Yosemite Valley itself. We checked out the meadows with milkweed blooming and monarch butterflies fluttering.
I almost captured the monarch on the milkweed…see him peeking out?
The milkweed is just glorious right now…so many butterflies and other insects in the meadows. Coexisting, growing so pretty.
We spent the afternoon pedaling at bike speed around the whole valley. What a great way to slow down and really see a lot of ground in a short time. Guess where we are parked?
The Merced River. Talk about refreshing! Most people were drifting down on rafts but we decided to jump in and get wet. No kidding, it was perfect.
One last shot at sunset of this massive granite rock that we have come to love. Half Dome in all its splendor…until next time.
“All the facts available and pertinent concerning each topic have been assembled in the ‘Teacher’s Story’ to make her acquainted with the subject; this is followed by an outline for observation on the part of the pupils while studying the object. It would seem that with the teacher’s story before the eyes of the teacher, and the subject of the lesson before the eyes of the pupils with a number of questions leading them to see the essential characteristics of the object, there should result a wider knowledge of nature than is given in this or any other book. ” Handbook of Nature Study, Preface. Written in 1911 by Anna Botsford-Comstock.
Anna Botsford-Comstock never meant for the Handbook of Nature Study to be the complete sum of information about any one topic. Her aim seems to have been to equip the teacher with information so she could ignite some questions in her students. The students armed with good questions would set out to complete a nature study that led to a wider knowledge of what was right in their own world.
The Handbook of Nature Study, if used wisely, can help parents become better nature study guides. This large volume gathers concise information and nature study starters into one book, giving more time to be outdoors with our children rather than preparing lessons from scratch.
I have found that using the Handbook of Nature Study has prepared us for the opportunities that arise….even months later. The photo above was taken on our recent trip to Yosemite. My son noticed this marshy meadow stream and he immediately started looking for tadpoles. There were none, but he did notice some damselflies and dragonflies which we had studied a year or so ago from the Handbook. He could tell me which ones were which by looking at their wings.
On this same hike we encountered our very first ever Yellow-bellied marmot. (He was busy eating flowers!) We only knew what it was because we had done a study of rodents with the Handbook of Nature Study. The Handbook does not cover Yellow-bellied marmots, but we applied what we already knew about other mammals like the woodchuck and squirrel. When we got back home we looked up the marmot and realized that it is a kind of ground squirrel so we were not far off in our observations. The point is that we were equipped with some basic knowledge and then were able to apply some questions from a previous study.
I think Anna Botsford-Comstock would be happy to know that her ideas and her Teacher’s Stories are as valid today as they were way back in 1911.
I think many of us have slowed down a bit with our formal nature study but don’t let that fool you into thinking there will not be much in the carnival. Take a few minutes to read what other families are doing this summer outdoors with their children.
Summer is hot so get outdoors early or spend some in the evenings to watch the sunset, see the bats fly, hear the mosquitoes buzz, the frogs croak, and perhaps even hear an owl. It is not too late to start the Summer Series of Outdoor Hour Challenges.
Summer Series #1: Mosquitoes
Alex and her family at Serendipity Home School share their experiences studying mosquitoes as part of the Outdoor Hour Challenge. She also has a great book to suggest to go along with your study.
Summer Series #2 Summer Tree Observations
Amy at Together for a Reason submitted their Summer Tree Observations. They picked their maple tree to observe.
Allison at Barefoot in Suburbia writes about their Summer Tree Observations. They took their study out into their neighborhood to pick a tree to study and then they went to a nature preserve to observe some more trees.
Angie at Petra School submitted their summer tree entry titled, Sniff a Tree Lately? This is a wonderful photo journal of their challenge and the results of their study.
Tricia, better known as Hodgepodge Mom, shares their family’s Summer Tree Observations. Don’t miss reading how she organizes her Outdoor Hour Challenge supplies and at the very bottom of the post a link to a pastel lesson for drawing trees.
Quinn from Inside the White Picket Fence has written about their crab apple tree Summer Tree Observations. I love the peaceful, easy study they had under their tree.
Summer Series #3 Summer Weather Observations
Angie at Petra School writes about their Summer Weather Observations: Advection Fog on the Oregon Coast. I learned some new things and I love the way this study shows how you can customize the challenge to fit your particular area. Angie submits a follow up post with some more Summer Weather Observations.
Tricia shares their Summer Weather Observations, including a great observation about the direction thesun rises and sets in their neighborhood during the summer. Don’t miss the pastel tutorial at the end of the post.
Summer Series #4 Bats and the Sense of Hearing
Makita at Academia Celestia shares their family’s bat study as part of this challenge. They took advantage of a camping trip to learn a little more about bats.
Angie at Petra School writes A Call of Joy and Dread which highlights their bat study. They were able to study a real bat up close…don’t miss the photos.
Tricia writes about the Bat Study saying, “From eewww to we love bats!” Their family learns how bats are a valuable member of their local ecosystem.
Summer Series #5 Summer Bird: Owls
Allison from Barefoot in Suburbia uses all her resources to observe some owls up close as part of their family’s Owl Study.
Angie and her boys completed their Owl Study and shared Screech the Owl Chickie with a completely thorough account of their owl pellet dissection.
Tricia shares an inspiring post about their Owl Study. Lots of great ideas and links in this post will get you anxious to study owls too.
Summer Series #6 Frogs
Angie lets us look into their frog study. Her entry will be sure to inspire you to look more closely into what kind of frogs you have in your particular area. Here is their entry: Frog Scavenger Hunt-In Three Walks.
Previous Challenges
Spring Series #10 Ants
Phyllis from All Things Beautiful writes about their study of ants and how it guided them to learn more about an interesting insect. Turns out that their ants were not ants….they were wasps. Great investigation.
Heidi from Home Grown Pumpkins shares their Ant Study for carnival readers. This is their very first Outdoor Hour Challenge so pop over and leave her an encouraging comment.
OHC #10 Picnic
Quinn and her family finished their first ten challenges with the picnic challenge. Wonderful photos here on her blog Inside the White Picket Fence.
OHC #16 Sunflowers
Tricia shares their Sunflower Study on her blog Homeschool Highlights. Nothing like a sunflower entry to brighten up the blog carnival.
Several entries came in that don’t fit a particular challenge but I thought you might like to read them anyway.
Please consider submitting your Outdoor Hour Challenge entries and your Summer Series entries to the next carnival. Deadline for submissions will be August 31st, 2010 and all entries from August are eligible. Here is the link for submissions: LINK.
Sight: Observe the cattail’s habitat. Look for birds, insects, and animals living or resting in or on the cattails. Look for nests. See if you can find the cattail flowers.
Smell: Sit or squat near your cattails and close your eyes. Breathe deeply and see if you smell anything.
Touch: Feel the leaves, edges, and spikes of the cattails.
Hearing: Take a minute to listen as you stand or sit near your cattails. Can you hear any birds or insects? Water running?
Inside Preparation Work:
Read pages 500-502 in the Handbook of Nature Study if you have not done so before (starting on page 551 if you have the free download version) . 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.
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.
Is your cattail still growing in water or has it dried up?
What does the “cattail” parts of the plant look like now?
What color and shape are the leaves?
Do you see the cattails seeds or balloons?
Can you pull some of the fuzz from the cattail and observe it more closely?
How do you think the seeds spread, by wind or water?
How crowded are the cattails growing together?
Please note: If you do not have any cattails to observe in your area, you may wish to choose another local plant to observe in each season throughout the next year.
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 and coloring page created for the Summer Series ebook, the notebook page from Autumn, a blank page, or any other general notebook page listed on the sidebar of my blog. You may wish to pull out your other cattail entries and compare the year-long changes in your cattails.
If you would like all the Summer Series Challenges in one place, I have an ebook gathered for you to purchase for your convenience. Here is a link to a complete description: Summer Series of Outdoor Hour Challenges
New purple wildflower. I am still working on identifying this one.
Crimson Columbine.
Large Tiger lily.
No kidding, it is as large as my palm.
Osprey nest on the top of this dead tree…see it up there made out of sticks?
Here is a link to the sound that was coming from this nest: All About Birds: Osprey
As we were standing there, the mama or daddy osprey flew in and dropped a fish from the lake into the nest and then it flew away. All was quiet again.
Just a few photos to keep track of some of the things we have experienced while outdoors this month.
Hubby surprised me with this new field guide. I haven’t had a chance to really look into it deeply but it looks very, very good. I will post a review soon.
My husband read my last garden post and was a little disappointed that I did not share some more of the successes we have had from our yard.
So, here are some photos of the things we have enjoyed.
We had a few carrots hidden in the flower garden. I don’t remember planting them but there they were when I went to do my weeding. Bonus!
We have been having fresh bruschetta with tomatoes and basil from the garden. I love it with pita chips.
Our tomatoes are slow going this year but there have been a few to enjoy with the promise of more to come.
These have been good performers from the deck container garden. I really wish I liked cherry tomatoes more but my husband eats them like candy.
The blackberries are coming regularly now and every time I do the watering I eat a handful. I mixed these in with some peaches and made a blackberry/peach cobbler….talk about yum.
Okay now my husband will be happy. He also says to say that we have had figs by the bagful from our tree, so many we have had to share them with our neighbors. There are a few apples, loads of purple plums, seedless grapes, and a full crop of walnuts to come later in the season.
I also remembered that we already dried oregano and dill from the garden. We also have had quite a few onions and I am ready to pull up another round this week to dry and store in the pantry.
He is going to keep me completely honest…thanks honey.
I forgot that I took these photos a few weeks ago of some quail’s egg shells in a nest. The nest was right on a bank outside a friend’s house in the dry grass on the ground. Amazing that no one saw it until now.
There were so many little egg shells and they are so pretty and speckled. We were not sure whether it looked like the eggs had hatched or not….they do have three foxes that frequent their property. Would foxes eat the whole egg or just break it open and eat what is inside?
We came home and looked up to make sure they belonged to a quail: California Quail
We learned that a nest can have as many as 28 eggs! The nest is usually in a shallow depression on the ground and lined with grasses and other vegetation, usually 5-7 inches across.
We have quail in our yard sometimes but I have never seen a nest before.
There is always something new to see if you keep your eyes wide open.
As much as we tried over the past few months to observe an owl up close, we just were not able to make it happen this time around. We are hoping to at least hear some owls when we go on our next camping trip to Yosemite National Park in a few weeks. We heard Western screech owls last year. Don’t you think they sound like bouncing rubber balls?
We took the challenge to dissect an owl pellet. One of my sons was eager and the other one was not so eager to complete this activity. The mood changed once we got started and they each ended up learning quite a bit about owls from this activity.
(Maybe we should have found some smaller gloves.)
We each had our own pellet to dissect and I decided I am not very good at this sort of thing. I am not a “detail” sort of person so this was a frustrating activity. In the end, I let the boys finish my pellet. The boys on the other hand were awesome at this activity. I was amazed at the minute bones they were able to extract from the mass of fur.
We all think we had mole and mouse bones in our pellets and we each found skulls and jaws with teeth.
Now that was interesting to me! Little tiny jaws with tiny little teeth!
There were amazing amounts of bones in each little pellet.
Although this was not a challenge where we were able to see the owls in person or even hear them in the night, we learned so much from our reading, online research, and the dissection. We are all looking forward to being on the lookout for both hearing the owls and seeing owl pellets during nature walks.
“Owls and hawks are predators that have an ecological relationship with each other. This means that whereas owls hunt predominantly at night, hawks fill their niche during the day. Both birds hunt similar prey species.” Discover Nature at Sundown, page 49.
Just one interesting thing we have been thinking about: There is a cycle of raptor activity-owls at night and other raptors like hawks and falcons during the day. There is always some sort of raptor activity going on in the woods. Fascinating.
Whose-Awake-Me-Too…..hopefully we hear a little of that call on our camping trip this time.
I wouldn’t quite say the garden is disappointing but it is far less productive than in recent years. Could it be the weather? Too cold and wet early on? Too hot now? I know I was committed to having a smaller garden this year so it may just be that I have become accustomed to having more of everything and this scaled back garden is what it is.
The zucchini is blossoming but nothing to eat so far. This bee was so heavy with pollen he could hardly move. I have never seen so much pollen.
Our sunflowers for the Great Sunflower Project are just now blooming so we will have the opportunity to count bees and participate in that activity this week. The bees are far more busy in other parts of the garden.
Our butterfly and hummingbird garden is a hub of activity. Swooping hummingbirds, buzzing bees, and perching finches grab your attention whenever you are outside in the backyard.
Rainbows of colors fill the flower beds now that the day lilies, coneflowers, bee balm, and roses are blooming all at the same time.
Some crazy pretty day lilies in the butterfly garden.
Most likely my new favorite flower in the garden this year is this bee balm.
Sometimes you just capture the best moments purely by chance. I was taking a photo of this butterfly bush and the bee came along and entered the shot. Pretty cool huh?
The crepe myrtles are starting to burst out in color this week. We love this bush so much that we planted three more in our front yard last fall…so easy to grow, brilliantly colored when they bloom.
Another new to us plant in our garden is this Dusty Miller. Here are the colorful buds.
This is the shape of the leaf…amazing and beautiful.
So as you can see, the veggie garden is not all that exciting but the flowers are making up for it. Hopefully my next update will be filled with yummy delicious things to eat.
