Looking to take a tree scavenger hunt this season? You are going to love this month’s printables! My hope is that they add some sparkle to your tree nature study activities and motivate you to take time to get outdoors with your children.
Warm Colors in Nature – This is a special activity that will combine nature study and art together. My family always loved viewing great paintings together and I encourage you to try it with your children.
Tree Scavenger Hunt Cards –We created cards that you can print and laminate for your nature walks. Use one or all of them to inspire interest in trees. One card is even a photo hunt!
These new printables are free if you are a member of the Ultimate Naturalist or Journey level memberships. You need to log into your account and then check the “Other Releases” section for brand new printables to enjoy along with the Outdoor Hour Challenges in 2015. Currently there are 36 printables in the members library in addition to the ebooks and newsletters.
Youtube video: Brown Bullhead and Bullhead Nest (great video, crazy music so you might want to turn the sound down).
More in-depth information for kids about bullhead catfish: BioKids. (Check out the section, “Who eats them and how do they avoid being eaten?”)
Learn about the barbels (whiskers) of this fish: Barbels.
“The bullhead lives in mud bottoms of streams and ponds and is particularly adapted for life in such locations.”
Outdoor Hour Time:
Spend your outdoor time at a stream or pond. If you are able, do some fishing! Or, you can wade in and use a net to try to catch any fish to observe.
Create a nature journal while outdoors as you take advantage of the early autumn weather. Use watercolors to paint a bullhead or any other fish you find during your outdoor time.
Follow-Up Activity:
If you didn’t complete a nature journal page during your outdoor time, do so as a follow up activity. There is a notebook page in the ebook for you to use if you desire.
Advanced Study: Follow the suggestion in the Handbook of Nature Study to write an account of the nest-making habits of the bullhead. Insert your work into your nature journal.
If you want to purchase the Autumn Nature Study 2015 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 2015announcement page for more details.
Bird watching is an active sport. With each new bird you identify you are inspired to get out and look some more! The life list is a simple way to not not only encourage your young birder but also to help them view birding and nature study as a life long habit. Creating a life list is an extension of your time outdoors that helps your child learn how science can be documented and analyzed over a period of time.
Keeping a life list of birds is a simple project. It can be kept in a variety of ways as shown below.
Ways to Keep a Bird Life List
On paper – in a journal dedicated to keep track long term.
Back of a field guide – in the back of many bird field guides there is a place to record your life list.
On the pages of a field guide – I have seen people make a note with pen next to the photo or the illustration of each bird they observed right in the field guide.
Notebook page- there are notebooking pages from various sources (including the one below) that you print and keep in a binder as an on-going record.
Online – there are websites specifically dedicated to keeping a birds life list (like e-birdwhich is an app for your phone as well).
Online- I have discovered several people who create a Pinterest board sharing their life list (like this one Bird Life List).
Computer spreadsheet – some people take their field notes and consolidate them on a spreadsheet on the computer.
Checklist – Find and print a bird list for your local area. Use this as a checklist as you observe each bird, recording your observation data right on the checklist.
Your own cards – Create a field guide card for each bird on your life list (use my printable and idea).
Special Activity:Life List Printable
Bird Life List Printable
I have attempted to create a Life List Printable that will be flexible for you to use in your nature notebook. Your list can be as detailed as you wish. Things to include: Date and Time of Day. Location. Gender. Weather. Bird Sounds. Number of birds seen.
You may be interested in the Learning about Birds ebook available here on the Handbook of Nature Study. If you have an Ultimate or Journey level membership, you have access to this ebook that covers every single bird included in the Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock.
Also I am highly recommending that you purchase the Bird Bundle from NotebookingPages.com as a great supplement to your study of birds using the Outdoor Hour Challenge. Note: These are affiliate links.
Use code discount5 to save $5 on any purchase $10 or more from the NotebookingPages.com Shop. (This does not include membership purchases.)
“But he learns naturally at his own pace, never tiring, and slowly learning just what he needs to know about the world around him. And this is exactly what a child should be doing for the first few years. He should be getting familiar with the real things in his own environment. Some day he will read about things he can’t see; how will he conceive of them without the knowledge of common objects in his experience to relate them to? Some day he will reflect, contemplate, reason. What will he have to think about without a file of knowledge collected and stored in his memory?”
If you have been following the blog in the past few years, you are aware that Renee’s Garden Seeds has been a sponsor and valued part of my summer gardening experience. Not only have I enjoyed her seeds in my garden, but I have shared seeds with my dad. He has a beautiful garden and each year he tenderly nurtures his vegetables through the hot California summer. This year his pond went dry but he still kept his garden green with his well water.
Here in town I did not have that option…we are on city water and have been restricted not only in the number of days we can water but we were asked to reduce our usage by using less than last year. I took the challenge and created a container garden on my back deck and watered using only a drip system and water that I caught from our shower warm up time that I collected in a five gallon bucket. This garden has brought such joy to me over the summer. I could look out and see the insects buzzing around the blossoms and the hummingbirds stopping by for some nectar.
Hello Mr. Sunflower! So glad you joined us….the bees have spent many hours hovering and gathering at my container sunflowers.
Each morning I would check my plants for something to harvest. It could be a handful of cherry tomatoes, a zucchini to pick, or some herbs to include in my dinner plans.
I would talk to my morning glory vines and coach them to stop growing so tall and to start blooming. The first morning that I looked out my window and saw these gorgeous flowers made all the waiting worth it. They now greet me every morning with a few blue flowers…happy, happy, happy.
The zucchini at the beginning of the season were small but more of a traditional shape. As the summer has worn on, they have started to change into this interesting shape, still tasty and summery on the table at dinner.
Apple Time!
We are looking forward to apple time in the coming weeks. Not only our local orchard but our very own apple tree in our backyard! This is the first year we really have an apple “harvest” on our young tree and it surprises me that even in our drought that we have apples to eat from our own tree. We will be visiting our local apple farm to purchase apples for various treats including applesauce. The taste of autumn around here is apple!
August was a great month of being outdoors for this nature loving mama. I accomplished one of my nature study goals for the year by visiting a new state park, Sugar Pine Point State Park! I will share that in an up-coming post here on the Handbook of Nature Study. The season is about to change here and that means even more time outside hiking with the cooler temperatures.
Outdoor Mom’s Journal
Whether your family spends a few minutes a week outside or hours at a time, share what is going on in your world. I hope you have enjoyed your August.
How Do You Join?
Answer all or just one of the prompts in a blog entry on your own blog or right here on my blog in a comment. If you answer on your blog, make sure to leave me a link in a comment so that I can pop over and read your responses.
During our outdoor time this week we went….
The most inspiring thing we experienced was…
Our outdoor time made us ask (or wonder about)…
In the garden, we are planning/planting/harvesting….
I added nature journal pages about….
I am reading…
I am dreaming about…
A photo I would like to share…
I will be posting my Outdoor Mom’s Journal entry once a month. Look for it during the first week of the month each month.
Read pages 109-115 (Lesson #28) in the Handbook of Nature Study. This lesson includes information on several different birds. There are links below to the All About Birds website and location maps so you can pinpoint which birds you have in your local area and what they look like.
Cliff Swallow: These are winter migrators so you will need to look for these next summer. Make sure to click the “video” tab and see them in action.
Barn Swallow: These are winter migrators so you will need to look for these next summer. Make sure to click the “video” tab and see them in action.
Bank Swallow: These are winter migrators so you will need to look for these next summer.
Tree Swallow: These are winter migrators so you will need to look for these next summer. Make sure to click the “video” tab and see them in action.
Chimney Swift: These are winter migrators so you will need to look for these next summer.
Learn about bird migration as part of this challenge. Make sure to note where your swallows and swifts migrate during the winter. Here are some links:
Advanced study: Read through these facts about bird migration and create a nature journal page that features any facts you found interesting: Bird Migration and Fun Facts About Bird Migration.
Outdoor Hour Time:
Make sure to look for any local resident birds that you can observe as the season is changing. During your walk, talk about bird migration and introduce the idea that not all birds stay in one place for the whole year.
Use your observation skills to listen for birds or look for signs of birds in your neighborhood.
Follow-Up Activity:
Create a nature journal entry for a swallow you have in your local area.
In addition, create a nature journal entry for any bird you observed this week. Make sure to look up information about the bird and include any interesting facts on your page.
Advanced study: Draw a map featuring a swallow’s or other local bird’s migration path.
Advanced study: View this link and create a sketch of a swallow in your nature journal: Swallow Naturalist Notebook.
If you want to purchase the Autumn Nature Study 2015 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 2015announcement page for more details.
Many of you have written to ask me how to go about planning a year of nature study for your family. It seems like it should be easy enough but when you want to follow your child’s interest and it doesn’t coincide with the Friday topics here on the Handbook of Nature Study you can get frustrated. My advice normally is to find a topic of interest for your family and then use the tabs at the top of the site to find specific challenges to use for your weekly nature study.
This advice works for families that are following the Ambleside Online nature study rotation as well. Find the tab at the top of my site that corresponds with the nature topic for the term and then glean ideas from the challenges and activities listed there on the page.
To make your planning a little easier, I developed Outdoor Hour Challenge Planning Pages. These pages are available in the printables section of the Journey and Ultimate level memberships.
There are three pages in the Outdoor Hour Challenge Planning Page packet.
This is the first page you can use if you prefer to have monthly nature study topics. I loved the years that we stuck with a topic for a whole month, digging in deeply. The chart at the top of the page gives you some ideas to choose from as you contemplate your seasons and habitat.
Hint: The topics listed in the chart on the page above are going to be the monthly topics found in the Handbook of Nature Study newsletter.
Some families like to schedule their nature study focus for a complete term or season. The page shown above found in the Outdoor Hour Planning Pages packet allows for a different topic to be planned each term. If you follow the Ambleside Online nature study rotation,this would be the page you could use to plan your year’s topics.
After you have chosen your topics, either monthly or for a term, you can then use the challenge and activity planning page found in the packet to note specific challenges or ideas that you want to implement during your topical study. The ideas shown above are what I hope to accomplish in September 2015 to go along with the newsletter topic of trees. Even if we don’t end up accomplishing all of the items listed, planning ahead of time will make it more likely that they will happen. You can use ideas from the tabs at the top of the website, suggestions in the newsletter, or ideas from a Pinterest board
For families that are following along with the weekly Friday challenges here on the Handbook of Nature Study, there is a planning page each month in the newsletter. It will include the current challenges, field trip ideas, nature journal page ideas, nature table prompts, and nature photo suggestions. These will all coordinate with the monthly theme of the newsletter. Note: You can receive each month’s newsletter by subscribing to the Handbook of Nature Study blog: Subscription Page.
Any more questions!
I hope this helps answer the frequently asked question about nature study planning for your family. Let me know if you have any other questions that I can answer in future posts!
Additional Help
You may like to have this page for your nature study goals.
This month marks a new beginning for the newsletter! I am excited to share with you a new condensed format for this edition…packed with lots of nature study goodness! I have streamlined the content to include lots of links to resources from my bookmarks but also from a select few contributors, women who have been offering nature study to their families for many years and love to share their tips and tricks with other moms (and dads too). I would love to hear how you like the new format or any other comments or questions. You can comment here on the blog or send me an email at harmonyfinearts@yahoo.com
Please read the following explanation outlining how to get this month’s newsletter.
The newsletter link is not in this email but will come separately. There may be a delay in your receiving the email so please don’t email me until the second day of the month if you haven’t received the link on the first. For some reason, some email providers take longer to receive the newsletter email.
If you don’t receive the separate email with the download link, you probably aren’t subscribed to the blog yet. This will take less than a minute to do if you follow the steps below.
If you are a subscriber and you haven’t received your newsletter email yet, check your SPAM inbox. Some subscribers have found the email buried in SPAM inbox.
If you need to subscribe:
You will need to go to the Handbook of Nature Study, look to the top right corner for the box to type in your preferred email address, and then confirm the email that comes to your email inbox.
Once you subscribe, you will receive a thank you email from me with the download link.
This month’s newsletter link will be available only during the month of September so be sure to download it before 9/30/15.
September Nature Study Planning Page printable – don’t miss the little extras I have added this month like nature photo ideas, field trip ideas, and a special 15 minute challenge for parents.
I have written an article entitled, “Learning to Look at Things“. I endeavor to share why nature study is so important to learning of all kinds and how it will become a refreshment to your family.
Leaf Study Notebook Page – This page includes a prompt at the top to help your family go more deeply into a leaf study this month or in the months to come. It can also be used as a nature journal topper if you want to cut and paste the prompt into your own nature journal.
Members:You may also wish to download the October 2012 Newsletter from the archives. You will find additional articles, printables, and links to support your tree nature study. Note: All levels of membership here on the Handbook of Nature Study include all back issues of the newsletter.
Please note that Ultimate Naturalist and Journey level members have access to members only printables each month in addition to the newsletter printables. You will need to log into your account and then go to the “Other Releases” section.
Need help getting started with your nature study using the Handbook of Nature Study? Check out the fresh “Getting Started” page here on the website!
Read pages 408-411 (Lesson #104) in the Handbook of Nature Study. There is a lot of information in this lesson so make sure to highlight a few interesting facts to share with your family.
Note: The caddisfly larvae (caddisworms) will be found in creeks, ponds, and streams. Adult caddisflies are moth-like creatures that will be attracted to light in the evenings.
Alternate study: Water striders are common insects found “walking” on the water: Water Striders.
Outdoor Hour Time:
Visit a pond or shallow stream, looking for caddisworms (larva) in their cases. Use a dipping net to try to catch a caddisworm to observe. Use some of the activity ideas from the lesson to make careful observations of your caddisfly larva.
In addition, sit out under your porch light in the evening and watch for caddisflies to visit. Look at its wings, eyes, and antennae.
Follow-Up Activity:
Create a nature journal entry showing both the caddisfly larva and the caddisfly. You can draw the life cycle of the caddis fly on the back of your nature journal page if you wish.
Advanced study: Research the insect order trichoptera. Use a field guide and complete two additional nature journal entries for insects in this order.
Alternate study: Create a nature journal entry for the water strider using the notebook page included in this ebook or in your nature journal.
Alternate Advanced study: Research the insect order hemiptera and create a nature journal entry with information on two insects from this order.
If you want to purchase the Summer 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 Summer Nature Study Continues – New Ebookannouncement page for more details.
This is the last of the summer challenges! We will be starting the Autumn Nature Study 2015 ebook challenges starting on September 4, 2015!
This month’s book in my Nature Book Project 2015 is The Bird Watching Answer Book (my affiliate link). As a bird lover and birdwatcher, I found this book to be easy to read and full of interesting and valuable information. The chapters are arranged by broad topics but then provide the information in question and answer style. I rarely have big blocks of time to read books so having the ability to read a shorter section and then pick up where I left off when the next opportunity comes along is very efficient. I actually enjoyed asking my family members questions to see if they knew the answers before I read them. What a great way to learn!
Interspersed in the chapters are pages with tips and practical ideas that relate to bird watching. Information about feeding, creating bird friendly environments, nests, songs, and migration. I wrote recently about my problem with birds flying into my windows. On pages 87-91 there are many ideas for preventing or reducing bird strikes which gave me some fresh ideas to try.
On page 7 it has this advice, “Birds are especially drawn to the sound of dripping or flowing water, so setting up a plastic bottle with a small hole in the bottom above your birdbath to provide a slow, steady drip will bring in more individuals and more species than a birdbath alone.” I’m going to try that one!
Ever wondered how long certain species of birds live? The book shares many common birds and their life spans on pages 302-304. Fascinating! Did you know a cardinal can live up to 15 years?
Then there are lots of questions that I had never even thought to ask. For instance, “Why is it birds can sit on electrical wires and not get zapped?” Hmmmm….good question!
Did you know four presidents had mockingbirds as pets? See page 191 for their names.
I give this book a big thumbs up and it will be sitting on my living room table for awhile before it finds its home on my nature library reference shelf. I know that visitors to my home will pick this book up and thumb through it, finding something of interest to catch their eye!
Some Quick Thoughts
I love the size of the book and that the spine is actual cloth binding. The pages have a nice weight and it is just a pleasure to hold and read.
The author Laura Erickson is the science editor at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
I think this would make a wonderful reference book in your nature library. Middle school aged children and up could read the book on their own but you could read aloud a few pages a day even to your youngest children and they would be interested. Charlotte Mason homeschoolers could read aloud a section at a time and have their children narrate back what they learned either in words or a nature journal page.
388 pages, indexed by topic and bird name for easy reference
This book would be a great resource for more advanced nature study students. It includes topics such as invasive species, birds that are endangered, and climate change.
I love to list the birds that visit my yard. There are so many that frequent my feeders, fruit trees, birdbath, and other hiding places. Many times I hear a bird and then go to the window to try to catch a glimpse, using binoculars to aid my investigation. I know my neighbors probably think I am the crazy binocular lady but who cares!
The finches have been feasting on the leaves of my sunflowers. They leave just the skeleton of the leaf behind after clinging to the leaf and nibbling it.
Here is my list for August 2015.
(Some were flying over the house but I still added them to the list.)
***Black phoebe– This is a completely new bird to our list!!! During our dinner one evening out on the back deck, we spied him sitting up in a tree near the railing. He definitely was saying fee-bee, fee-bee. We saw him the next day in the same tree.
(my affiliate link). As a bird lover and birdwatcher, I found this book to be easy to read and full of interesting and valuable information. The chapters are arranged by broad topics but then provide the information in question and answer style. I rarely have big blocks of time to read books so having the ability to read a shorter section and then pick up where I left off when the next opportunity comes along is very efficient. I actually enjoyed asking my family members questions to see if they knew the answers before I read them. What a great way to learn!
