Handbook of Nature Study Archives

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Barb — 3 Comments

OHC More Nature Study Book 2 – Sheep/Wool

More Nature Study Book 2
Sheep and Wool Study

Inside Preparation Work:
1. Read pages 270-274 in the Handbook of Nature Study (Lesson 66). Since most of us do not have access to a real sheep to study up close, use this information as preparation for any future encounters with sheep. For this challenge you can spend time learning about how man uses the sheep’s wool to make fabric. Make sure to have at least one item made of wool for the children to observe (or a ball of wool yarn will work as well).
2. View these videos on YouTube.com: Sheep Dogs in Training and How It Is Made-Wool.

Outdoor Hour Time:
If you have the ability to observe a real sheep and make direct observations, this is the best way to learn about sheep. If you don’t have access to sheep, there are several alternative ideas.
1. Take a walk outdoors wearing a wool hat, sweater, mittens, coat, or scarf. Enjoy the warmth and be grateful for sheep.
2. Observe another mammal and compare it to the sheep: size, fur/hair/wool, feet, teeth, eyes, tail.

Follow-Up Activity:
1. Spend a few minutes after your outdoor time to review your experience. If you found anything of interest, make sure to talk about it and look up any additional information in the Handbook of Nature Study or at your next library visit.
2. View wool and hair with a hand lens. You can sketch what you see in your nature journal or on the back of the sheep notebook page. Ebook users: Complete the sheep notebook page with information from the Handbook of Nature Study.

3. Advanced study: The Handbook of Nature Study suggests writing about the method by which wool is made into cloth. Research at the library or on the internet and then give a summary.
4. Advanced study: Research the Artiodactyla order and Bovidae family of mammals (links below). Use resources from your public library or the internet.

Additional Links:

Sheep coloring pages to print
Wikipedia articles: Sheep, Artiodactyla and Bovidae. (Please note: All Wikipedia articles have references to evolution.)
Additional sheep information (child friendly): All About Sheep For Kids

You can see our family study here: Wool Study.

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Barb — 5 Comments

OHC More Nature Study Book 2 – Twigs

Twigs in a Vase - Beginning our Twig Study

“Many times children are familiar with trees in spring, summer, and autumn but they have no knowledge of them in winter; yet trees in winter give much delight to those who know them as they do in summer. Oftentimes I have gone out on a winter day with my botany can and filled it with twigs for the pleasure that the colors and form gave me.
Home Nature-Study Course, Cornell University 1906

More Nature Study Book #2
Winter Tree Study – Twigs

Inside Preparation Work:
1. Read the Tree Study section staring on page 623 in the Handbook of Nature Study (Lesson 172). Pay special attention to #3 in the section on Winter Work. Take note of the lesson’s observation suggestions to keep during your nature study of winter twigs. You may wish to read the links in the follow-up activity and the additional links listed below before you go outdoors so you will be equipped with some vocabulary to use casually during your observations.
2. Optional reading if you have access to a willow tree: Read Lesson 179 in the Handbook of Nature Study (starting on page 654). Use the ideas in the lesson to study willow twigs and buds.

Advanced Study Option

Outdoor Hour Time:
1. Outdoor time this week should include a few minutes gathering twigs. Select twigs from three different trees to take indoors for closer observation. It would be helpful to know the names of the trees you collect your twigs from but not necessary. We came inside and marked each twig with little name tags This is primarily a challenge about comparing and contrasting twigs from various trees.
2. Advanced activity: Tie a string on a twig attached to a tree. Observe and record in your nature journal the twig’s changes for a few months.

Follow-Up Activity:
1. Use the questions from Lesson 172 to get your child started making observations for each of the three twigs you collected (or just one twig for younger children). Make sure to use your sense of sight, smell, and touch to make careful observations. Record your thoughts in your nature journal or on the notebook page (ebook users only).
2. Place your three twigs on a table. How are they different? Look at size, shape, arrangement of the buds, as well as the size or shape of the buds. Compare two buds on the same twig. Can you see the leaf scars where the leaf dropped off?
3. The main parts of the twig in winter are the buds, leaf scars, and lenticels. Sketch your twigs in your nature journal or on the notebook page, drawing everything you see and labeling the parts neatly.
4. Advanced follow-up: Complete the Twig Study notebook page (ebook users). Dissect a bud from your twig and then record your observations.

Additional Websites:

Twig vocabulary

Structure of a twig

You can view our twig study here: Winter Twigs – Training Our Eyes.

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Barb — Leave a comment

OHC More Nature Study Book 2: Winter Wonder Walk Challenge

More Nature Study Book 2
Winter Weather Walk

Inside Preparation Work:

Read the “How to Use This Book” section in Part I of the Handbook of Nature Study (pages 23-24). This information will apply to every challenge in this ebook. If this is your first time reading this section, use a highlighter or pen to underline thoughts you can implement with your family.
Ebook Users Only: Before beginning this series of challenges, use the Winter Wonder? Notebook Page to create enthusiasm for this season’s nature study. Print a page for each member of the family and complete it together. Refer to this page as you work your way through the challenges and spend time outdoors this winter. Keep the page in the front of your nature journal as a reminder of the three questions you hope to answer and the three activities you hope to accomplish.

Outdoor Hour Time:

Take a Winter Weather Walk and observe as many things in your neighborhood as possible that are special about the winter season. These can be man-made or natural items. If you downloaded my January 2012 Newsletter you can also use the Study Grid ideas as part of this challenge (newsletter in the archives for Members). More Nature Study Winter Ebook Users: You can take along the notebook page and record your thoughts as you walk outdoors or wait until you return home to complete the page.
Advanced study: Challenge yourself to take a walk keeping completely silent. Go as a family or all alone. Ebook Users: You can take the Silent Winter Walk Challenge notebook page along with you and record your observations as you walk or wait until you go back inside to record your findings. Collect a small item to bring inside to sketch in your nature journal or onto your notebook page.

Three notebook pages are included in the ebook for this challenge.

Follow-Up Activity:

Record your Winter Weather Walk experiences in your nature journal. Ebook users can complete any or all of the notebook pages associated with this challenge as a follow up to your winter weather walk. You may wish to complete another walk later in the season just to compare your weather and surroundings. File your notebook pages in your nature journal.
Advanced study: Keep track of the weather in your nature journal. Design and sketch out your own weather chart. (Handbook of Nature Study, page 807, Lesson 222 has an example.) Suggested topics of study: Rain and snow amounts in inches, temperatures (highs and lows), wind speed and direction, cloud types, anything else weather related that you can think of to include. You can use the free weather chart I posted in this entry: Dry December Leads to a Dry January.

You can view our Winter Silent Nature Walk here on my blog.

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Posted on November 4, 2011 by Barb — 4 Comments

OHC More Nature Study #9 Thistles

“On looking at the thistle from its own standpoint, we must acknowledge it to be a beautiful and wonderful plant. It is like a knight of old encased in armor and with lance set, read for the frey.”
Handbook of Nature Study 524

More Nature Study with the OHC #9
Thistles

Inside Preparation Work:

Read in the Handbook of Nature Study pages 524-526 (Lesson 141).
Read and view Common Thistle Information and Canada Thistle Information. View the range maps to see which plants you have in your area.

Outdoor Hour Time:

Spend part of your Outdoor Hour time looking for thistles or other autumn fall flowers. The thistle is a composite flower like many other autumn blooming flowers: goldenrod, aster, yarrow, burdock, chicory, and even the dandelion. If you can’t find a thistle, choose one of the other composite flowers you have access to as part of this challenge.
If you can pull the thistle up by the roots, this will be the subject of your nature study once you return home. Make sure you are pulling a thistle where you have permission from the landowner. (I suggest taking gloves with you for this part of the activity.)

Follow-Up Activities:

If you were able to bring a thistle plant inside with you, take time to carefully observe all the parts of the plant. Use the suggestions from the lesson in the Handbook of Nature Study to guide your children in noticing the major parts of the thistle. In autumn you will probably need to focus on the dried flower head and seeds.
Give time to complete a nature journal, a notebook page (available in the ebook), and/or a coloring page. There are three different coloring pages available for this challenge in the ebook.
Watch this video on YouTube (Bull thistle) .
Advanced Follow-Up: Watch this video about Canada Thistle on YouTube.com.
Advanced follow-up: Sketch and compare the thistle to two other seeds you find in the autumn.

This challenge is part of the More Nature Study – Autumn series. All of the challenges are gathered into one ebook with notebooking pages (regular and for advanced students) and additional resources. You can gain access to this ebook by purchasing an Ultimate Naturalist membership here on the Handbook of Nature Study. See the Join Us page by clicking the link at the top of the website for more information about what comes with your Ultimate membership.

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Barb — Leave a comment

OHC More Nature Study #7 House Sparrow

More Nature Study #7
House Sparrow (English Sparrow in the Handbook of Nature Study)

Inside Preparation Work:
1. Read pages 83-85 in the Handbook of Nature Study (Lesson 20 English Sparrow). Highlight some points you can share about the house sparrow with your children.
2. If you have a bird field guide, use the index to look up the House sparrow and any other sparrows you may have in your area.
3. Let your children see an image of the House sparrow and have them describe what they see. (You may use the information in the Additional Links section below.)
4. Younger Children: Read the Burgess Bird Book chapter on the English(House) Sparrow online. Listen to an MP3 recording of the chapter.

Outdoor Hour Time:
1. Seize the opportunity to observe a House sparrow during your week. This may need to be done from a window at first but outdoors is always better if you can keep still and quiet as you observe. If you have a pair of binoculars, take them along with you so you can view the sparrow’s features. Try to observe their color, size, beak, tail shape, and behavior. Look for House sparrows in your yard in bushes or hedges, in parks, or even around buildings in urban areas.
2. If you don’t have a House sparrow to observe, choose another bird and have your child describe its features. (It is always good to compare size, shape, beak, and tail.)

Follow-Up Activity:
1. After your Outdoor Hour time, take a few minutes to follow-up your bird observation time. Pull out your field guide and learn a little bit more about any birds you were able to view.
2. Allow the opportunity for a nature journal entry, a notebook page, or time to color the accompanying coloring page.
3. Advanced follow-up: Compare the House sparrow with another sparrow in your neighborhood. You can use the accompanying notebook page for your notes (ebook users only).
4. Advanced follow-up: Watch for the House sparrow in all four seasons. Keep a record of what months you see them in your yard or neighborhood.

Additional Links:
All About Birds: House Sparrow
My HubPage on birdfeeders: Birdfeeders in the Winter
Advanced students—for research: House Sparrow

Please note these are affiliate links to products I love and highly recommend.

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Posted on October 16, 2011 by Barb — 3 Comments

Found My Orb Web!

We were busy pulling all of the dead and brown things out of the garden when I spotted it! The most perfect spider web I have seen in a long time was right next to the hose reel. I actually touched it before I saw it and it startled me.

The sun was shining just right to see most of it in a photo so I ran inside and snapped a few images to share here on the blog. I called Mr. A and my husband over to take a look and we admired the preciseness of the web and we talked a bit about how it was constructed with a frame and then the web spun around and around.

I took the opportunity to see if the inside threads were sticky like we read about in the Handbook of Nature Study.

Isn’t that grand? I love learning new things alongside my boys….

“The radii or spokes, the guy-lines, the framework, and the center of the web are all made of inelastic silk, which does not adhere to an object that touches it. The spiral line, on the contrary, is very elastic, and adheres to any object brought in contact with it. An insect which touches one of these spirals and tries to escape become entangled in the neighboring lines and is thus held fast until the spider can reach it. If one of these elastic lines be examined with a microscope, it is a most beautiful object. There are strung upon it, like pearls, little drops of sticky fluid which render it not only elastic but adhesive.” Handbook of Nature Study, page 440.

Thanks Anna Botsford Comstock for bringing such an amazing detail to our attention. We have a heightened sense of awe over something we have overlooked our entire lives. Now I can rest our web study for the season, unless a new web presents itself.

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Barb — 2 Comments

So Many Webs – So Many Questions

No webs in this image, just a pretty flower.

Looking for spider webs can become a little obsessive. We have been hypersensitive to webs over the past few weeks in anticipation of the Fall Web Challenge, spotting them just about everywhere. Are there always this many webs and is it only because we are focusing on them right now that they seem to pop up in so many places? I guess that is a question we will answer over the next few months. We are in the middle of a huge rainstorm so I am glad that I have been snapping photos as we went along…it is very wet out there today.

We seem to see the most of this kind of web….very filmy and not at all like a web you would draw or think of when the word is mentioned. They seem disorganized and messy, that is until you get up close and really look at the structure.

There they are…the outline lines of the web. We wonder how they get from here to there and back again since the distances are quite far. We could never actually see a spider spinning a web which is now on our list of things to be on the lookout for in the months to come. We could not determine if this was truly a “filmy dome” as described in Lesson 113 of the Handbook of Nature Study.

These photos were all taken in our backyard and were mostly in the crepe myrtle bushes.

See how the web seems to almost encase the leaves and branch? We observed many of these webs in our backyard and although they were a great source of interest, we were disappointed that we didn’t see a pretty orb web. We all decided that this will be a study we save for when the opportunity presents itself, to study a web up-close and maybe, just maybe to see the spider spinning the web.

We are looking forward to this Friday’s challenge….the current rainstorm has started the leaves falling and I even spotted a few colored ones! We did have snow up the road from our house this morning but it has melted already in the rain. This is going to be an interesting autumn.

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Barb — 3 Comments

OHC – More Nature Study #3 Pear Study

More Nature Study #3
Pears/Fall Tree Study

Inside Preparation Work:

For the pear challenge there is no lesson in the Handbook of Nature Study. You can read about pears online: Pear Varieties and Pear Fact Printable.
As an alternate or supplemental activity, you can read the section, “How to Begin Tree Study” in the Handbook of Nature Study on pages 622-624. Pay attention to Lesson 72—Autumn Work (#1-#5). Take note of some observations you can make during autumn.

Outdoor Hour Time:

If you have access to a pear tree in your yard, neighborhood, or near-by orchard, spend your Outdoor Hour time observing the tree: tree shape, arrangement of the branches, trunk, leaves, fruit/seeds.
If you don’t have access to a pear tree, use the information from the Autumn tree work section in the Handbook of Nature Study to observe any tree you have in your yard or neighborhood. You can use this tree as the subject of a year-long tree study if you wish. You may wish to read the information from the Autumn Tree Observation Challenge 2009.

Follow-Up Activity:

Have on hand a pear and an apple for each child to observe up-close. Use the suggestions on the notebook page (ebook users only) to compare these two fruits.
For Pear Study: Give the opportunity to make a nature journal entry recording any observations made about pears. Suggestions for discussion: shape of the pear, size, color, smell, markings on the skin, and the stem. Cut the pear in half and draw the inside of the pear in your nature journal. There is also a pear coloring page included in the ebook
For Autumn Tree Study: You can use the Autumn Tree Study notebook page linked above. You may use it for any tree you observed during your nature study.
Advanced follow-up: Complete the Dissection Lab notebook page with a pear (ebook users only).
Advanced follow-up: Make a dry brush watercolor of the pear and either its vertical or cross section.

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Posted on September 9, 2011 by Barb — 8 Comments

Outdoor Hour Challenge – More Nature Study #1 Milkweed

More Nature Study
Challenge #1 Milkweed (or any other autumn blooming plant)

Where to find it? Showy Milkweed and Common Milkweed

Showy Milkweed in Bloom Earlier In The Summer

Inside Preparation Work:

Read in the Handbook of Nature Study pages 491-493 (Lesson 128) on the milkweed plant. Glean some ideas from Lesson 128 for your milkweed observations. This plant is still in bloom in many areas of the country but even if it is past bloom, the seed pods should be present and a wonderful nature study lesson all on their own. Lesson 128 in the Handbook of Nature Study gives some interesting suggestions for observations.
If you have a field guide for wildflowers, you may wish to look up milkweed in the index to learn more about your local milkweed.

Outdoor Hour Time:

As part of your Outdoor Hour this week, look for milkweed to observe.
Make observations of the flowers, the leaves, and/or the seed pod. If it is appropriate, break off a leaf or cut a stem to see the rubbery “milk”. Did you see any insects on or near your milkweed?
If you don’t find milkweed, check for other fall blossoming wildflowers to observe like: Jewel Weed (Lesson 134), Late blooming Goldenrod (Lesson 132), or Asters (Lesson 133).

Follow-Up Activity:

Give the opportunity for discussion of the Outdoor Hour time and the details of your milkweed or wildflowers nature study and then follow-up with a nature journal entry, a notebook page, or a coloring page (ebook users) to finish your nature study for the week. Note: If you downloaded the September 2011 Outdoor Hour Challenge Newsletter, you have a custom notebook page to use along with any weed study.
Advanced follow-up: Compare the seeds of the milkweed, the dandelion, and/or the cattail.
Advanced follow-up (Ebook users only): See the Upper Level notebook page for suggestions for additional research. Use the blank notebook page to record your information.

Posted on August 25, 2011 by Barb — 6 Comments

Frogs of the Sierra Nevadas and the Handbook of Nature Study

I was given the opportunity to purchase a 1911 version of the Handbook of Nature Study….with all its well worn pages…all still intact and in very good shape. I jumped at the chance to have as a keepsake the volume in its original form. Thanks Anna Botsford Comstock for caring enough to write these lessons down for all of us that follow you.

My new Handbook is very similar to the current version that I use but what makes it nice is the layout….only one column on a page, original clipart, diagrams, little extra references to books and brochures that probably no longer exist. The charm of this book is how it is still relevant today…..one hundred years later.

Frog Pond

We had the chance to visit Grandpa’s pond last week and since the weather has been so dry, the creek fed pond is getting a little low. There is still a spring underneath keeping it wet enough for the critters that depend on it for water. We were surprised to see all the frog heads with bulging eyes sticking up above the water. They really do blend in except if they move….the duck weed is thick on the top and it makes the frogs look like they have beards.

Where’s the frog?

You need to move slowly or they plop under the water very fast. I was able to zoom in and get a few images of the frog heads for us to look at on the computer screen. We consulted our favorite frog and toad website: California Frogs and Toads. We are fairly sure it is an American Bullfrog…. we are going back later this week and we will take our field guide to confirm the identification.

In the Handbook of Nature Study in lesson 47, the suggestions are all things that we would need to really spend some time investigating and perhaps even catching one and taking a closer look. We decided to narrow our study down to a few things:
#3 Describe the colors and markings of the frog on the upper and on the under side. How do these protect it from observations from above? below? How do we usually discover that we are in the vicinity of a frog?
#4 Describe the frog’s ears, eyes, nostrils, and mouth.
#6 How does the frog feel to your hand? Is it easy to hold him?

Those seem like logical questions to keep in mind when we go back again next week. We will update this entry when we answer the questions.

I look forward to seeing some of your pond studies or any other nature studies you have completed this month. Make sure to submit your entries to the Outdoor Hour Challenge Blog Carnival. You can submit your entries by following this LINK.

Category: Handbook of Nature Study

OHC More Nature Study Book 2 – Sheep/Wool

OHC More Nature Study Book 2 – Twigs

OHC More Nature Study Book 2: Winter Wonder Walk Challenge

OHC More Nature Study #9 Thistles

OHC More Nature Study #7 House Sparrow

Found My Orb Web!

So Many Webs – So Many Questions

OHC – More Nature Study #3 Pear Study

Outdoor Hour Challenge – More Nature Study #1 Milkweed

Frogs of the Sierra Nevadas and the Handbook of Nature Study

Outdoor Hour Challenges for families since 2008!