The first time I saw a sphinx moth, I thought it was a hummingbird! It flew into my house and started flying around a vase of flowers we had on the kitchen table. It took a minute before I realized that it wasn’t a hummingbird but a very big flying insect. I have since seen several more while at the garden nursery and even in my own yard a few times when we lived in California.
I no longer think of these large flying insects as creepy but I include them in the Creepy Things series of Outdoor Hour Challenges so you can learn to appreciate their beauty too!
Don’t know what a sphinx moth is? Use these ideas to learn more:
Use an insect field guide to gather facts about the sphinx moth.
Read lesson 75 in the Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock.
See the Creepy Things ebook for more sphinx moth nature study ideas, videos, and printables!
Please note that I will not be posting the complete challenge here on the blog. You’ll find the detailed challenge in the Creepy Things ebook that’s available both in the Ultimate Naturalist and Journey level memberships. Sign into your account and download the ebook for the details, more links, and notebook pages.
If you don’t have a membership yet, click the graphic above and join today for immediate access to the 26 ebooks and so much more! Remember that all levels, even the Discovery level membership, include access to all of the archived newsletters!
Are you facing Spring Break with the kids and are wondering what you can do to have some fun and learn something at the same time? It may be time to give the Outdoor Hour Challenge a try!
Just look at all those benefits of an Ultimate Naturalist Library membership!
The current library contains 25 ebooks covering hundreds of topics. There are 76 newsletters in the library and dozens of printables in addition to the ebooks!
Right now, use the discount code SPRINGBREAK for $10 off an Ultimate Naturalist Library membership. This offer will be valid until 3/31/2020.
What a fantastic deal! For $35 dollars you will have this amazing resource for a complete year from your purchase. Take a look at some samples and download a newsletter to take a peek at what you will get with your membership.
Click over to the Join Us page and scroll down to find a sample that interests you: Join Us.
If you haven’t joined us for our weekly nature study yet this year, it’s not too late to jump in with the rest of the year’s plan!
We’ll be starting a new series of nature study lessons from the Forest Fun ebook on January 17, 2020.
Topics will include: bear, porcupine, raven, skunk cabbage, California quail, moose, rabbitbrush, azalea, and Western tanager.
I’m super excited to be offering these topics that are not covered in the Handbook of Nature Study, but are subjects that many of us observe during our nature study outings and during our vacations.
After we finish up the Forest Fun ebook, we’ll move on to another completely new (soon to be published) ebook that features topics from the High Desert.
Topics include: mountain lion, coyote, elk, pocket gopher, golden mantled ground squirrel, river otter, sagebrush, bitterbrush, snowberry, succulents, greater sage grouse, turkey vulture, juniper tree, and the bristlecone pine.
Our year will finish off with the Creepy Things series of nature study topics. This newly released ebook includes fascinating studies of the banana slug, tarantula, black widow, scorpion, leech, muskrat, sphinx moth, cicada, millipede, and poison oak.
I’m inviting you to join us as members here on the Handbook of Nature Study which will give you access to all of these brand new nature study topics in addition to the archives of past ebooks, newsletters, nature planner pages, and growing list of printables available.
Use the discount code NATURE5 when you purchase your Ultimate Naturalist membership and you’ll receive $5 off your purchase.
Your membership will start the date of purchase and will be valid for one complete year from that time. This will include all of the upcoming ebooks and monthly printables released during that 12 month period.
Salt Nature Study – Handbook of Nature Study Lesson 212, pages 753-754
Make sure to click the link above to read the entire Outdoor Hour Challenge with helpful links, nature study ideas, and suggested follow-up activities.
In addition to the suggestions in the Handbook of Nature Study, you may wish to conduct this simple winter experiment to enhance your salt study.
If you have freezing temperatures in your area, conduct an experiment where you try to freeze salt water outdoors in your own backyard. Take two pie pans. Fill one with tap water and one with saltwater. Compare the time it takes for each to freeze.
Please note this challenge is found in the Winter Series ebook, included in the Ultimate Naturalist Library membership. Log into your membership and scroll down to the ebook download link.
Included in the ebook, there is a custom notebook page for this challenge.
Salt Experiments Printable Shown Above is Available to Members!
If your family is interested in conducting even more salt related experiments and you’re a member here on the Handbook of Nature Study, you can download the Salt printables shown above and use the pieces in your nature journal. This printable unit comes complete with instructions for four simple experiments using common household items.
Look for the printable in your Ultimate and Journey level memberships in the Misc. Category.
If you’re not currently a member, you can use the links above to learn more about the benefits of a membership here on the Handbook of Nature Study.
Note this is an Amazon affiliate link to a product I own and love!
This week features an Outdoor Hour Challenge that everyone can complete no matter where you live! Take note of the weather using the suggestions in the winter weather nature study link below. This is a super easy and fun nature study topic that can be the start of a seasonal weather study.
Use the notebook page above to create a record of your observations for your nature journal.
Make sure to click the link below to read the entire Outdoor Hour Challenge with helpful links, nature study ideas, and suggested follow-up activities.
Please note this challenge is found in the Winter Series ebook found in the Ultimate Naturalist Library membership. Log into your membership and scroll down to the ebook download link. Included in the ebook, there is a custom notebook page for this challenge.
Archive Outdoor Hour Challenge – Click the link above to take you to the original challenge.
Goldenrod is a showy yellow wildflower that is included in the Handbook of Nature Study. There are many varieties of goldenrod all over North America, so you may have some in your local area. This is the perfect beginner’s nature study that starts with a pretty flower and a super interesting lesson in the Handbook of Nature Study.
Anna Botsford Comstock encourages us to engage our child’s imagination as we hunt for “golden cities” in our neighborhoods and to look for insects. This makes it a subject that appeals to a wide range of children as they take a look to see if they can discover this flower and possibly some creatures to observe. Make sure to read the pages in the Handbook of Nature Study that will help you build an interest for this week’s topic.
Make sure to click the link below to read the entire Outdoor Hour Challenge with links, ideas, free notebooking pages, and suggested follow-up activities.
This Outdoor Hour Challenge is part of the 2018-2019 Plan here on the Handbook of Nature Study. We will be using the Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock to discover new things about the world around us. Join us each Friday for a different nature study topic. Make sure to subscribe to this blog to receive the weekly challenge right in your email box.
Note this is an Amazon affiliate link to a product that I have used and loved for many,many years.
Homeschooling for high school using the Charlotte Mason method is a dynamic and living way to teach children. It gives your family room to personalize their learning.
Living ideas are derived only from living minds.
Homeschooling using the Charlotte Mason style is marked by a use of good living books. Living books are books that are written by someone who has a passion or interest in the subject, usually in a conversational or narrative style.
When I homeschooled my teenage sons, I tried to include living books in every science course. These kinds of books drew interest and excitement to the topics we learned about in our science curriculum.
A good living book is worth its weight in gold and can give even the most reluctant student a reason for digging deeper into various aspects of science.
Inspiration versus Information
My aim in homeschooling my children was to inspire a love of learning and not just to feed them dry facts. Living books inspire thinking and don’t just provide information. Think back to when you were in school and you had a true learning experience, one that impressed you and has stuck with you all these years later. In my experience, those times were inspired either by passionate people fired up about a topic, a book that was written to give you a window into another time or person’s life, or when you made a connection from the written page and related to your real life in some way.
It takes less energy to learn something from a living book than it does from a text. Learning takes place without all the effort to memorize and drill the facts. Learning takes place because it is meaningful and you own it right from the first reading.
“A book may be long or short, old or new, easy or hard, written by a great man or a lesser man and yet be the living book which finds its way to the mind of a young reader.”
Charlotte Mason Homeschooling Series, Volume 3
Living Books in High School
How to Use Living Books in Your Science Courses
Most of us feel more comfortable using a text as the foundation of our high school science courses. This doesn’t mean that we need to limit our assignments to the text. Why not add in a few living books to supplement your learning? I found that when I left one day open during the school week for a living book reading and follow-up narration, we enjoyed our studies so much more. It balanced out the textbook learning and made it more meaningful.
Tips for Offering Living Books in High School Science
1. Assign a living book each week. I broke longer books down by chapters or pages and assigned a short reading each week.
2. Allow for some kind of narration – oral, written (summary on a notebook page works well), project, or additional research.
3. Look for ways to connect the text to your living books selections by pulling in biographies of scientists or explorers.
4. Create interest in a topic by drawing connects between the text and your nature study.
5. When on field trips, look in the bookstore at the museum, science center, nature center, planetarium, or state/national park for living books you can include in your science courses.
Living Books for High School Biology
“They learn what to observe, and make discoveries for themselves, original so far as they are concerned. They are put in the right attitude of mind for scientific observations and deductions, and their keen interest is awakened.”
Text = Apologia Biology: If you’re using this text, I have written a blog entry sharing how we incorporated nature study into each of the modules in the book. It has detailed suggestions of topics, additional books, and nature study ideas for you to use as inspiration.
This is the foundation of all of our informal biology study from elementary age to high school age. I have written dozens of nature study lessons based on this book.
I have written lots of advanced nature study ideas and included them in my Outdoor Hour Challenge ebooks. My high school aged sons used these as a weekly supplement to their biology study.
Here are particular ebooks that you may find helpful in planning a high school level nature study course. You can click this link to find all of these ebooks: Handbook of Nature Study.
Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer Nature Study Continues Series – includes advanced nature study ideas and advanced notebooking pages for follow-up learning and narration.
More Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer Nature Study Series – includes advanced nature study ideas and advanced notebooking pages for follow-up learning and narration.
All of these ebooks are available in my Ultimate Naturalist Library membership. This membership includes all 21 of my nature study ebooks, 76 archived nature study newsletters, and a growing library of additional printable notebook pages and activities.
Here are the additional “living books” we added in to fit the interests and learning styles of our children.
Field guides for all subjects are an absolute MUST: Trees, Wildflowers, Birds, Mammals, Insects, Mushrooms. Taking the information from a text and then going outside to observe your subjects brings the study to a new level. If you take the time to use a field guide, now you have real knowledge about the real world.
Living Books for High School Chemistry
These books can all be used for narration exercises. My boys kept a written summary of each of the books on notebook pages.
Napoleon’s Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History: This one you might want to preview. I didn’t like it as much as some people do, but my boys enjoyed reading it and narrating back to me at our weekly discussions.
The Joy of Chemistry: The Amazing Science of Familiar Things.: This is much more than a lab idea book. There’s a narrative chapter and then a demonstration of the concept that uses fairly easy to find materials. Great supplement to any chemistry course you are completing.
Living Books for Human Anatomy
Human anatomy is a fascinating look at our own bodies. Dry textbooks can provide information in an organized way but a good living book will give the student something to think about and to observe in their own body. We have used the following books as the complement to our text.
The Way We Work: Getting to Know the Amazing Human Body: My son loves the artwork and the text narrative in this book. Like all David Macaulay books, it is full of interesting facts that are shared in an enjoyable way. My son copied some of the illustrations into his anatomy notebook with colored pencils….all inspired by this book.
I Am Joe’s Body (A Berkley/Reader’s Digest book): This simple book is a quick read but gives lots of ideas and things to think about. It’s worth finding used and having for your high school age student.
Fearfully and Wonderfully Made: This was one I wasn’t sure about until we received it and read through the first few chapters. I found it interesting and supportive of our Christian point of view.
Exploring the History of Medicine: More like a text than any of the other books, but we devoured the stories in this book. We skipped the questions and used the table of contents as a jumping off spot for further research and narration.
Mr. Fisher says, ‘There are real books, and there are textbooks.’ The day is soon coming when everyone will realize that textbooks have no educational value. We hardly ever use textbooks in our Parents Union Schools. Whenever possible, we use books that spark the imagination and have a touch of originality. These are the differences between a real book and a text book.
Charlotte Mason Homeschooling Series, Volume 6
Additional Links to Science Related Blog Entries I’ve Written:
Making Apologia Texts Work in Our Family: My real life experience with Apologia science texts shows how we adapt to fit our learning styles and tastes using some alternative methods.
I’ve long been a fan of the Story of Science series by Joy Hakim. We used these science books alongside our history lessons. I love the layout of these books and the information is presented in a chronological order. I’m including them in this post because my teenage sons thoroughly enjoyed reading these books because of the narrative style and the obvious love for science that the author shares. You could very easily include these in your living books list for science, perhaps covering a chapter or two a week. This would make these books span a few years’ time.
Story of Science Series – link to see more about these books, including sample chapters to download and read.
There are ways to draw in living books to every topic if you search hard enough. Our study of chemistry, physics, marine biology, and human anatomy have all been enhanced by selected living books offered every week for narration of some sort. Some of the books we stumbled upon, some were recommended by blog readers and friends, and some we already had on our shelves; we just needed to get them down off the shelf and read them one at a time.
I encourage you to consider including living books alongside any science text you offer to your students. You will not regret your decision!
I’m hoping there will be many of you who will be joining us for the up-coming autumn season of nature study. I’m all geared up to jump into an ebook from the archives with fresh eyes in a new location.
I am by nature a planner, and I know many of you are likewise, so here’s the plan for the next few months here on the Handbook of Nature Study.
If you want to see the complete plan for the next year, you can pop over to this entry to see what will be covered: Plans for October 2017 to August 2018.
I’m giving away 5 copies of the Autumn 2010 ebook!
Would you like a chance to win the Nature Study with the Outdoor Hour Challenge – Autumn 2010 ebook? Here you go! Enter by leaving me a comment and then using the Rafflecopter gadget to make your official entry. The giveaway will end on Friday, September 8, 2017 at midnight. You can enter once a day until then!
I will be choosing 5 winners at random!
The giveaway runs until Friday, September 8, 2017 at midnight so enter now!
The academic school year is drawing ever closer and with it will be some changes here on the Handbook of Nature Study. Since my move to Oregon last spring, I have barely kept my head above water as far as writing new challenges, keeping up with blog posts, and creating a monthly newsletter. It is not a good feeling.
I want to bring some joy and passion back to my work here so I’ve made some hard decisions.
Things to Note
I will no longer be creating a monthly newsletter. This will free up my time to write more about what I am learning and experiencing here in my new Central Oregon home. I realize that most of what I’m doing in my monthly newsletter can easily be shared in blog posts so the content will still be there for readers but not in the form of a newsletter.
There will continue to be 2-3 new printables per month for members. Those printables are usually either a notebook pages or activity that can be found in the Ultimate and Journey level membership libraries.
I have one new ebook in the works for spring 2018 and possibly another one for summer 2018.
Nature Study Plans for October 2017 to August 2018 – Ebooks to Be Used from the Ultimate Naturalist Library
Note: I am going to list the ebooks that will be the basis for the next year’s nature study here on the Handbook of Nature Study. It is advantageous but not necessary to have access to the ebooks. The ebooks contain custom printables (notebook pages and coloring pages) that will enhance your nature study but you can just as easily complete a page in your own blank nature journal.
October 2017 to December 2017 – We are going to use the Autumn Nature Study ebook plans from 2010. Many of you have not worked through this ebook in the past and I am anxious to complete these challenges again in my new habitat. You can find all of the challenges listed on this page: Autumn Nature Study.Scroll down and you will see the specific topics for the Friday challenges during this period of time.
This series of Outdoor Hour Challenges was written to help your family learn more about each topic by using comparisons. I explain how to make comparisons and then use a Venn Diagram to help see the topic more in detail. (Venn Diagram instructions and printable included in the ebook.)
January 2018 to February 2018 – I’m super excited to use the ideas in the Winter Wednesday series here in my new Central Oregon home. These cold weather and winter related challenges are going to help all of us get to know more about our winter world.
March 2018 to April 2018 – Outdoor Hour Challenge Learning About Birdsfrom 2016. Let’s use the bird challenges this spring to learn more about the birds in our yards and neighborhoods.
May 2018 to June 2018 – Summer Nature Study – Using Your Sensesfrom 2010. We are going to be using eight of the challenges from this ebook. It is going to be a lot of fun to revisit so many of these older challenges once again.
July and August 2018 – Outdoor Hour Challenges – Getting Started ebook! This is the ebook that started the whole thing around here. I would love for newbies and veterans to join us working through the first ten nature study challenges before the next school year starts.
So there you have the plan for the year to come! I became very excited as I made these plans and I hope you will consider joining us for all or part of the nature study journey this time around. As always, make these plans work for your family by adding or subtracting things to customize your experience.
If you have any questions, you can comment here on the blog or send me a direct email: harmonyfinearts@yahoo.com
Just as a sidenote: I miss the community we had built here using the blog carnival and Mr. Linky system from times past. I yearn to hear from families once in awhile to know how your nature study is going. It fuels me! So, if you have a moment over the next few months, shoot me an email or leave a comment. I love to hear your stories from your nature study time.
You can follow me on Instagram (Outdoorhourchallenge)to see my day to day nature study photos. I follow many of the OHC families so share your Instagram name and I will pop over and check your images out too!
Use the discount code NATURE5 to receive $5 off an Ultimate Naturalist Membership!
Outdoor Hour Challenge Wildflower Nature Study Set #1
Don’t miss the special promotion code at the bottom of this email!
Exciting News! I am creating NEW wildflower challenges based on flowers that I have become familiar with over the years. These are flowers that are NOT specifically covered in the Handbook of Nature Study written by Anna Botsford Comstock. They will be flowers that many of you know about and have seen in real life and now you can use the brand new OHC lessons to create a meaningful nature study for your children. In addition to the specific flower, each challenge will help you learn about a different plant family.
This is a huge undertaking and much more time consuming than I originally anticipated, so I am going to create a series of smaller ebooks and release them over the next few years. I am planning on releasing the first set of five wildflowers by the end of March 2017. Then starting in April 2017, this series of fresh wildflower Outdoor Hour Challenges will post every Friday. The ebook will contain custom designed notebooking pages for each wildflower, including more advanced pages for older students.
Please note the notebooking pages will only be available to ebook users and the ebook will be available for those that have an Ultimate or Journey level membership.
A Little Background
In choosing which flowers to start with in this series, I tried to narrow the list to early blooming plants that many of you will have access to in person. I’ve also included suggested substitutions for flowers that may also be common in your area by listing related flowers in the same plant family. Learning more about the plant families is something I’m going to be stressing in this new series of nature study ideas by referencing the Botany in a Day book and providing internet links for you to use as resources.
Want a sneak peek at the topics?
Wild Mustard and Wild Radish (mustard family)
Shooting Star (primrose family)
Lupine (pea family)
Purple Chinese House (figwort family)
Yarrow (composite family)
This new ebook will be loaded into the Ultimate Naturalist and Journey level memberships soon!
If you aren’t a member yet, you still have time to join and have immediate access as soon as it publishes.
As a special promo, you can use the discount code WILDFLOWER5 for $5 off the Ultimate Naturalist Membership.
Alternate study this week: Moths – Summer ebook and another moth study
Do Some Comparisons
