Outdoor Hour Challenge Use the Wildflower and Weed Grid from this month’s newsletter to get started or to continue your nature study for this week. Pick a few of the prompts to complete as you spend just a few minutes outdoors. Pick a time of day that isn’t too hot so you will enjoy your time even more.
Printable Activity: Wildflower Photo Hunt Use the free printable to guide your wildflower and weed hunt this week…or save the photo hunt for when you visit a natural area with wildflowers.
Getting Started Suggestion:
If you already own the Getting Started ebook, complete Outdoor Hour Challenge #1. Spend your time outdoors with your children following their lead. You might tell them ahead of time that you are on the lookout for wildflowers and see if they can guide you to a spot they have observed wildflowers in the past. Keep it relaxed and fun!
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Outdoor Hour Challenge:
The benefits of a year long tree study cannot be measured. Getting to know a tree season by season allows your family to take nature study to a new level by observing a tree in its complete annual cycle of growing. Use the links below to complete your tree study. Mark your calendar to remind you to complete a tree study in each season for the next year. After that, pick another tree and start all over again. Think of all the trees you will know by the time your children are grown up and on their own. This would be a wonderful gift to give your children.
You may also like to read this entry for additional simple ideas to get you started: For the Love of Trees
Four Seasons Tree Photo Project:
To accompany this challenge, print these notebook page for your nature journal and attach a photo of your tree in each season.
>Four Seasons Tree Photo Project Notebook Page: One page for each season’s observations and a photo or sketch.
Getting Started Suggestion:
You can complete Challenge #3 Now is the Time to Draw along with this Four Seasons Tree Study. Pick something from your tree to draw in your nature journal.
Our family loves this beautiful picture book that combines gorgeous paintings of a tree in all seasons along with questions to help you really see how a tree looks differently throughout the year. I highly recommend this book from my personal library.
Since this month’s theme is trees, I thought it might be fun to start a new photo challenge featuring trees.
Here is the challenge:
1. Take a photo of your child (or yourself) with a tree you observe during October 2012.
2. Join my new Pinterest board: Me and My Tree. You can email me with your Pinterest name and I will add you to the board.
3. Pin your photo to the group board. Make sure to leave the tree name in the description and your state and/or country. You do not have to show your child’s face if you don’t want to…be creative.
We are still noticing all the greens of our garden so this was the perfect assignment for us to do this month. You can see more about spring greens in our nature journal: Spring Green Nature Journal Ideas.
This week’s Outdoor Hour Challenge was to do a robin nature study…but where were the robins? Just a few weeks ago we counted six for our Project FeederWatch count. We saw forty-two during the Great Backyard Bird Count this year in February. This week….zero. We have been vigilant about looking but they are gone from our neighborhood now. So what to do?
We were out looking for any birds this morning and we were surprised to see that our neighbor’s trees were full of Cedar Waxwings! We have learned that they visit us on their way south and then again northwards. The interesting thing, according to our family’s records, we usually see the big flock come through during the GBCC in February. We did not see them this year at all until now. What does that mean? Not sure but it will be interesting to see what happens next year.
Would you like to see our Cedar Waxwings?
They filled three trees and were munching on the “nuts” from the pistache tree that have lasted all winter…just waiting for them to come and polish them off before the next growing season. What a wonderful provider they have!
Yes, we had very gray skies this morning but it wasn’t very cold. They sat resting and eating for quite some time and I was able to get up close to take a few colorful photos of them as they sat in the tree. Don’t you just love their yellow-tipped tails? I could really hear them making their very unique buzzing sound. Do you want to hear? Here is a link to AllAboutBirds and you can click over and hear what I heard…click the “high pitched hissy whistle” and that is exactly it.
Then in a blink of an eye, they were off again. I was amazed at just how fast they flew away in a flock. What a great experience we had this morning! I am forever grateful for the Outdoor Hour Challenges. I know that if I had not started this adventure with all of you that I would have missed out on so many deeply memorable times with my family.
It spurs me on to get outside and this month I have enjoyed joining in with Debi at Go Explore Nature and her #GetOutside project…a photo scavenger hunt. This simple project has already brought such joy to our family. It has encouraged us to think about how we can incorporate outdoor time each day in the month of April. I hope you will consider jumping in with us and take a few minutes to read more about the way it works on her blog. You can see all my entries in my Flickr Set: April GetOutside Project.
Another great week of nature study with my teenage sons.
Don’t forget to share your April Outdoor Hour Challenge blog entries with the Outdoor Hour Challenge Blog Carnival.You can submit entries directly to me if needed: harmonyfinearts@yahoo.com
What kind of camera do I use for the photos on my blog?
First posted on May 1, 2008 and updated on December 29, 2011
I get asked this question a lot in comments and email. I have shared before that I really don’t use a fancy camera but one that I can take with me everywhere in my pocket or in my backpack with no worries.
So what do I use? For most of my everyday shots I use the Nikon CoolPix S3300 (Point and Shoot). I also take some of my bird photos with my son’s really old Canon Rebel with a zoom lens. I would say 90% of the photos on my blog are with the inexpensive point and shoot Nikon. Purple of course!
My point is that you don’t need a fancy, expensive camera to take a good photo. If you learn a few tricks and practice taking photos, you will have more success.
Honestly, I use this camera for all my regular and macro photos with minimal cropping on the computer. I rarely, if ever, mess with anything other than that. If I do make any adjustments to a photo, they are done on Picnik (through my Flickr account).
Here are my tips for taking a good photo.
1. Take lots of photos. If I am trying to get a good photo of something for the blog, I will sometimes take ten photos of the same thing. I’m not kidding…with digital it doesn’t really matter how many you take since you can delete the ones you don’t like once you get home.
2. Learn to use your camera. I know those manuals are intimidating but you can skim through to find things that will help you take a better photo. What I did to take better photos was to learn what all those little symbols on the back of the camera meant and that immediately helped me take a better photo. I love the little flower setting….better known as macro. I can take close-ups of flowers or bugs now and they are truly in focus. I decided at the beginning of 2011 to read one page in my camera manual everyday and then practice what I learned. This was an easy way to work through the ins and outs of the camera and show me what it could do. (This photo I took many years ago. On this day, I think I took 50 photos to get this one keeper.)
3. Pay attention to composition. Take that extra second to see if there is something weird in the background, to make sure your subject is framed in a pleasant way, and that you are not taking the photo directly into the sun.
4. Watch shadows on faces if you are outside.
5. Remember your flash typically doesn’t work farther than about 5 or 6 feet.
6. Take flower shots early in the morning or later in the afternoon and not during the glare of mid-day. 7. Take photos from different angles. Get low and look up. Get high and look down. Go child level. Sometimes an interesting photo is just one that comes from a different perspective than normal. 8. If you are taking a close-up photo, steady your arm or hand on something solid like a table or a fence post. Before pressing the shutter, breathe in and hold your breathe so you are as still as possible. This has made a huge difference in the quality of my close-up photos.
Taking a good photo is sometimes just a matter of being in the right place at the right time with your camera in your hand so take it everywhere you go.
I post lots of photos on this blog of our adventures, gardening, and nature study. You can only imagine how many images I don’t share….perhaps thousands (30-40 a week adds up especially when you add in longer trips). I decided to share ten of those images that didn’t make the blog for your viewing enjoyment.
#1 This was from an amazing day at Yellowstone…totally unplanned and we were on half-speed since both my boys were really sick with some sort of sinus cold. We had planned a glorious day of hiking at Teton National Park, but since they were sick we altered plans and opted to drive the short distance up to Yellowstone and take a leisurely day and let things happen. Sometimes you just need to be flexible and this was one of those times. It was a great day with some great images… this was the same day we saw the grizzly bear and cubs driving back from Yellowstone to Jackson.
#2 Roosevelt Elk in Northern California are such majestic animals…very powerful. This photo reminds me of a great camping trip full of boy stuff, including lighthouses, long deserted beaches, crazy long hikes in the redwoods, and roasting monster size marshmallows over the campfire.
#3 The real story of hiking with boys is shown in this photo. How do they always find something to climb on, over, or through? This gate leads to a fantastic little spot that we discovered this year and have been back in just about every season, including January with about four feet of snow.
#4 There is not nearly enough time and space to share all my wildflower photos with you on this blog. These are along the roadside inside Yellowstone National Park. Honestly, if I didn’t always have boys waiting for me I could get stuck on just taking photos of flowers.
Prepare yourself for a different sort of image….
#5 Yep, this is one of my boys’ favorite images of all 2011. They spent quite some time posing this salmon head for a photo. Mr. A had his camera phone out and was snapping away before I even took any images. Gross but sort of cool when you examine it….I think it looks like a fossil. Later they found a really funny looking dead fish but I will spare you the images.
#6 You must click over to Flickr and look at this one really big…the texture of the feathers is awesome. Do you think I will ever learn to identify more kinds of ducks. Mallards are the only ones I can name for sure…something to work on in 2012.
#7 I planned on writing a post that included this image and sharing how much I HATE brussel sprouts although they are really quite interesting to look at. Who likes brussel sprouts anyway?
#8 This is a combo I am thinking about for my yard. Isn’t it pretty? Love the white of the birch and the yellow of the yarrow together.
#9 My daily friend who visits our feeder. There is a pair that sits on the utility wire across from our house and they make the most amazing sound when they fly….mourning doves are a great bird.
#10 This is what my family sees me doing a lot….gazing out the window at a variety of things, mostly birds.
If you would like to see my Flickr set with my favorite images from the blog from 2011…here you go:
I can’t tell you how this video has touched me….this familiar place is my home away from home and this artist has captured the essence of Yosemite on video.
I invite you to enjoy this visual and auditory treat.
We have had an abundance of birds in our yard for the past few weeks. Part of the reason is my new birdfeeder station in our front yard but mostly because it seems to be that time of year.
I grabbed my son’s camera the other day and took quite a few photos of just a small fraction of the variety of birds right in our yard.
There are always lots of Western scrub jays in our yard. This one found an acorn snack.
This is the best I could get of the Northern mockingbird in our front tree.
There have been quite a few Western bluebirds hanging around this week. I was able to snap a good photo of this pretty little bird.
There is a pair of Nuttall’s woodpeckers that are frequently on the utility pole across the street from our house. This seems to be the female…the male has red on his head.
This Western scrub jay was poking around in the rocks. I think he was trying to find some acorns or walnuts that he stashed but I was able to catch him holding still for a few seconds so I could capture his beautiful blue feathers.
Stay tuned because I am sure I will have some more to share soon. We spend time watching birds everyday and it is always fun to share.
My oldest son gave me his old Canon Rebel to use and yesterday I took a deep breath and started using it for the first time. I am a little intimidated by the sheer number of things I can do with this camera compared with my point and shoot.
I must have taken 100 photos and there are only four that are worth sharing. 🙂
I shared last week that we have a Western Scrub Jay building a nest in our front yard. I was able to capture him gathering some twigs for the nest as he flew from the backyard to the front yard about fifty times.
Here is another jay in the feeder. I love the way his tail feathers are all folded up in this photo. He really is the King of this particular feeder. He spends a great deal of his time chasing the little birds out of the way.
Here is a junco who managed to get his share of dinner before the jay swooped in and scared him away. The juncos are not particular about which feeder they eat in or under. I like the way you can see all his different colors of feathers in this photo.
One last photo of one of our resident juncos. He is so cut all puffed up and sitting on the branch of our sweet gum tree.
My goal is to work with the Canon a little each day so that I gain some confidence.
