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Posted on November 13, 2009 by Barb — 9 Comments

Outdoor Hour Challenge Autumn Series-Mushrooms

Mushrooms! Fungus! Molds! Ask my children and they will tell you that I am fascinated with these things when we find them during our outdoor time. They even call me very affectionately the “Fungus Lady”.

I found this video during our last study of mushrooms and I would love for you to watch it in order to prepare you for your study of mushrooms. This video is very well done and will help your children understand how a mushroom grows.

Planet Earth: Mushroom Madnes s

You will need to click over to YouTube.com to view this video. Please note: Turn down the sound if the music is too much for you. As always, please preview the video on YouTube and I do not endorse any other video that may come up after this one. There are some questionable videos about mushrooms.

If you do not think you will observe any mushrooms during your Outdoor Time, you can still complete the Inside Preparation work as a way to be ready the next time you do see a mushroom.

Outdoor Hour Challenge
Autumn Series #9 Mushrooms
(See Also Challenge #41)

Inside Preparation Work
Mushrooms and Other Fungi-read the overview starting on page 714 and continuing to page 719. Page 719 shows the parts of a mushroom with labels.

Outdoor Hour Time
The ideal study of ferns, mushrooms, and fungi would be to experience them outdoors in their natural habitat. Use your 15 to 20 minutes of outdoor time this week to enjoy a search for some kind of mushroom. Your particular area may not have these subjects readily at hand but let your friends, family, and neighbors know that you are studying mushrooms and with more pairs of eyes looking you may be able to find something to study up close.

Enjoy your time outdoors whether you can find this week’s subject or not. Remember to look at the sky and comment on the weather. Take time to notice your tree from your year long tree study. Collect a few items to take inside to sketch into your nature journal. Just because the topic of this challenge is mushrooms, you do not have to limit yourself to that narrow focus during your 15 to 20 minutes of outdoor time.

Follow-Up Activity
Spend a few minutes once inside to discuss your experiences from your nature walk.Are there questions that need to be answered or items that need to be identified? Make a note of any topics that come up that you can research further in the Handbook of Nature Study or at your local library.

Make an opportunity for a nature journal entry. The diagrams on pages 695 and 719 could be sketched into the nature journal. I have created a notebook page for you to use in your nature journal to record your mushroom observations and it is listed in the free downloads section of the sidebar of my blog.

“Since mushrooms are especially good subjects for watercolor and pencil studies, it would add much to the interest of the work if each pupil, or the school as a whole, should make a portfolio of sketches of all the species found. With each drawing there should be made on a supplementary sheet a spore print of the species.”
Handbook of Nature Study, page 718

Spore prints are another idea for an activity following up the mushroom study. I would only do this activity with older students who truly understand that mushrooms can be poisonous.
Here are some instructions you can download: Mushroom Spore Prints or this blog entry.

You can use the provided notebook page to sketch a mushroom that you observed during your Outdoor Time or you can use it to copy the sketch from page 719 in the Handbook of Nature Study, labeling the different parts of a mushroom.

Amazon.com Widgets

Posted on July 31, 2009 by Barb — 1 Comment

Outdoor Hour Challenge: Crop Plants-Corn

Outdoor Hour Challenge
Crop Plants #3
Corn and Maize

This week we are going to learn about corn and hopefully you will be able to observe an ear of corn up close. In addition to learning about corn, do your best to spend some time outdoors enjoying the summer weather. If it is too hot in the afternoons, try going outside in the early morning right after breakfast or in the evening and see if that makes it more enjoyable for your family.

Inside Preparation Work
1. Read in the Handbook of Nature Study pages 598-604. Highlight any facts about corn that can be shared with your children during the follow-up activity.

Suggested activity:
“Corn should be germinated between wet blotters in a seed testing experiment before observations are made on the growing corn of the fields.”
Handbook of Nature Study, page 601

Follow the same procedure that you did with the bean germination to germinate a few kernels of corn. The Germinator
http://pbskids.org/zoom/activities/sci/germinator.html
(This project was a part of Outdoor Hour Challenge #19 and the Bean Challenge.)

Outdoor Time
3. For this challenge, spend 10-15 minutes outdoors. Afterwards, you might include a trip to the grocery store to pick out some ears of corn to observe and then to eat at a meal. Check on any seeds or plants that you have in your garden for the challenges. Keep your eyes out for some clover if you have not had the chance to study some up close yet.

Follow-Up Activity
4. Allow time for discussion and a nature journal entry after your outdoor time. Follow up any interest in any subjects you observed during your outdoor time. You can use the questions in the Handbook of Nature Study on page 603 to help you observe an actual ear of corn.

5. Prepare corn for eating and enjoy! You may want to pop some corn and have a popcorn feast as well. You may wish to view this YouTube video about popcorn: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2lKV02JzPc

We are thinking about growing some popcorn next year. Here is a link with some information:
http://howtogardenguide.com/2008/03/05/growing-popcorn-how-to-grow-popcorn-in-your-garden/

New for this series of challenges are custom made notebook pages for each crop plant we will study. I have designed simple to use pages that will complement each challenge and will be an easy way to start a nature journal. Each of the eight notebook pages is in full color, but they are just as great in black and white.

SAMPLE

Posted on May 31, 2009 by Barb — 7 Comments

Drawing White Flowers in Your Nature Journal

Question from Phyllis:

On another topic, more art than nature study, I have a question for you: do you have any tips for drawing/painting white flowers? We’re trying to draw these flowers with watercolor pencils right now. In the past, I’ve drawn a background behind, and left the white. Any other ideas? It’s hard!

I did some experimenting and found a way to easily include white flowers in your nature journal. Using a watercolor wash and then putting the white flowers on top is one solution to the problem.

Steps:

Make a watercolor wash on your page and then let it dry.
Sketch lightly with pencil your flower’s leaves, stem, and blossom.
Use watercolors and paint your leaves and stems.
Use white watercolor paint and very little water to fill in the white flower, keeping the paint very opaque.
Let your paints dry and then go back to add darker details and shading.

I use tube watercolors with great success.

We made a short video tutorial for you to watch.

I really like this book and even though it says it is for use with acrylics, I find it perfectly applicable for watercolors as well. If you click the Amazon.com link below, you can preview the pages inside. I love the visual index at the end of the book.

Many families wait to offer watercolors from a tube to their children. In our family, we found these watercolors to be a lot of fun and the boys learned early how to only squirt out a little at a time. I gave each one their own set along with their own palette and brushes. With a little training, you can offer these paints in your family as well.

Enjoy!
Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Posted on May 19, 2009 by Barb — Leave a comment

Black Birds: Our Family Outdoor Hour Challenge

We have had our eyes out for black birds of all kinds. We have a short list of black birds that we observed for this week’s bird challenge:
American crow
Red-winged blackbirds
Turkey vultures
Brewer’s blackbirds
Ravens

The most abundant black bird we observed for this challenge was the Brewer’s blackbird.

Our field guide says that it has a “distinctive yellow eye”. It is very easy to identify.

blackbird

Here is a short video of a red-winged blackbird eating some sort of seeds washed up alongside the river. You do hear him at the end of the video.

We all decided that the turkey vulture, although it is as ugly as can be, is the best flier of the bunch. They soar and soar and soar on a good day. We often see groups of six or eight turkey vultures all gliding and soaring over our house.

Crows and ravens are the noisiest bunch of the black birds we observed. You always hear them coming before you see them. My son observed that they are also the most obviously useful birds of the bunch. When we were at Yosemite last week we saw a pair of ravens cleaning up a dead squirrel off the road….gross but useful.

Our favorite black bird we learned about this week was certainly the red-winged blackbird. We had the opportunity to see quite a few and it has quickly become a favorite bird because of its flash of red as it flies. Now that we can identify its call, we hear him more often as we hike in different areas.

We realized during our hiking adventures last week that birdsong usually fills the air as we go along. If you stop and listen, you will usually hear some sort of bird singing you a tune. We had an especially happy bird on this day.

We made a joint journal entry later back at Curry Village. Someone forget to bring the boys’ nature journals…oops. I started the entry with the Steller’s jay and Mr. B sketched the ground squirrel after that. I was trying my best to notice with each bird the color and shape of their eye. The Steller’s jay has a very black eye and beak.

So that was our black birds challenge this week. We will continue to look for starlings since they do come to our yard on occasion.

Great bird week for our family.

Posted on May 9, 2009 by Barb — 3 Comments

Music While We Walked, Catkins to Look At, and a Squirrel Entertainer

Click this photo! Gorgeous!

We had a unique experience the other day out on a walk in an area where at this time of year there are very few other people. It was a quiet, bird watching sort of day as we hiked along until one section of the trail where I swore I heard music. We all stopped and listened and sure enough, far in the distance we could hear music playing….I thought banjo music. We had no idea where the music was coming from. We were pretty far from the parking area, we had only seen one other person the whole afternoon, and I was fairly sure it was someone actually playing the music since it sort of started and stopped and wasn’t like it was a CD or something like that.

music while we walked

We rounded one bend in the trail and we had our answer. You can listen for yourself here in this very short video. (I felt really weird taking a video but I was sure we would want to remind ourselves of this in the future…it made us smile.)

We did eventually catch up to these two walking along and they were just out enjoying the spring weather, making some music. I have no idea what kind of instrument he was playing. It looked to be homemade. It sort of looked like a guitar/banjo/cigar box stringed instrument.

Sometimes I feel like playing music when I am out on a hike too. No, I won’t be doing it anytime soon.

Here is a little friend that entertained us on this afternoon as well.

California ground squirrel….he was posing for us for a very long time.

We also had a chance to observe up close the catkins of the Quaking aspens. This is something new and interesting that I want to do some more research about…..the boys were not impressed with this subject but I will do research on my own. 🙂

The photo at the top of the page is a bunch of catkins hanging on the tree. Aren’t they pretty?

Something I learned about the Quaking aspen is that is the preferred food of the beaver. It makes total sense to me since this is where we saw the beaver’s dam and there is an abundance of aspens. I love making connections.

Posted on May 1, 2009 by Barb — 6 Comments

Hummingbird Study: Our Outdoor Hour Challenge

This week we were on the lookout for hummingbirds as part of the Outdoor Hour Challenge: Hummingbirds nature study. We haven’t had too many hummingbirds yet in our feeders, a few here and there that we have noticed. Summertime is hummingbird time in our backyard and we have several hummingbirds that perch on the tree behind our picnic table and in the evenings we see them sitting there watching us eat our dinner. There isn’t much information in the Handbook of Nature Study on hummingbirds but it is enough to answer a few of our questions.

The hummingbirds we have in our yard are Anna’s Hummingbirds and they are very pretty. They are green and pink and very fast flyers. They will soar way up high in the air and then suddenly swoop down.

The Handbook of Nature Study says, “Hummingbirds are not supposed to sing, but to use their voices for squeaking when angry or frightened.” We often hear the male Anna’s Hummingbird before we see him. He will fly up high in the air and then swoop down and make a chirping sound. They also make a sound as they sit on the branches of the tree…cuing us to look for his distinctive silhouette.

We found this video and now we are anxious to observe our hummingbirds to see if we think it is their tail that chirps.

There is always something new to learn.

I am fascinated with hummingbirds and our last trip to the desert was memorable because we visited a hummingbird aviary at the museum. I posted then about the hummingbirds.

Isn’t he gorgeous?

This one was not shy at all and we spent a long time watching him fly and sip.

Here is a hummingbird nest that we collected a number of years ago. I am in awe whenever I look at the way it is constructed.

Can you imagine how small the eggs are inside this miniature sized nest? Amazing stuff.

One last thing to share from this week’s Outdoor Hour time with the boys. We came across a very bold Spotted Towhee that let me come up fairly close and take a video of him singing his song. Enjoy.

Hope you enjoyed reading about our Outdoor Hour this week and our continued study of hummingbirds as well as any other bird that crosses our path.

Posted on April 30, 2009 by Barb — 3 Comments

Gold Country: Some Random Things to Share

Our part of the world is best known for being the place that gold was discovered in California back in 1848. We live very close to the South Fork of the American River and in fact, we spend much of our outdoor time in or around the water of this river. My parents live even closer to the actual gold discovery spot and have remains of an old town where the Chinese workers came to work in the mines and along the river.

The river was used for hydraulic mining which destroyed much of the habitat and you can still see remains of ditches dug for diverting water and piles of river rock where the soil was washed away looking for gold. The scars remain even today.

So much history left behind for us to explore and experience today.

This is an abandoned mine that we discovered on our regular hiking trail. This was taken a month or so ago and we were just there yesterday and it looks very different. The water level has dropped inside the mine and you can step inside a little to check it out. The water is not raining down inside as heavily either. The plants around the opening are getting green and somewhat covering up the entrance.

We took a hike to a different part of the river two weeks ago and it had lots of rocks that looked like this with the quartz encased in the other rocks.

This short video gives you an idea of what the rock and the river is like where we are. In the beginning of the video you will hear my husband’s narrative….please know he was trying to be silly. Don’t miss me almost falling into the river at one point… the rocks are hard to walk on especially when you are taking a video.

We had packed along our gold pans and the boys tried their hand at finding some gold. No luck this day.

The water was really cold and they decided there is a definite skill to panning. We wondered about the gold miners back in the 1800’s and how they must have remained motivated by either their success or the success of others around them. It is back breaking work.

On another hike, we saw this guy alongside the river on the North Fork getting ready to start using his sluice box for gold mining. Here is an easy explanation of how a sluice box works. My husband has used one before and he says it just is an easier way to sift through the gravel looking for flakes of gold. He took a geology class where they actually did gold dredging in this river and he was surprised that there still is quite a bit of gold if you take the time to look for it.

I bet you don’t see this very often. We have one place that we like to hike to along the river because it has a perfect spot for skipping rocks when the water is low. We went there the other day and for the first time we saw these signs posted everywhere. I have to do some research because as far as I know, this place is on Bureau of Land Management land which seems like an unlikely place for someone to post a mining claim. Anyone know how that works?
Edit: Here is a link to answer my questions: BLM FAQ

Well, I hope you enjoyed my little glimpse into the gold country around our house. It is something that interests my boys so we might just need to tackle a geology course and use mining as the basis for our study. We already have a ton of rocks that we have collected over the years to study and identify. I should look at it as a project.

Posted on March 19, 2009 by Barb — 11 Comments

How to Make a Plant Press

If you didn’t catch my video on how to make a simple flower press last year, I wanted to post it again.

We have been using our press just about every day this week and it is an easy way to press your flowers that you are learning about for your Wednesday Flower Study lessons. It only takes a few days in the press and then the flowers are ready for your nature journal. Let you kids watch the video and have them make it for themselves…it really is that easy.

Here is the link to YouTube: Flower Press

Or you can watch it here on the blog.

Posted on March 8, 2009 by Barb — 5 Comments

Desert Nature Study-Joshua Tree National Park and More

I wanted to share some more of the photos from our trip to the desert that we took a few weeks ago. The photo above is from Joshua Tree National Park. The scene is typical of what you will find as you hike along the trails of the park. It has taken me three trips to the desert to begin to develop a love for the animals and plants that live here. In this strange and wonderful landscape, you can find the most beautiful of things if you look carefully enough.

There really are blooming plants here and if you get the chance to get up close, you realize that there are bees and other insects as well as birds that are attracted to the color and fragrance.

I will admit that there are sections of the park that are more rock than anything else. My two boys couldn’t resist a good climb when they saw it.

When you get up close you see all the intricate patterns and designs of the desert plants. I believe this is some kind of cholla cactus.

Now here was something that surprised me and I examined it carefully for some time. Can you see all the different colors of lichen on this rock? There is a moss green, a grey-green, an orange and a soft yellow-green all living right here on the side of this rock. Beautiful.

Many times as we hike along we name the rock formations we see. The boys named this one “Whale Head”.

Not to be confused with “Whale’s Mouth”.

They keep me smiling…..and thinking.

We came across a wash on our hike and the wildflowers were already blooming. There are three different flowers blooming in this photo…two white and the desert sand verbena.

How about a video? (Why does it take so looooong for the videos to load onto Blogger anyway?)
This squirrel was entertaining us with his acrobatics…trying to get that certain pod to eat.

Here is what the squirrel was gathering to eat. This is a palo verde tree.

I took a lot of photos at the Living Desert Museum and I shared a lot of the butterfly and hummingbird photos already but here are a few more of the larger animals we saw that the boys spent a lot of time observing.

The giraffes…there were four of them.

The cheetahs..there were two of them. I love this photo….look at that face!

For some reason I threw our nature journals in my backpack and we took the opportunity in the afternoon to slow down and do some sketching at the museum. It was a great way to remember our time there.

What a great memory.

It was great way to end our stay at the museum. The desert holds so many interesting and surprising creations for us to learn about….a life time of learning just one plant and one bird and one animal at a time.

So whether you venture out in the national park or you stay in town and visit the Living Desert Museum….there is so much to enjoy as a family. Pick your adventure.

Posted on February 20, 2009 by Barb — 7 Comments

Outdoor Hour Challenge #50 Mammals-Skunk and Badger

Outdoor Hour Challenge
#50 Skunk and Badger

This week there are some great videos to share with your children to capture their interest.

PBS Nature Skunk
This video series is excellent and we learned more than we ever wanted to know about skunks. You must watch this for yourself even if you don’t watch it with your children.

Here is a video about badgers.

Wow! Those critters can dig!

1. Read pages 245-247 in the Handbook of Nature Study.
Resources for the skunk
Resource for badger

2. Supplemental reading in The Burgess Animal Book for Children: Read Stories 22-23. Use the illustrations on pages 135 and 110 to prompt a narration your child’s narration if needed.

3. This week during your 10-15 minutes of outdoor time, keeping an eye out for signs of mammals as you walk. In our area we many times will smell a skunk but not see him. If you have the opportunity over the next few weeks, point out the fragrance of a skunk to your children.

Another idea this week is to carry a small pouch or bag to collect any nature items you find while you are outdoors.
Start or add to a nature collection. (see challenge 6)
Did you find any animal tracks this week? Take photos or make a mental note of how they looked for further research.

4. After your walk, take a few minutes to discuss anything your child found interesting during their outdoor time. If they collected items in a bag, pull those objects out and take a closer look with your magnifying lens. Use a Mammal notebook page to record what you learned about skunks and badgers this week. Complete the Seasonal Weather Study notebook page and file it in with your autumn observations. You could talk about the differences between what you observed in autumn and those things you recorded this time. How is the scene you drew this week different from the autumn scene? How are the temperatures different? Is there a difference in the number of hours of daylight?

Additional resources for this challenge:

Fun online book/audio book about skunks
Skunk notebook page
Skunk coloring page (skip down to page 21)
Badger notebook page

Category: video