Outdoor Hour Challenge Purple Chinese Houses Wildflower Study Wildflower Set #1
Inside Preparation:
There are 20 species of Chinese houses, most found in California. Their common name suggests the look of a Chinese pagoda.
¨ Purple Chinese Houses (Collinsia heterophylla) Look to see the range on USDA.
¨ Sticky Chinese Houses (Collinsia tinctoria) Look to the range on USDA.
Outdoor Hour Time:
Look in sandy soil on shaded flats or slopes.
¨ Usual bloom time is March to June. In my experience, these showy flowers are found in large patches on sunny slopes along the trail.
¨ You may wish to look for the Checkerspot butterfly since this flower is a host plant for this insect.
Follow-Up Activity:
Note: Ebook users can find custom notebook pages to use for the Purple Chinese House flower and the figwort family.
¨ Create a notebook page for the Purple Chinese house flower.
¨ Start a figwort family notebook page. Keep a running list over time of the flowers you observe and/or study in this plant family.
How do you get the new Wildflower Nature Study ebook?
Members of theUltimate Naturalistand Journey levels have access to the new ebook in their library. You need to click the “Members Area” button at the top of the website, sign into your account, and the ebook is there to download and save for your family to use when desired. If you don’t have a membership yet, I am offering a $5 off discount code that will be good towards your Ultimate Naturalist membership.
This week is going to be fabulous! We are going to be on a dandelion hunt with our children. This cheerful flower has so much to teach us as we look at the leaves, the flower shape, and the seeds. You can find these little beauties everywhere now that spring is bursting out all around us.
Use the ideas in this week’s challenge to dig into the Handbook of Nature Study lesson on dandelions. Create a record of your observations in your nature journal.
How do you get the new Wildflower Nature Study ebook?
Members of theUltimate Naturalistand Journey levels have access to the new ebook in their library. You need to click the “Members Area” button at the top of the website, sign into your account, and the ebook is there to download and save for your family to use when desired. If you don’t have a membership yet, I am offering a $5 off discount code that will be good towards your Ultimate Naturalist membership.
¨ Look up and read about this beautiful showy flower in preparation for your outdoor time. Make sure to share images of the flower with your children so they know what they are hunting for. Look for shooting stars any time between April and August depending on the variety you have in your local area.
¨ The flowers look like rockets atop a long erect stalk growing from a basal cluster of leaves.
¨ Few-Flowered Shooting Star (Dodecatheon pulchellum) See the range: USDA.
¨ Alpine Shooting Star (Dodecatheon alpinum) See the range: USDA.
¨ Sierra Shooting Star (Dodecatheon jeffreyi) See the range: USDA.
¨ You may wish to watch most of this video that features shooting stars: Shooting Stars.
Outdoor Hour Time:
Look in sunny grasslands and shady woods.
¨ The shooting star’s unique dart shape and coloring should make it easy to identify. Look for a rosette of leaves at the base, a smooth stem, and then a cluster (or umbel) of flowers at the top.
Follow-Up Activity:
Note: Ebook users can find custom notebook pages to use for the shooting star flower and the primrose family.
Create a notebook page for the shooting star and be sure to include a sketch with the flower parts clearly labeled. Record the date and location of your shooting star for future reference.
Start a primrose family notebook page. Keep a running list over time of the flowers you observe and/or study in this plant family.
Advanced study: Learn how the Shooting star flower is pollinated. Also, sketch the life cycle of the plant in your nature journal.
Advanced study: The genus name dodecatheon means “twelve gods”. Research to find out why they chose this genus name.
How do you get the new Wildflower Nature Study ebook?
Members of theUltimate Naturalistand Journey levels have access to the new ebook in their library. You need to click the “Members Area” button at the top of the website, sign into your account, and the ebook is there to download and save for your family to use when desired. If you don’t have a membership yet, I am offering a $5 off discount code that will be good towards your Ultimate Naturalist membership.
The past month has been a month of wildflowers. Coming out of the wettest winter in our memory, we are so grateful for the green sprouting grass and the pops of springtime color.
It has been a time of yard work as well. We listed our house on the market so that meant a whole yard tidy and sprucing up. I weeded and weeded until my hands were sore and I still didn’t get them all.
Last week we flew to Southern California to meet up with my son who was out from New York to be in a friend’s wedding. What did we do with our time together? We hiked of course! I realized we could take advantage of the “super bloom” of wildflowers and using Instagram search, we found a place near where my son was staying to visit for a long afternoon hike in the hills.
Point Mugu was a perfect place to hike right along Hwy 1 on the coastline of California. You start at the day use parking lot and head up the hill on the fire road. Masses of wildflowers covered the hillside!
We could identify many of the flowers and the others I have images of to use with a field guide. I quizzed my son about flower names and he remembered quite a few which made my Outdoor Mom heart happy. Don’t be fooled…they are paying attention even when they don’t act like it.
I have been struggling with keeping up with my nature journal but I am determined to keep my page a week goal. Look for my nature journal entry later this month or follow me on Instagram for my Wednesday nature journal posts.
Many of you have heard by now that we sold our house in California and we will be moving next month to Central Oregon. I am so excited to start learning about my new habitat along the Little Deschutes River. I am going to try to keep up my posting routine here on the Handbook of Nature Study so hopefully you will not notice much difference here on the blog except for the topics I will be covering in my nature journal.
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….
The two wildflowers in this challenge are usually considered weeds and grow along the roadside or in fields. They bloom in early spring and are easy to spot with their colorful blossoms. Look for the mustard and/or wild radish plants in the early spring and on through the summer months.
Field Mustard (Brassica rapa)- Read about this plant. See the range: USDA.
Wild Mustard (Sinapis arvensis )- Read about this plant.
Wild Radish: (Raphanus raphanistrum)- Read about this plant. See the range: USDA.
Outdoor Hour Time:
Look in fields and along roadsides.
The challenge this week is to get outside and look for wildflowers, especially those in the mustard family. If you made a list of plants to be on the lookout for in addition to the mustard or radish, keep those in mind as well.
Make careful observations (Ebook users look for a notebook page to print and use.)
Follow-Up Activity:
Create a notebook page for the field mustard and the wild radish plants. (Ebook users look for a notebook page to print and use.)
Start a mustard family notebook page. Keep a running list over time of the flowers you observe and/or study in this plant family.
Advanced study: Research how the wild radish was introduced and spread across a lot of the western U.S. landscape.
How do you get the new Wildflower Nature Study ebook?
Members of the Ultimate Naturalist and Journey levels have access to the new ebook in their library. You need to click the “Members Area” button at the top of the website, sign into your account, and the ebook is there to download and save for your family to use when desired. If you don’t have a membership yet, I am offering a $5 off discount code that will be good towards your Ultimate Naturalist membership.
My apologies for sending this at such a late date but it has been absolute chaos here for the past few weeks. We sold our house after it was on the market for only a few days and then we needed to scramble to find another house for us to call home. This we did after extensive research, driving 450 miles, and a whirlwind day of house viewing. It will be so very worth the effort but in the meantime I am much distracted and am struggling to keep to my routines.
Note:
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Handbook of Nature Study Newsletter
April 2017 Wildflowers
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Resources for your Nature Library: I have started to build a nature library store on Amazon that will feature by category my favorite nature study books and resources. Take a look and see if there is anything you would like to put on your wish list for your family’s nature study library: Handbook of Nature Study Nature Library Suggestions on Amazon.com. Note this is my affiliate store to items I personally recommend and have read or seen in person.
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This new ebook is found in the Ultimate Naturalist and Journey level memberships.
As a special promo, you can use the discount code WILDFLOWER5 for $5 off the Ultimate Naturalist Membership.
Ultimate and Journey Level members can click this graphic to go directly to the library to download a copy of this new ebook. Make sure you are logged in and if you are having trouble with your password, please leave me a comment or send me a direct email to receive my assistance. Email: harmonyfinearts@yahoo.com
Outdoor Hour Challenge Wildflower Nature Study
Set #1
Here are the specifics:
This 46 page digital ebook has 5 challenges and supplemental activities that will help you learn about a few of my favorite early spring wildflowers.
There are custom notebooking pages for each of the five wildflowers featured. In addition, there is a general notebook page for recording information for each of the plant families introduced in this ebook. There is also a page for use with any spring flower study and a page for following up a flower dissection.
Full color photos of every wildflower included in the ebook.
Five coloring pages.
There is enough material in this ebook to provide 5 weeks of wildflower study or more depending on how long you take to complete each challenge.
One of the resources in this ebook is a chart that coordinates each study with the Botany in a Day book.
Here are the specific flowers included in this ebook:
Wild Mustard and Wild Radish (mustard family)
Shooting Star (primrose family)
Lupine (pea family)
Purple Chinese House (figwort family)
Yarrow (composite family)
Note: If you don’t have the specific wildflowers listed above in your area, there are suggestions for studying an alternative flower or you can focus on the plant family instead. This ebook will work no matter where you live if you want to just focus on the plant families and use a local field guide to look for flowers you can observe during a nature walk in your own habitat.
How do you get the new Wildflower Nature Study ebook?
Members of the Ultimate Naturalistand Journey levels have access to the new ebook in their library. You need to click the “Members Area” button at the top of the website, sign into your account, and the ebook is there to download and save for your family to use when desired.
If you don’t have a membership yet, I am offering a $5 off discount code that will be good towards your Ultimate Naturalist membership.
Discount Code: Wildflower5
How To Get Started With This New Ebook!
Make sure you have a membership to the Handbook of Nature Study website! Click the Purchase Now button above or the Join Us button on the website. If you don’t already have a membership, use the discount code above for $5 off an Ultimate Naturalist Membership. If you are a member, sign in to your library and download the book.
You may wish to subscribe to the Handbook of Nature Study blog so you can receive the prompts in your email box each Friday. Also, subscribers receive my free monthly nature study newsletter on the first of every month. It is full of nature study encouragement, activities, and printables.
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.
One thing I can find in my backyard at all times of the year is mullein. I love the rosette of leaves and their soft texture. Join me this week in a study of the mullein.
Winter mullein – shake and see if you can find some seeds!
If you are interested in purchasing an Ultimate Naturalist Membership at this time, you will gain access to the custom notebooking pages that go along with each of the challenges in the ebook.
Note: You do not need to purchase the ebook to participate but they are handy to have for planning and for the regular and advanced notebook pages included in each one. Click the graphic at above to go over to check out the Ultimate Naturalist Library membership.
Spring Plans!
We will be working through a new series of wildflower challenges starting in April using a new ebook that will publish sometime in March. The new wildflower ebook will also be added to the Ultimate Naturalist Library so if you purchase a membership now, you will have the new ebook as soon as it is available. I will posting details about the new ebook soon.
This is the week to look for thistles. The landscape right now makes it easier to find some dried up thistles for you to look at closely. Make sure to be careful if you touch the thistles because the thorns are going to be sharp. I tried to remember to bring a leather glove on our thistle walks to wear if the boys wanted to touch the plant. Go on a thistle hunt this week!
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