This week we are going to look at tree cones. Such a simple nature study that children love! Use the challenges listed below for ideas on getting started with your family’s cone study.
Printable Notebook Page – My Tree Cone Observations
Here is a simple notebook page to use with your challenge this week. Have some fun observing a tree cone and help your children make a record of their thoughts for their nature journal. I left the box large enough that you can adhere a photo of your cone if you don’t want to sketch.
Getting Started Suggestion:
If you already own the Getting Started ebook, completeOutdoor Hour Challenge #6.Start a cone collection this week and complete the notebook page provided in the ebook if you desire. See this Pinterest board for display ideas: Nature Display.
The Winter Snow challenge from the Winter Wednesday ebook is a fun one to have on hand whenever you get some snow. I wish you all a great week of nature study! Original Challenge: Snow Use the suggestions in this challenge to complete a snow related experiment, recording the results on the accompanying notebook page or in your nature journal. There are also some additional ideas for non-snow related activities to substitute if you live where there is no snow. You can also use the Winter Nature Walk printable from Hearts and Trees.
Special Activity: Watercolor With Snow
Bring a cup or so of snow in and let it melt. Use the resulting water to watercolor a winter scene.
Getting Started Suggestion:
If you already own the Getting Started ebook, complete Outdoor Hour Challenge #3.Make sure to read the pages in the Handbook of Nature Study for this challenge. We all need reminders about how to encourage our children in their nature journals. This week you can record a winter scene in your journals or use the notebook page from the ebook to keep a record of your outdoor time.
You are welcome to submit any of you blog Outdoor Hour Challenge blog entries to the Outdoor Hour Challenge Blog Carnival. Entries for the current month are due on 1/30/14.
This week we are going to be completing the World of Color challenge from the Winter Wednesday ebook. This challenge invites you and your family to take a walk outdoors and find some color in your winter world. Even if you have to complete this challenge from your window, it will help train your eyes to see the bursts of color that are out there if you look carefully enough.
Original Challenge: The World of Color.
Don’t worry if you don’t have the Discover Nature in Winter book to use along with the challenge. Take the ideas listed in the blog post to complete a simple color hunt with your children and then follow up with an entry in your nature journal. The journal can be simply a list of colorful things you saw or a sketch of something your child found interesting. Make this a no-pressure challenge for your child.
There are a few other ideas in the ebook to try if you don’t want to go outside for this challenge. Color Cards For Your Winter Color Study
Use these color word cards to stimulate a fun nature study related activity. See how many of the colors you can find during your winter color hunt.
TIPS: These cards can be printed on cardstock or cut and pasted to index cards. If you only have a black and white printer, have your children color the words or the border with markers before going outside. Printable Color Word Cards
Getting Started Suggestion:
If you already own the Getting Started ebook, complete Outdoor Hour Challenge #1.This is the perfect challenge to just take a simple walk outdoors with your children as part of completing challenge #1.Make sure to follow up your outdoor time with a discussion to find out one or two things your child would like to know more about. Don’t worry that you won’t know the answers to any questions they may have…just take the opportunity to learn together using internet resources or a trip to the library.
Getting Started Suggestion:
If you already own the Getting Started ebook, complete Outdoor Hour Challenge #6. Use the printable notebook page in this challenge to record some of the things you collect for your winter-themed nature table.
You may wish to follow my Pinterest – Nature Display board for additional ideas.
Outdoor Hour Challenge Using Your Senses – December Walk
There have been several challenges here on the blog during different seasons that feature using your senses or being quiet during a nature walk. Prepare your children ahead of time by explaining that spending some of your Outdoor Hour Challenge time should be time spent quietly observing. Use the ideas in the links below and the Listening Game in the additional activities below to incorporate some “using your senses” time into your OHC this week. Don’t be discouraged if your children can only manage a minute or two of quiet…it is something they can grow into when they learn the advantages of careful observation.
Don’t forget you can use this month’s (December 2013) Study Grid from the newsletter as part of this challenge.
Additional Activity: Outdoor Listening Game
Go outside with your children and let each one find a place to sit quietly, choosing a comfortable spot where there are few distractions. Show them how to make cups with their hands and then hold them behind their ears like big deer or rabbit ears. Sit with your “deer” ears on and discover the sounds of your neighborhood or a near-by park.
This is a great training activity for sitting and listening quietly during your nature adventures.
Getting Started Suggestion:
If you already own the Getting Started ebook, complete Outdoor Hour Challenge #10. Try having a snack or picnic lunch even if it is super cold outside. Our family even found driving to a favorite spot, parking with a view to something natural, and eating in the car is a fantastic way to make a memory. Keep it simple and then come home and record your experience on the accompanying notebook page in the ebook.
I started dreaming of spring bulbs blossoming way back in the fall. Although I didn’t feel like getting out and digging the holes and actually planting them, I knew that if we did there would be a springtime show of color.
Well here it comes!
Here is our Early Spring Flower entry for the last challenge of the Winter Series of Outdoor Hour Challenges.
Our fall planted daffodils are adding splashes of yellow to our front yard. You might remember we did a complete remodel of our landscaping last summer/fall and we are just now starting to see the new plants getting green again. It is amazing to look out my front window and see how things are shaping up.
We have had lots of vases inside filled with daffodils….the new ones have rather large blooms.We can all clearly identify all the parts because of previously studying daffodils, including dissecting them. They are still an amazing flower to observe and to marvel at when you think that they come from a dried up old bulb you stick in the ground months ahead of time. They seem to know just when to start growing.
Don’t you think they are even lovely from the back?
We have jonquils blooming in the yard as well which smell heavenly.
Another watercolor nature journal today….this one was fun because I used paint splotches at the end to sort of fill in the page. I would love to know from my readers whether my nature journal entries encourage you or discourage you from doing some of your own pages. Leave me a comment or send me an email….
I have enjoyed seeing your early spring flowers this week and it has recharged me to get going on the next series of spring challenges tomorrow. If you are still experiencing lots of snow and cold temperatures….be encouraged by those of us who are through to the other side of winter already.
As part of preparing for our mammal study this week, I pulled our mammal field guide from our shelf to have for easy reference. I opened to the introductory pages and I would love to share a few thoughts from those pages with you in this post.
Most mammals are creatures of the darkness, only becoming active at night after dark and returning home again before dawn.
Most nocturnal mammals communicate by odor which humans cannot detect and with sounds which are frequently high pitched and low in volume.
Direct observation of most mammals is difficult except for a few species like chipmunks and squirrels.
The vocalizations of mammals have not been extensively explored and most make brief sounds called “call notes”.
We were walking along our usual trail having a great conversation when my son twirled me around to get me to look up on the hill. He had spotted a few young deer not too far from where we were. They were slowly moving along, not really paying too much attention to us.
California mule deer are very common in our area and we often see groups of 8-10 deer alongside the road or in grassy meadows. My husband actually hit a deer with his truck last month when he was coming home from work…minimal damage and the deer bounced back up and ran off into the woods. He was lucky. He once hit a deer and it totaled the vehicle.
We were planning on studying our backyard squirrels this week as part of our mammal study but we spent a little time reading up on the mule deer too. California mule deer are very graceful and agile mammals. They have lovely eyes but don’t let those innocent looking eyes fool you. They have been known to eat my garden down to the ground in one night.
There are three fox squirrels and one gray squirrel in our yard just about every day. They are in the bird feeders and up in the trees chattering at us and the dog pretty much all day long. I started off trying to keep them out of the feeders but it is an impossible task.
They are very acrobatic and can get to just about any of our feeders.
We spend time each day watching these very acrobatic mammals hop from limb to limb and then hang upside down to eat from the feeders.
Here is a coloring page for a Fox Squirrel. We found this website that has a recording of the sound the fox squirrel makes.
Again, I ended up including photos as part of my nature journal entry to show the differences between the Western gray squirrel and the Fox squirrel.
One of my sons told me that it used to be an “event” when the gray squirrel showed up in the yard but now we have so many squirrels that they are commonplace. We have started to think of them as rodent pests rather than welcome visitors.
Hardly seems possible that we will be finished with all our winter nature study after this week! I think completing the challenges makes the time go by faster for some reason. This has certainly been a memorable winter season as far as the weather for most of us and I think we did a great job taking advantage of the opportunities that came our way.
My favorite posts are the ones that share the unexpected joy of winter nature study. Thank you for sharing all your wonderful experiences with the Outdoor Hour Challenge.
If you missed last week’s list of spring challenges, here is a LINK.
If you are ready to read some more about the spring series of challenges, I completed a Squidoo page where they are all organized with additional links and ideas.
