Category: winter series of outdoor hour challenges

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Outdoor Hour Challenge – Winter Color Nature Study

Winter Color Nature Study

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.

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Year-Long Nature Study Reminders – Winter


Seasonal Topics Reminders – Winter

Here are some ideas from year-long nature study topics we have done in the past:

Make sure to add your year-long study to your January or February nature study plans so you don’t forget!!!

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Outdoor Hour Challenge – Winter Nature Table



Outdoor Hour Challenge
Winter Nature Table

Creating a nature table or nature display is an easy way to add a little nature study on days your weather is too cold or wet.

Here are some ideas from the past to inspire you. Make sure to see the printable ideas I shared below!

 Nature Table – Winter Ideas


Nature Table – Winter Ideas Printable

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. 
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Outdoor Hour Challenge – December Senses Walk


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. 
I am looking forward to getting out with my snowshoes and really using my senses.

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. 
 
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Ultimate Ebook Library @handbookofnaturestudy

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Winter Bundle Special Offer!


            Winter Bundle Special

Includes all three winter themed Outdoor Hour Challenge ebooks:

Winter More Nature Study Book 2 Winter Wonder coverWinter Wednesday Button

Special Bundle Price $18.95. ($24.85 value)

Challenges Include:
• Winter Cattails • Winter Tree Study • Winter Sky and Stars • Winter Weather • Pine Tree • Salt Study • Winter Bird—Migration • Small Square Study—Winter • Winter Mammal—Tracks • Early Spring Flower • Winter Colors • Snow • Winter Sky-Constellations • Tree Silhouettes • Tree Cones • Winter Weeds • Winter Insects • Winter Birds • Winter Mammals • Winter Wonder Weather • Chickadee • Tree Twigs • Sheep/Wool • Winter Weed—Mullein • Winter Insect—Gall Dwellers • Quartz Study • Magnets and Compass • Moon and Moon Names • Pansy Study

Introductory Video to the More Nature Study Book 2 Challenges!

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Early Spring Bulb Study: Watercolor Time

Daffodil journal with watercolors (15)

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.

Spring Bulbs 3 15 11

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.

Daffodil 3 16 11

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.

Back of a Daffodil 3 16 11

Don’t you think they are even lovely from the back?

Jonquils

We have jonquils blooming in the yard as well which smell heavenly.

Daffodil journal with watercolors (8)
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….

Daffodil journal with watercolors

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.

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Family Mammal Study – Unexpected Deer and Our Usual Squirrels

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”.

3 11 11 walking trail deer

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.

3 11 11 walking trail deer

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.

Fox Squirrel in the Tree
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.

Fox Squirrel eating my seed bell
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.

Squirrel watercolor with photos (3)
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.

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2011 Winter Series OHC #10 Early Spring Flowers

Bulbs 2 13 11 (4)

Winter Series #10 Early Spring Flowers

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.

Thank you to all the Winter Series and Winter Wednesday participants. We enjoyed reading all your entries and sharing your nature study.

Winter Winter Wednesday Button

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OHC Winter Insects and Hike With a Waterfall

We had almost given up trying to fit in a winter insect study but it was such a perfect day today to get outdoors that we took advantage. I whipped up some sandwiches, we jumped in the car, and we had a little picnic before we took a hike on our close-by and most familiar trail.

Oak with Moss
What impressed me the most as we started to hike was the greenness all around us!  The grasses, the mosses, and the ferns are what Crayola would call “spring green”. It felt good to get outside and hike…we saw a red-tailed hawk right above us and it was amazing! We heard robins and Western scrub jays as we went along, nice to hear the familiar spring sounds in the woods.

Deciduous Oak and Spring Sky
Then the sky and clouds captured my eye and the beauty made me stop to admire and try to get a good shot of just how beautiful the almost spring sky is in our neighborhood today. We had a hail storm around 5:30 AM today and then the storm passed and the clouds parted, revealing a bright blue sky.

So for our insect study I was hoping to find some oak galls or leaf miners and I was successful in finding one of those things.

Leaf Miner 1
Leaf miners are talked about in the Handbook of Nature Study starting on page 329 (Lesson 77).
“Among the most familiar of these are the serpentine miners, so called because the figure formed by the eating out of the green pulp of the leaf curves like a serpent…..The serpent-like marking and the blister-like blothces which we often see on leaves are made by the larve of insects which complete their growth by feeding upon the inner living substance of the leaf.”

Leaf damaged by insects
We saw evidence of other insects all around the trail when we stopped to look closely.

Insect on leaf
As I was taking these photos, I happened to see this guy. I have absolutely no idea what kind of insect it is but was great to observe him this afternoon, a sign of life in these woods.

Shooting Star Wildflowers
The next leg of the hike had some surprises in store for us. Like these very first of the season Shooting Stars!

Wildflower and Insect
And these colorful and cheery buttercups…added bonus….some small fly-like insect.

Manzanita and Oak Spring

I have been down this trail a hundred times and I haven’t ever noticed how nicely this manzanita is shaped. It must be pretty old because it is taller than most of the manzanita in this area and looks more like a tree than a bush. See the nice oak on the left all covered with spring moss?

Saxifrage just starting to sprout
On the way back up the trail we stopped to admire the waterfall and I was excited to see the early spring saxifrage beginning to sprout. Soon it will be blooming and I will know it is spring.

Kona at the Waterfall
Kona had to get in the water while she waited for me to finish my photo taking. She moved some rocks around in the water with her nose and got a drink.

3 7 11 Red Shack hike (17)
Here is the waterfall from the trail. This is looking up and there is a section below where we are so the sound of rushing water is heard from the parking place all the way down to where we turn around and come back up. It is one of those very relaxing and comforting sounds that we enjoy on this hike.

Red Insect
Here is a red insect I spotted while I was crouched down taking photos of the saxifrage. I don’t know what it is but it had wings and eventually flew away.

I think that wraps up our hike and our insects for our study. We are going to try to identify the red insect in the photo above and add it to our nature journals this week. What a great day outdoors! I think I have been color deprived because just seeing the few wildflowers, the greens of the grasses and mosses, and the colorful insect has brightened my mood. I think we all feel better.

Update:
I updated my last entry with a photo from last summer….we were at the redwood forest in Northern California. Click over and scroll down to see how small we are in comparison to the base of the tree!

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2011 Winter Series OHC #9 and Winter Wednesday #9 – Mammals in Winter Nature Study

Pair of Squirrels in March
Our Resident Pair of Fox Squirrels in Our Backyard

This week you are going to spend some time focusing on mammals.

OHC Winter Series #9 Mammals

Link for you to check out: Hibernation
This pdf can be printed out and shared with your children.

Ideas for you to try:
1. Keep a record of animal tracks you have observed in the snow or mud. Record your findings in your nature journal along with a drawing, the date, the weather, the time of day, and the type of animal if you have identified it at this time.
2. Compare a dog’s and a cat’s footprints in the snow or mud.
3. Research an animal that hibernates and record what you learn in your nature notebook. You can also sketch your animal and what its tracks look like.

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