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Outdoor Hour Challenge Autumn Series-Fall Tree Study

This week’s challenge is a continuation of an annual tree study for some of you but a new challenge for many.

Our family is going to be choosing a new tree to observe and get to know from our backyard. I prefer for my boys to pick a deciduous tree so there will be lots of changes to observe, but you are welcome to choose any tree that you and your children are interested in getting to know better.

Outdoor Challenge-Autumn Series
Seasonal Tree Observation-Autumn
See Also Challenge #36 
You may also like: Four Seasons Tree Study Photo Project

Inside Preparation Work
Read the section in the Handbook of Nature Study discussing seasonal tree work. You will find it on pages 622-626. This week the challenge includes making a seasonal observation of a tree. Lesson 172 on page 623 includes five suggestions for studying your tree during autumn. If you are just joining the challenges, pick a tree from your yard, your street, or a near-by park to observe over the course of the next year. I would suggest printing out the Seasonal Tree Notebook Page and taking it with you so you have the option to complete it during your outdoor time.


Outdoor Time
Take your 10-15 minute outdoor time to choose a tree to observe over the next year. You can take photos of your tree to put in your nature journal or you can sketch the tree in your journal. You may also choose to complete the Seasonal Tree Notebook Page during your outdoor time.

Follow-Up Activity
Allow your child a few minutes to tell you about their outdoor experience. Talk about the tree you chose to observe for you seasonal tree study. Check in the Handbook of Nature Study to see if your tree is listed there and make sure to do the reading about that particular tree over the next few weeks. There should be some suggestions for observations that you can follow. File your page away so you can compare it during your next Seasonal Tree Study.


We are hoping to take some time to go walking and find a tree to study this week. The photo above was taken a couple of years ago and it reminds me of the warm autumn day we had hiking and taking in the fall color of the aspen trees.

This is what it really is all about for our family-building memories and experiences that shape who we are and how we feel about our Creator.
Plants & Trees Nature Study Notebooking Pages
This is an affiliate link to a product I have used and highly recommend.

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Winter Tree Study: Our Sweet Gum Tree

This time of year our Sweet Gum tree has lost all its leaves and is totally bare except for a few of the sticker balls hanging here and there.


Here are the tree’s trunk and branches.


My son used the Seasonal Tree Study page to record his observations and his sketch. He looked carefully at and drew the buds on his journal page.


Here is our tree last summer with all its leaves.

We followed the suggestion in the Handbook of Nature Study on page 624 and we took a twig with buds, put it into a vase with water, and then placed it in a warm, light place to see what happens.

I added in some forsythia branches as well to see if they will bloom inside this year.

We really enjoyed watching this tree all year long. We are thinking about choosing a different tree to watch this year.

Twigs in a Vase - Beginning our Twig Study

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Morning Tree Silhouettes: Our Ongoing Tree Study

We have been watching and observing all the different shapes of tree silhouettes we have in our neighborhood. We are all pointing out different shapes and patterns and I can honestly say we are loving our winter trees.

This morning we were looking out and noticed that our trees were filled with American Robins. I counted sixteen of them at one time in the trees along the side of our house.


The sunrise was just so pink and pretty and then the birds with their dark silhouettes….I couldn’t resist trying to get a photo or two or three. If you click to enlarge and look closely, you will see several bird sitting on branches.

All of the photos above were taken within minutes of each other and you can see the sky and the light changed so fast.

Here is my son’s tree silhouette of the walnut tree in our backyard.

I always think of his sketching as sort of gesture drawing. He has such a unique style all to himself.

Great study this week.

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Outdoor Hour Challenge #47 Seasonal Tree Study-Winter

Outdoor Challenge #47
Seasonal Tree Observation-Winter

1. We are now completing our full circle study of a tree in our yard. If you completed challenges 11, 20, and 36, you will now be observing your tree in its fourth season. This week you will use the suggestions on pages 624-625 of the Handbook of Nature Study to make general winter observations of your tree. You can record your thoughts either in your nature journal or on the Seasonal Tree Study page provided below.

2. Take your 10-15 minute outdoor time to study your tree. If you are just starting out with a tree study, pick a tree from your yard that you can watch through all four seasons. The Handbook of Nature Study suggests taking a twig from your tree and looking at the tree’s buds carefully. See page 624 #3 for more details.

3. After your outdoor time, complete your Seasonal Tree Study notebook page or record your tree observations in your nature journal. You can take photos of your tree to put in your nature journal. The Handbook of Nature Study suggests sketching your tree to show its shape as it stands bare. Take a few minutes to talk about your time outdoors to see if there is anything that your child wants to learn more about. Follow up any interest shown.


You can purchase all of the first ten challenges in a convenient ebook along with custom notebook pages.

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English Walnuts-Yes, Another Tree Study

Today was *another* cloudless day but we were outside looking to see what we could find interesting in the backyard. The walnut tree now that it has just about lost all of its leaves was our subject of the day. First we started looking at the way the woodpeckers have over the years made numerous holes in the trunk and large branches. Be sure to click the photo to get a better look.

As we examined the trunk closer, we noticed the change in the texture of the bark shown in the photo below.

I was interested in what was going on with it and I somewhere in my memory have stored away that my husband had once told me that they graft the English walnut onto the black walnut tree because the black walnut is a native of California so it is a hardy tree, resistant to pests but the English walnut has a thinner shell and easier to open and eat.

We decided to ask him more about it and to look it up on the internet once we got inside from our outdoor break.

Here is what we found:

  • Did you know that California grows 99% of the United States’ walnuts?
  • That is an average of 303,000 tons of walnuts every year!
  • The Romans called the walnut Juglans regia or Jupiter’s royal acorn.
  • My husband was absolutely correct and the English walnut is grafted onto a black walnut rootstock.

Fascinating! I have never noticed the grafting before in all the twenty plus years we have lived in this same house. If you want to know more about the California(English) walnut here is a link to a simple to read explanation. California Walnut


Here is the pile of leaves under the walnut tree. So many leaves to rake but not many nuts due to the resident squirrel and the Scrub jays.

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Autumn Tree Study: Our Family Outdoor Hour Challenge #36

Autumn Tree Study
We continued our tree study with the Sweet Gum or liquidambar tree in our backyard.


We had a huge wind and rain storm last night so the tree has lost most of its leaves.

Here were his observations:


The tree has just about lost its leaves. If you look carefully, perhaps clicking the photo to enlarge it, you will see a little bird on the branch of his tree- just the behind section.


The bark is ragged and rough.

I saw ants and a bit of moss on the trunk.

It didn’t smell like anything.

The leaves under the tree were mostly yellow but some were reddish.


I saw the sticker balls on the ground and some were brown and a few were green and heavy.


Where the leaves have fallen off, there are little buds on the tree.

I think he did a pretty good job of observing his tree. He completed the Seasonal Tree Study notebook page for his journal and it is filed away with the other two pages.

One more season to go.

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Outdoor Hour Challenge #36 Autumn Tree Study

Autumn Tree Study handbookofnaturestudy

“Children should also become familiar with trees at an early age. They should pick about six in the winter when the leaves are gone, perhaps an elm, a maple, a beech, etc, and watch them during the year. In the winter they will see the color of the bark, the way the branches grow and the thickness of its build.”
Charlotte Mason, volume 1, page 52

The Outdoor Hour Seasonal Tree Study started in the spring and will complete its cycle in the winter. Our family has been anticipating the changes that come with fall. The last week or two has brought about some *huge* changes in our tree and we are anxious to focus this week on our journal pages.

Outdoor Challenge #36
Seasonal Tree Observation-Autumn

1. We started a tree study project way back in Challenge #11 and made our first observations of our tree. Then during the summer we completed a summer observation of the same tree in Challenge #20. If you would like to review this section in the Handbook of Nature Study, you will find it on pages 622-626. This week the challenge includes making the next seasonal observation of your tree. Lesson 172 on page 623 includes five suggestions for studying your tree during autumn. If you are just joining the challenges, pick a tree from your yard, your street, or a near-by park to observe over the course of the next year. Check in the Handbook of Nature Study to see if your tree is listed there and then do the reading about that particular tree. There should be some suggestions for observations that you can follow. You can use the prepared seasonal tree study page to record your observations.

2. Take your 10-15 minute outdoor time to study the tree you are going to observe over the next year. You can take photos of your tree to put in your nature journal or you can sketch the tree in your journal. If you need help with tree sketching you can use this resource.
Clare Walkers’ Tree Guide

3. After your outdoor time, complete your Seasonal Tree Study notebook page or record your tree observations in your nature journal. Take a few minutes to talk about your time outdoors to see if there is anything that your child wants to learn more about. Follow up any interest shown.


You can purchase all of the first ten challenges in a convenient ebook along with custom notebook pages.

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Slow Start to Our Tree Study: Outdoor Hour Challenge #31

Our start on our study of trees was sort of slow. The boys have been spending all their free time with our new puppy and I guess the only way to entice them to a nature walk is to bring the dog along.


We have a number of trees that are starting to get their autumn color and my son brought to my attention that the sweet gum trees are making the rocks underneath them shiny.


Note the leaves that have already fallen from the tree.


The leaves are getting shiny too.

Here’s what it says on Wikipedia:
“The gum resin, also known as liquid amber or copalm balsam, yielded by this tree has no special medicinal virtues, being inferior in therapeutic properties to many others of its class. It is a kind of native balsam, or resin, like turpentine. It may be clear, reddish or yellow, with a pleasant smell like ambergris.”


This is my garden companion….she is watching a bird on the lawn with great intent in this photo. (Ignore the weeds in the photo…they were left there in the name of challenge #30 or at least I keep telling myself that is the reason.) She does her own kind of tree study and is an expert tree climber.

We took a few hours to go up to a local apple orchard. We all enjoy the apple harvest time of year and all of its yummy treats, both the kind you eat and the kind you can see, smell, and feel.

The trees were loaded with apples.

Now for the kind of treats we look forward to all year. Apple doughnuts. No explanation needed
except for maybe the fact that we each enjoy a different kind…with nuts, or crumbs, or glazed, or plain, or cinnamon sugar.

I think there is no better way to learn about a tree than to eat the fruits of its boughs.

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Year Long Tree Study-Our Oak

“Children should also become familiar with trees at an early age. They should pick about six in the winter when the leaves are gone, perhaps an elm, a maple, a beech, etc, and watch them during the year.”
Charlotte Mason in Modern English, volume 1, page 52

Way back last August of 2007 we started our first tree study out in the woods. We took a piece of yarn and staked out a big square around the tree and did observations within that square and then also about the tree. The oak is really big and has lots of interesting things about it.

Here are a couple of the older entries to compare with this entry.
August Tree Study
Our Tree In The Woods: October

Here is our yarned off square. You can barely see the purple yarn unless you click and enlarge the photo.

Not much there except a few new little baby oak trees.

And near-by there was this poison oak turning red…..watch out for that stuff.

Then we noticed that as we walked we were being stuck by this plant….star thistle. I would consider this a WEED! Our backyard had this plant growing all over the backside when we moved in twenty years ago and my husband has very lovingly removed it all one plant at a time. We found you have to pull it up roots and all in order to get rid of it. It is an invasive weed in our area.

After we got back to the car, we realized our shoelaces and socks were covered with stickers of all kinds. They stick like velcro.

Well that wraps up our year-long tree study for now. We will probably keep our yarn up and continue through another year to see if we see any more changes.

https://naturestudyhomeschool.com/2010/06/outdoor-hour-challenge-summer-nature.html

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Outdoor Hour Challenge #20 Our Summer Tree Study

We have had hot smoky weather for the past two weeks with all the fires burning in our area. It is very unusual for the wildfires to start so early but my husband says that the fuel in the forests is so dry that it doesn’t take much to get it going. We had several dry lightning storms and two weeks ago we had extremely high winds. All these factors together make for extreme fire danger.

We have been enjoying our outdoor time both in the garden and out on hikes in our local area. First of all though, here is my son’s summer tree study.His tree doesn’t look that much different from our last study. There are lots of green leaves which my son thinks are darker than they were in the spring but it is hard to tell.

Here is a close up of the leaves.This time he measured around the trunk and found it to be 28 inches in circumference.

This is what he noticed had changed the most about the tree. It had these sprouts coming up from the bottom of the trunk. We usually snap these off as they sprout but my son wants to leave them just to see how they grow.

We are anxious to compare our summer tree with our autumn tree!

https://naturestudyhomeschool.com/2009/02/announcing-outdoor-hour-challenge-ebook.html