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Posted on November 1, 2010 by Barb — 4 Comments

OHC Blog Carnival – October 2010 Fall Inspiration Edition

Welcome to October’s Outdoor Hour Challenge Blog Carnival! The days are definitely shorter and the temperatures are cooling off here in Northern California. The opportunities are still available for some wonderful nature study and our family has been snatching up quite a bit of time outside both in formal and informal enjoyment of the season.

The Autumn Series of Challenges are moving right along and I have enjoyed reading and viewing the outdoor time your families have shared in your entries. So, here is your carnival….sending big thanks to everyone who participated. You will get a wonderful sampling of what has been accomplished if you read each of the following carnival entries.

Signs Of Autumn
Jamie from See Jamie Blog joined us for this carnival with her entry that shares their autumn signs…don’t miss her daughter’s list.

Lynn shares their Autumn Signs from her blog, Nature Notes.

Autumn Series #2 Autumn Bird/Geese
Paula and her daughter from Belgium share their autumn bird study of the nuthatch. Read their entry, Bird Study in Town.

Another unusual autumn bird study comes from Amy in Peru. Read their entry on her blog, Fisher Academy International. They ended up comparing two of their local birds and adapting the study to fit their part of the world.

Autumn Series #3 Horses
Melissa submits their family’s horse study, With Flowing Tail and Flying Mane. Love the title and all that she writes about in her entry to the carnival.

Angie from Petra School links up with their autumn horse/dog study. She shares how they pulled in some drawing activities to compare and learn more. Great idea!

Phyllis and her family share their horse challenge experiences in their entry to the carnival. What a wonderful study and the photos really tell the story.

Tricia from the Hodgepodge Homeschool has linked up with their horse study and their experiences. One of their observations comparing horses and dogs was, “Both horses and dogs can nudge you with their noses when they want attention.” Perfect!

Autumn Series #4 Apples
Phyllis from All Things Beautiful links up to the carnival with their family’s apple study. Don’t miss the pastel art at the end…lovely.

Paula’s daughter shares their Apple Study from Belgium. Paula has adapted all the autumn challenges to fit their European habitat. She also includes some book suggestions to check out.

Monica from Discover Their Gifts writes about their apple study and how they compared thirteen different varieties of apples. Great job on this study and the journals!

Tricia met up with Angie (The One Thing) for some apple study. What is nature study without a little dirt? They had a wonderful afternoon, I loved seeing their photos and catching up with Angie’s boys. Thanks Tricia for sharing your day.

Autumn Series #5 Autumn Tree/Leaf Study
Angie from Petra School shares their wonderfully encouraging and informative study of autumn trees/leaves. Thanks Angie.

Tricia from Hodgepodge Homeschool submits their entry to carnival with their autumn leaf study. What a rich and full study of leaves at this time of the year. Don’t miss their journals.

Phyllis at All Things Beautiful shares their tree study with a tree I have never seen before. Pop over and check out their osage orange tree study.

Mauren from Homeschool Mo shares how they adapted the autumn tree/leaf study to their preschool day.

Autumn Series #6 Queen Anne’s Lace/Weeds
Tricia from Hodgepodge Homeschool decided they didn’t have to travel farther than their backyard to find some autumn weeds to study. Read all about their nature study as part of Autumn Series OHC #6.

Amy from The Teachable Heart shares their excellent study of Queen Anne’s Lace and how she adapted the study to fit their preschool age boys. She used some garden carrots to compare to the Queen Anne’s Lace…excellent idea!

(Autumn means hanging a few more birdfeeders and filling the ones already up there.)

Outdoor Hour Challenges-Other
Karen writes on her blog The Fruit of Her Hands about their Outdoor Hour Challenge #2. I think they did a great job of coming up with words for their time outdoors. I am sure she would love to hear some encouraging words as they set out on the OHC trail.

Rhonda at Preparation Education didn’t need to go farther than their own backyard to find a subject for their weekly nature study. Read about their dragonflies and see their journals as part of the carnival.

Amy from Hope is the Word submits to the carnival their Outdoor Hour Challenge #1. They have gone back to the beginning of the challenges and in this entry they come across some armadillos!

Makita from Academia Celestia shares their pine cone study which includes some wonderful journal examples for you to check out.

Phyllis from All Things Beautiful writes about their mushroom study. She has a photo of a fairy circle that will amaze you!

That wraps up this edition of the carnival. I hope you enjoy reading what other families are outside doing for nature study and how the Autumn Series is helping us learn a little more about our own backyards and neighborhoods.

Please consider submitting your Outdoor Hour Challenge entries to the next carnival. Deadline for submissions will be November 30th, 2010 and all entries from November are eligible. Here is the link for submissions: LINK.

Thanks again,
Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Posted on November 16, 2009 by Barb — 5 Comments

The Joy of Fungus: Our Mushroom Study

We haven’t had much of a chance to study mushrooms up close in the last few weeks but we did over our summer break. Our trip to Oregon gave us plenty to look at and identify. Identifying mushrooms is really a difficult task.

As part of our biology course, we studied the mushroom’s life cycle and my boys made nature journal entries using some of the photos we had collected of mushrooms in our area.

“Fungi, as a whole, are a great boon to the world. Without them our forests would be choked out with dead wood. Decay is simply the process by which fungi and other organisms break down dead material, so that the major part of it returns to the air in gaseous form, and the remainder, now mostly humus, mingles with the soil.” Handbook of Nature Study, page 715

I think if that is the only thing we learn about fungus/mushrooms from our study we will have accomplished a greater understanding of how the forest ecosystem works. There is great beauty in these living things and a wonderful purpose to their creation.

Our mushroom season will soon be upon us and we will be out and enjoying a whole array of fungus to observe. We will be using the diagram on page 717 to categorize the mushrooms we see as we go along. I am totally inspired by Casey’s study: Extraordinary World: Mushrooms.

Here is a set of our mushroom photos from the last year that I gathered on Flickr if you would like to see what we have in our area of California: Mushrooms

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.

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Posted on February 26, 2009 by Barb — 3 Comments

Winter Wednesday-Our Winter Insect Study

We have had our eye out for insects the past few weeks.

Yesterday we actually saw two very small butterflies as we took our afternoon walk. We are going to try to take our butterfly net today and see if we can catch one to identify.

Added after today’s walk: We actually caught one of what we thought were butterflies and now I think they are moths.

Here is the best photo I could get inside the net. They are orange on the backsides of the wings. This is the first time that I have tried to actually catch a butterfly with a net and I am really glad that my son did not have a video camera. It was hilarious….I sort of felt like a tennis player, swatting at the air. Let’s just say that I got a lot of exercise. 🙂

We saw this on a bunch of leaves and we brought one home to investigate. We decided it is some sort of leaf miner that has been at work.

We found a whole section (pages 329-332) in the Handbook of Nature Study on leaf-miners!

“To most children, it seems quite incredible that there is anything between the upper and lower surfaces of a leaf, and this lesson should hinge on the fact that in every leaf, however thin, there are rows of cells containing the living substance of the leaf, with a wall above and a wall below to protect them…….The serpent-like markings and the blister-like blotches which we often see on leaves are made by the larvae of insects which complete their growth by feeding upon the inner living substance of the leaf.”
Handbook of Nature Study, pages 329 and 331

Here are a few more photos from our walk today.

So these little fungi caught our eye today on this piece of bark. They looked like little mini hamburger buns.

The manzanita is starting to bloom and the shape of the blossoms are so pretty and delicate.

I feel like we are finally starting to catch up on our Winter Wednesdays and our Outdoor Hour Challenges. We have been so busy and the weather so wet that it really distracted us from our time outdoors. It feels good to be back in the routine again.

Learn more about leaf miners in this challenge:
Leaf Miners and Leaf Rollers.

Posted on December 19, 2008 by Barb — 2 Comments

Outdoor Hour Challenge #43 Molds, Puffballs, and Morels

As we finish up our mini focus on flowerless plants, I need to say that I have personally learned more than I ever anticipated. I hope that you have learned something too or that you are better prepared to study flowerless plants as you will eventually come into contact with them in the near future. At the very least, I hope that you have gained confidence in knowing a few facts, gleaned from the Handbook of Nature Study.

Edit to Add: Here is a link to another post with additional ideas to get you started with growing molds: Additional Help with Challenge 43 Outdoor Hour Challenge #43 Molds, Puffballs, and Morels

1. Read pages 727-729 in the Handbook of Nature Study. Included in the reading are instructions for growing your own mold on bread so you will have some mold of your own to observe. I highly recommend this activity and your children will be amazed at the results. Although some might find mold repulsive, try to keep a positive outlook as you grow and then observe your very own mold.

2. Read pages 720-725 in the Handbook of Nature Study and learn about puffballs and bracket fungi. Read pages 726-727 in the Handbook of Nature Study about Morels. You can underline and highlight any sections you find in these pages that you find interesting. File away the facts until you come across some of these interesting subjects during your nature study.

3. Do your best to spend 10-15 minutes outdoors this week with your children. View this time as the opportunity to enjoy whatever you have available for nature study this week. If you find some mushrooms, ferns, moss, lichen, mold, bracket fungus, morels, or puffballs, you are equipped to observe these subjects more closely. If you have snow or ice to deal with, why not review challenge #39 on water forms and spend a few minutes talking about the water cycle?

4. After your outdoor time, spend a few minutes reviewing your outdoor experience. This step will help you identify any additional interests your children have so you can answer any questions or help identify any objects they observed outdoors. Are they curious about clouds or a bird they saw? Did you find any flowerless plants at all during your outdoor time? Use this time to follow up with the Handbook of Nature Study and don’t forget that you can look things up in the index.

5. Give an opportunity for a nature journal entry or provide a notebook page to complete together. Remember that a nature journal should be the child’s expression of something they found interesting during their outdoor time. You are helping them make a memory.

Posted on December 8, 2008 by Barb — 1 Comment

Fungus and Fern Hikes: Our Outdoor Hour Challenge #41

We have been on the lookout for mushrooms and ferns for the last few weeks in anticipation of this challenge. I am overwhelmed with how much I don’t know about mushrooms at this point but I am determined to document the mushrooms and other fungus that we see so that when I have a cold winter day and I want to spend some time with a field guide, I will be able to flip through the photos and hopefully come up with names for them.

I decided that there are so many photos that I would make a slideshow on Flickr.com to share with you. The fungi are from three different places but the majority are from my own yard or from a hike within three miles of my house. The others are from the Calaveras Big Trees State Park.

Mushroom Slideshow– Don’t miss viewing this page with all my fungus images

As we hiked yesterday, I noticed that the boys were catching sight of more and more varieties of mushrooms than ever before. They even spotted some that I didn’t see and directed me to go back to the spot and take a photo. 🙂

This particular hike they were having a good time in the cool fresh air together.

If you look carefully up over the trail where the boys are hiking, you will notice a tree that broke off and is just barely hanging in place. The boys thought they should try to throw rocks at it to see if they could get it to come down but my husband explained that he didn’t think that was a really great idea.

I noticed that I was getting into quite a few sticker type seeds as we walked along.

We hiked back to the top and noticed that the moon was up over the oaks. What a great blue sky, don’t you think?

So I am still getting used to my new little camera but I think I will like it in the long run. It has a better zoom and the viewing screen is much bigger.

Here are the last of the photos for today.

Backside of a fern

Big ferns along the path.

Ferns along the side of a gully that will have a creek running in it once it rains again around here. 🙂

Here is my son’s mushroom diagram for his nature journal. We copied this out of the Handbook of Nature Study, page 719.

This was a great challenge for our family and we never dreamed we would find so many different kinds of mushrooms and other fungi to study.

I encourage you all to give the challenge a try either now or when your weather is cooperating.

Posted on December 5, 2008 by Barb — 11 Comments

Outdoor Hour Challenge #41 Flowerless Plants Overview

Outdoor Hour Challenge #41
Flowerless plants-General Overview

1. This week you need to familiarize yourself with the section in the Handbook of Nature Study that discusses flowerless plants. Turn to the table of contents and in Part III, go to the list of flowerless plants and skim down the list of topics covered. The suggested readings for this challenge will be in the following categories:
Ferns-read the overview on page 693 and then turn to page 695 to see the parts of a fern labeled. Pages 704 and 705 show photos of several kinds of ferns.
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.

I found a video to watch 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.

2. 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 a fern or 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 ferns and 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 flowerless plants, you do not have to limit yourself to that narrow focus during your 15 to 20 minutes of outdoor time.

3. Spend a few minutes once inside to discuss your experiences you had on 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.

4. Make an opportunity for a nature journal entry. Start a list of flowerless plants in your nature journal. The diagrams on pages 695 and 719 could be sketched into the nature journal as well.

“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

Please note this entry includes affiliate links.
Amazon.com Widgets

Posted on December 4, 2008 by Barb — 3 Comments

What are Flowerless Plants?

“There is something uncanny about plants which have no green parts; indeed, many people find it difficult to think of them as plants. It is, therefore, no wonder that many superstitions cluster about toadstools. In times of old, not only was it believed that toads sat on them, but that fairies danced upon them and used them for umbrellas……But science, in these days, brings revelations concerning these mysterious plants which are far more wonderful than the web which superstition wove about them in days of yore.”
Handbook of Nature Study, page 714

As a prelude to tomorrow’s challenge, I wanted to help explain what it is exactly that we will be focusing on during the next few weeks of the Outdoor Hour Challenge. I have a feeling that some of you are not too excited about the focus on non-flowering plants but I think if you understand a little better what you are going to be looking for, your enthusiasm will grow.

Here is some information I have found in researching this topic and it was surprising to me that there are so many things to be on the alert for as far as topics that are covered in the Handbook of Nature Study. Hopefully this list will give your eyes something to search for over the next few weeks during your Outdoor Hour time. There is more to the focus of flowerless plants than just looking for mushrooms.

First of all you have the obvious subject and that is mushrooms or different fungi. Mushrooms are technically a fungi but we can call them mushrooms if that is easier. Puffballs are also in this family.

Fungi are really non-flowering plants that have no green.

Next you can look for ferns. I think everyone knows what a fern looks like but the variety of ferns available in your area will vary. You should look for ferns in shady places. Many of the ferns in our area are turning brown but you will recognize their unique shape when you see them.

Mosses and lichen are another category of flowerless plants. Once you start looking for moss…you will see it growing in many places and it is something that children love to observe and touch. Look on tree trunks or logs, cracks in the sidewalk, along a moist section of concrete, or under ledges.

Molds are also flowerless plants. How about observing the mold on a slice of bread? I found this flowerless plant over a section of ground that has a rotting tree trunk and roots. No very pretty until you get up close and then it is fascinating.

Flowerless plants may be new to your family. Take the challenges one at a time and do the reading in the Handbook of Nature Study and keep your eyes open. You will be pleasantly surprised at how much you learn and your children will become aware of a whole new fascinating world.

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