Outdoor Hour Challenge:
This week spend your outdoor time enjoying the daily weather. Keep track of your weather for a week, recording the temperature, rainfall, etc. You can use any of the free printables on my Freebies Page. Look there for the seasonal weather pages and the weather chart.
You can also use any of the Seasonal Weather Challenges from the past that are appropriate for your time of the year:
Printable Notebook Page: During your seasonal weather observations, take a photo of something that shows your current weather conditions. Better yet, let your children take the images and then print them out for a personalized nature journal entry. This can be done in each season and recorded in your nature journal’s seasonal section.
Printable Notebook Page:My Seasonal Weather. Getting Started Suggestion: If you already own the Getting Started ebook, complete Outdoor Hour Challenge #10.I realize that this is a cold time of year (or hot for you Southern Hemisphere folks) for many of you but there are ways to make a “picnic” happen even if you just drive in the car, park under a tree, and enjoy some sandwiches and hot cocoa. Get creative! If you have a picnic, make sure to take a photo to include in your nature journal. I will challenge myself to taking a picnic in the next few weeks with my family and I will post our experiences here on the blog.
We had plenty of opportunities to observe clouds in the past few days. It has been really cloudy and wet…only a few breaks in the weather where we were able to get outside and breathe some air. I tried to enjoy the rain but it really did just bum me out. I was really glad that this week’s challenge was to pull out some art supplies and make a watercolor entry for the weather in my nature journal.
I collected some water for my watercolor project from the rain gauge. Now that I had my supplies ready I was anxious about actually watercoloring in my journal so I decided to make the painting on a separate sheet of paper and then add the painting to my journal with tape.
I played with my gray watercolor pencil before starting the actual artwork, experimenting with different methods of applying the color to the paper. You should try this if you have a few minutes just to see how different the effects are on your artwork.
If you are interested in this sort of thing, here are the options I used.
Left box: Use the pencil to draw the square, then apply water with a brush.
Middle box: Dip the tip of the watercolor pencil in water, draw the square.
Right box: Use a wet brush on the pencil tip, apply to paper.
All of these squares are made with the same pencil….very different results.
Creating a journal page always cheers me up! Between the journal page and taking advantage of the breaks in the rain to get outside, I was starting to feel not so blah.
One morning we woke to actual sunshine and we decided to take a hike to see our neighborhood waterfall. Kona loves this trail since we can let her off leash. She runs ahead and finds something interesting to sniff, following the scent until she detects another trail to follow. She definitely enjoyed the opportunity to get outside and stretch her legs alongside us on the trail.
We were rewarded for our hiking efforts with the rushing sound of water coming down the hill and over the rocks. We took a few minutes to just enjoy the moment and then we all headed back up the hill, just in time for the rains to return. I realized that without the rain we would have had no waterfall to hike to…..sometimes we need to be reminded of the benefits of all that wet weather.
This will wind down our weather study for the month. Just for fun, I will be keeping our rainfall records as we move through January. We might get a dusting of snow later this week which would be the perfect way to wind up the month.
This week is another simple idea for a nature challenge. Take some time to observe clouds. Remember to look up whenever you are outside, even if you have rain or snow…the clouds are ever changing.
Special Activity:Watercolor Clouds
If you are able, observe clouds on several occasions and then use watercolors to record some clouds for your nature journal. To make it fun, use melted snow or rain with your paints! We do this a lot when we are out on the trail, using whatever water source we encounter.
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 some cloud sketches 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 12/30/12.
You may wish to view my daughter’s Cloud Art Show and see how other painters captured clouds. There are so many ways to show clouds in your nature journal…watercoloring is just one way.
Our week has been marked by frosty temperatures…which make for beautiful early morning treasures. Now each morning when I go out to check the bird feeders and the bird bath I need to bundle up with gloves and hat…my nose still gets frosty cold.
Using the December Newsletter Weather Grid Study, our family has been trying to notice the weather and its effects on the plants and wildlife. This doesn’t seem much like a formal study but just part of our everyday routine to notice the temperature, the clouds, the forecast.
Reading Angie’s entry for the up-coming blog carnival, I noticed that her son had cut the Weather Study Grid into squares to adhere into his journal. I love this idea! So thanks to Angie’s family I have a cool new way to record the grid study in my nature journal.
It seemed like such a natural way to customize my nature journal page. Once I had the squares cut out, I had the idea to print a few of my weather related images from the month in wallet-sized photos and then add those to my page.
After that, I added a few more of my thoughts about our weather study and voila! This is a perfect nature journal entry for this part of our weather study. Using these simple steps you end up with a journal page that anyone can make!
You can read more about this week’s weather nature study challenge here: Weather Grid and Weather Sounds. Don’t miss the free printable in that entry to record you personal weather words. You can get the weather grid by subscribing to this blog (box on the sidebar) and then in the next entry in your email box (or Google Reader) there will be a download link. The download link will be available until the end of December 2012.
Grab your own GBBC button and makes plans to participate in the bird fun!
I had in mind a totally different post for you this week but our internet has been down for over a week so working online has been limited. Instead, I have a collection of recent bird photos that show some of our feeder birds that we enjoy everyday. As the leaves fall from the trees, observing birds becomes much easier. We also have more of a variety to enjoy this time of year and keeping track of them for Project Feederwatch becomes our normal routine at least two days a week.
The Outdoor Hour Challenges this month focuses on the weather and we have been noting how the weather affects the birds in our yard. We have had ice on the birdbaths quite a few mornings this week and if I don’t go out and break it up, the birds skid around on it which makes me laugh.
House finches can seem common at the feeders…oh, just another finch. But, when you see these colored birds through the eye of a camera, you realize they are not just another bird. They come in varying shades of pink, orange, red, and purple…they come day after day and provide a happy bird song (listen on All About Birds to hear the sweet sounds of a finch).
Our backyard Anna’s hummingbirds are still at the feeders every day. They have a particular tree they sit in and most days it is on the same little branch that hangs over one end of our deck. I can hear them making their little chattering noises whenever I am outside. In this image the feathers look black but it is just the way the light is hitting him. If he tilts his head in just the right way or the sun hits him just right, his chin and throat are the most brilliant pink and his body is a dazzling green. I always thought that hummingbirds were delicate creatures but I have seen them at my feeder in the pouring rain and when we have snow. All About Birds says that they weigh the same as a nickel….imagine that!
The return of the Dark eyed junco is complete for the season. We started having one or two a day under the feeders but now I am counting 12-20 every day. They mostly poke around under the seed feeders to glean some food but I have noticed that they are hanging out at the suet feeder as well. They do give the woodpeckers first chance at the suet but as soon as the woodpecker flies away, they hop on and have a meal.
Our Northern Mockingbirds make daily appearances at the berry vines in our front yard. I read on All About Birds that they switch to an almost all berry diet in the fall and winter. The other fact I learned about the mockingbird is that they don’t sing at this time of the year. The website says that they sing from February to August and then from September to early November. Isn’t that interesting? I am going to record the dates I hear them sing in my neighborhood…a little extra project for me.
The Nuttall’s woodpecker is a frequent diner at the suet feeder. We seem to have a female that is rather shy but I have observed her quite a bit as she hops up and down the trees near the feeder. She shares the feeder many times with the little White-breasted nuthatches.
The excitement this season is that we appear to have a wintering Red-breasted nuthatch who comes daily to the trees outside my window. At first I thought he was my usual White-breasted nuthatch but I read online that the Red-breasted has an eye stripe….sure enough, our nuthatch had an eyestripe. He is super quick and I have yet to capture a clear image but you can see in this one that he definitely has an eyestripe! Hopefully I will get a good image of him for my nature journal sometime this winter.
Project Feederwatch has helped bring my bird observation skills to the next level. In just a few minutes a day, I have learned so much more about the bird life right outside my window. What a gift this activity gives…hopefully you enjoy seeing my bird friends and are inspired to start learning about your own backyard birds.
Take it one bird at a time and enjoy!
There is a wealth of birding information on the internet but I have not found a more homeschool-friendly site than the ones sponsored by Cornell University. I would love to encourage you all to subscribe to their homeschool blog (click the logo to pop over there now).
Outdoor Hour Challenge: This week your outdoor time should be all about the things you hear during your winter weather walk. Take along your Weather Grid (from the December Newsletter) and see if you can find your three weather related words for your nature journal. Observe the wind and which direction it is coming from.Listen for the sounds of weather. If you are currently in your summer season, you may be interested in the Summer Weather-Using Your Senses challenge from the Summer 2010 ebook.
Printable Notebook Page Free printable this week: Weather Sounds: Use this notebook page to record your weather related sounds. You can use this as an on-going nature study project and add to your list as you listen throughout the year.
Getting Started Suggestion:
If you already own the Getting Started ebook, complete Outdoor Hour Challenge #2. This Weather Grid and Weather Sounds challenge will go perfectly with this Using Your Words Challenge! After your outdoor time, try to complete the assignment with weather related words and then record them in your nature journal. Complete the accompanying notebook page if your child has interest.
A week ago, our family took a trip up to the mountains to spend some time together and enjoy the beauty of an alpine lake. I thought this would be the perfect time to take a Seasonal Weather walk as part of the Outdoor Hour Challenge. The weekend started off with rain, sunshine, and then rainbows. We actually saw a double rainbow a couple of times….amazing!
Boy, did we have weather! The rain turned to snow and dusted the landscape with clean bright snow. The ducks and geese in the lake didn’t seem to mind much. The clouds covered the mountains in the distance but left us with a pocket of sunshine to get out into and explore.
We would watch for the sun to come out, taking advantage of the time to warm up in the bright mountain sunshine and see some more rainbows.
The snow would really fall at times and we enjoyed the beauty of it…we didn’t have to go outside unless we wanted to do so. Mr. A met up with some friends and went snowboarding one of the days we were up at the lake….crazy teenage snowboarders. (Sorry Mr. T that you dislocated your shoulder.)
This was pretty much the pattern for our whole weekend…rainbows and sunshine…snowing in the distance.
One of the days we took a drive around the lake to a spot we like to hike at but the wind was blowing so very hard that just getting out of the car was difficult. This video is just showing how much the large pines were swaying back and forth in the gusts of wind…it also was really super loud just like on the video. Amazing power of the wind! We experienced 50 mph winds (gusts higher than that).
It was hard to even stand up in the blasts of wind….we ended up taking a short hike over to Fallen Leaf Lake where the waves were high enough you could have surfed. This lake is usually calm, flat, and crystal blue but on this day it looked more like the gray ocean. Mr. D bundled up against the wind…it really was that cold!
While we were up enjoying the lakes of the Sierra, back at home the rain gauge was getting filled up. We had to dump it since it was overflowing at 8 inches! There was flooding and our basement sump pump didn’t work once the power went off….wet floors and furniture. The phones were out for a week and so was our DSL. The weather really gave us something to talk about this past week…more than I anticipated.
There is still time for you to take your weather walk and share your experiences with all of us at the Outdoor Hour Challenge. Make sure to send in your blog entries for the up-coming OHC Blog Carnival (due date 12/30/12).
Outdoor Hour Challenge:
This week’s challenge kicks off our weather study for the month. Keep your outdoor time very casual and open-ended by just taking a short walk together, noting your weather conditions. You can combine this week’s challenge with aseasonal tree study (printables available)or you can find something for your winter nature table. You will find nature table ideas in the December 2012 newsletter.
The most important aspect of this week’s challenge is to get outside! Fifteen minutes is not too long for anyone…no matter the conditions. Dress appropriately, have a positive attitude, and watch the magic happen.
Printable Notebook Page The Four Seasons-In My World:This week the Outdoor Hour Challenge extra activity is another printable for you to use as part of your weather study. Use this page to record the exact dates of each of your seasons, depending on which hemisphere you live in. Discuss with your children how each of the seasons is a little different and have them draw a scene from their favorite season for their nature journal.
Getting Started Suggestion:
If you already own the Getting Started ebook, turn to Outdoor Hour Challenge #1. Use the ideas there for an open-ended time outdoors this week following your child’s lead. Casually mention the weather and you can discuss the seasons after you come back indoors. Complete the accompanying notebook page if your child has interest.
Now that the season has changed and we have cleaned up the yard for the coming season, I thought I would share a few of the ways we keep our yard as a wildlife habitat in winter. It is just a matter of knowing which plants to prune back and which ones can be left as they are.
We have learned by trial and error mostly.
The Heavenly bamboo along the front of our house is not only colorful this time of year with the leaves turning reddish and the berries ripening to a brilliant orange-red but it is a source of shelter for birds and insects. I have seen the Ruby-crowned kinglet gathering spiderwebs from these bushes. (Audubon website says of the kinglet’s nest, “Moss, grass, lichen, bark strips, twigs, rootlets, needles, and spider webs comprise its outer walls, and feathers, plant down, and hair form a soft lining.”)
We leaves some of the grasses and weeds for the birds and other animals to use as food and shelter.
They don’t look very appetizing but the birds think these are tasty little treats….blackberries left on the vine just behind our bird feeding station. The finches, sparrows, titmouse, and towhees all shelter on and under these vines. I also saw fox scat just by these vines last week so I think they might be gleaning a few berries as well (as evidenced in the scat).
The coneflowers are another favorite in the winter flower garden. I cut them way back but leave some of the seed heads for the birds to glean from.
We also have learned that some of the weeds in our yard are best left to over-winter. These mullein plants will shoot up a stalk next spring and then flower all summer. The hummingbirds and finches will use them as a steady part of their diet. We leave those in the garden.
I harvested about thirty pounds of walnuts this year for our enjoyment. I will spend many a winter evening hour cracking nuts for our family and to share with friends. Some of those friends will have feathers and fur. I leave quite a few of the nuts for the squirrels and Scrub jays to use for their winter meals. When I note that all the nuts are up off the ground, I will regularly set some out of my store cupboard in various parts of the yard. They always disappear.
Lavender along the front wall is once place I trim but not all the way back. It looks sort of wild but it does provide shelter all winter long for birds and nectar for the hummingbirds and bees. Yes, we have bees and hummingbirds in the winter who frequent this section of the garden. It amazes me every time I see the birds hovering over those small little flowers but they must be gathering some food or they wouldn’t come back. I also love leaving this section of lavender because when the sun hits those plants it produces a sweet smell that reminds me that summer will come again.
It can’t all be about the animals, birds, and insects.
I have another post that I will share in the next few weeks showing some more sheltering spots in our yard that may inspire you to try your hand at a winter garden for wildlife.
December 2012 – Weather and Climate
We have reached the last newsletter of 2012 and the fourth topic in our series of nature study topics from the Handbook of Nature Study. (See bottom of this post for the proposed plan of nature study for 2013.) Hopefully you have all been able to participate at least once a month and this month everyone can complete a weather study and some of the fun additional activities that will be planned for each Friday.
Contents of this edition of the newsletter include:
Nature study and high school biology – 2 articles (one is mine and one is from a veteran OHC participant)
Article showing how a family in the UK overcomes weather related stumbling blocks to nature study
2 articles contributed by OHC family members showing how a study of the weather relates to real life
December Study Grid and Bookmark – Weather Themed
Weather Themed Notebook Page
Nature Table ideas for a weather theme
Show and Tell, Favorite Links, Winter Bundle Special Offer
Thank You Offer for the More Nature Study Bundle
I have attached the newsletter download link to the bottom of my blog feed so if you are a subscriber you will receive the link to the latest newsletter at the bottom of every post for the month of December. If you haven’t subscribed yet, you can still subscribe and receive the newsletter link in the next post that comes to your email box. You can subscribe to my blog by filling in your email address in the subscription box on my sidebar.
Note: You can download your newsletter from the link in two ways:
If your link is clickable, right click the link and then “save link as” to save the file on your computer.
If the link is not clickable, cut and paste the link to your browser, open, and then save your newsletter to your computer.
For those that are curious, I will post the proposed list of topics by month so you can plan ahead and anticipate what is in store for the coming months. Of course, this is my plan but it is subject to change…hopefully things will proceed as planned but you never know.
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