Autumn in our part of the world has been very mild and sunny. We would have a few days of rain and then the sunshine would be back to draw us outdoors again. Our garden has never been so tidy and neat for the autumn season. We have been able to work in some new bulbs and replant our deck containers. The leaves have fallen in small batches so we have easily kept up with the raking and composting.
That all changed this week.
We had wind and lots of rain. The leaves fell from the trees like crazy and made big mounds in the street gutters. At last, it seemed like a true autumn. The leaves made beautiful mosaics of color on the ground.
My husband sees the leaves differently since has spent the last few weeks being able to keep up with the leaves that fell.
Now he is overwhelmed.
It really is a case of whether you see the glass half full or half empty.
I see the colors and shapes as an inspiration so I run inside to find my camera and to capture the moment.
Here are some more of the images I was able to gather from my yard on this beautiful autumn morning.
This is on the side yard where in the spring I have my daffodils.
Kona was glad to be able to get outdoors with her ball between rain storms.
The birds have cleaned out this birdfeeder in less than a day. This time of year I need to fill them up more often for the finches, sparrows, nuthatches, juncos, towhees, and jays that come to enjoy their daily seeds.
Kona doesn’t see the problem with the piles of leaves since exploring the yard and sniffing the smells of autumn delight her and she never tires of it. She is an optimist like me.
I am going to take the colors from these images and make a color palette in my nature journal…yellows, greens, browns, reds, purples, and oranges. Watercolor crayons or pencils? I will share my colorful mosaic when I finish.
Hooray for mammals! I loved reading all the mammal entries for the month. For those that didn’t get a chance to work on a mammal study, remember that these challenges are not seasonal and you can pick them up whenever you find a mammal of interest. I am hoping that this whole year’s worth of challenges will be studies you will do over and over throughout all your homeschooling years as the opportunity arises.
There are also quite a few entries in the Potpourri section that carryover from last month’s tree study. I invite you to read and comment on those entries as well.
Mammal Grid Study
Cristy from Crafty Cristy found two interesting mammals to observe up close -the dolphin and the horse: Mammal Study for the OHC. I think dolphins qualify as a “mammal that swims” and they got to observe the horses fur both by touch and sight. Excellent!
Shirley Ann from Under an English Sky submits their OHC November Grid Study entry for you to read. You don’t want to miss this entry and their special clay mammal project. I love this idea!
Squirrels and Other Rodents
Shirley Ann from Under an English Sky writes about their OHC Mammal Study #2 – Squirrels and this is packed with fun information and images. Love a good squirrel study!
Celeste from Joyous Lessons put together the account of their squirrel investigation for the carnival: Squirrel Signs. I think they did some great thinking after observing some scratches on the tree trunk.
Sarah from Granwood Explores shares their mammal study for this month: Beavers – America’s Largest Rodent. They did a terrific job on this study and I appreciate that they are going to keep it going over the winter. Want to know what the word fossorial means? Read their entry!
Signs of Mammals
Robin from Academia has written up their Signs of Mammals entry and would love for your to pop over and see all the interesting things they found. They have a fantastic collection of tracks to share so don’t miss those!
Lisa from What We Do shares their Signs of Mammals. They found quite a few things on their walk, including a huge groundhog hole! Fun entry.
Mammal List
Shirley Ann from Under an English Sky shares their OHC Mammal Study #1 – Hedgehog with carnival readers. What an interesting study and she shares some great facts and a video!
Nadene from Practical Pages has written up their mammal study: Journal Mammals. We get a glimpse into their South African farm animals through her daughters words and Nadene’s journals. Inspiring!
Jennifer from Royal Little Lambs has an entry from last month’s focus on trees: Autumn Trees and Leaves. They did leaf rubbings in a little book as a follow up to their outdoor time….and a little poetry. Great job!
Michelle from Following Footprints shares their last two challenges in the Getting Started series: Outdoor Hour Challenge #9-Small Square and Outdoor Hour Challenge #10-Picnic. Michelle has done a great job of working through all ten challenges and I see such progress with her children and her thinking. What a great example!
Barbara from The Schoolhouse on the Prairie has submitted their Enjoying Fall entry with lots of fun ideas and images from their tree study. Love the smiling faces in this entry!
Heidi from Home Schoolroom put together their Nature Study-Focusing on Trees entry for us all to savor. She has pulled together lots of great ideas from the OHC to learn more about trees and more. She also shares some tips on nature tables that I think you will love to read.
Jen from Snowfall Academy shares their entry: Our Tree Study-Autumn Follow Up. Wonderful to see their European entry and see their nature journals, including her daughter’s final stanza in her seasonal tree poem.
Makita from Academia Celestia shares two entries with the carnival.The Science of Bee-Keeping – I am so glad to see someone studying a subject near and dear to my heart…love bees! Acorns from Harvest to Food – She shares a really interesting study of acorns, including foods made with acorns. I have tasted acorn cakes before but they had quite a variety of items.
Don’t forget to share your blog entries with the Outdoor Hour Challenge Blog Carnival. All entries done in December are eligible for the next edition. The deadline for entries is 12/30/12 and you can send them directly to me: harmonyfinearts@yahoo.com or submit them at the blog carnival site (link on the sidebar of my blog).
I love the way this image came out with the gray sky as the background and then the shapes of the sticker balls and leaves.
The bird watching in our neighborhood has significantly improved with cooler weather. The number and variety of birds has been amazing! Every day I end up with my camera and binoculars viewing some new bird visitor….in my feeder, under my feeder, in the berry bushes, in the pistache tree, in the birch tree, in the sweet gum tree.
This was obviously on another day when we had crystal clear skies. This Western bluebird and many of his friends were eating the fruits of the pistache tree. These are such pretty birds and they always seem to come in a flock.
I love it when I load the photos onto my desktop and I find I have captured a “moment”. This is another Western bluebird image showing his magnificent wings and ability to grab a bite to eat on the fly. Love it!
Here is another one of those surprise images. I think this is a starling and I love the way it shows his legs and feet and speckled belly.
We had a couple of days this month when we had turkey vultures by the tens all soaring over our house. All of those black specks are turkey vultures just soaring and swirling around. We looked it up on the internet and there is an official name for this….a kettle of turkey vultures.
We also had one day where the sparrows came by the hundreds to eat at our feeders, in the trees, and on the street as well. It was an amazing sight. We have been counting birds as part of Project Feederwatch a couple of days a week.
Here is my list:
House sparrows
House finches
White-crowned sparrows
Dark eyed juncos
Titmouse
Anna’s hummingbirds
Lesser goldfinches
Spotted towhees
Western bluebirds
White-breasted nuthatches
Cedar waxwings
American robins
Mourning doves
European starlings
Next month one of the Outdoor Hour Challenges is to note how the weather affects animals and birds in our neighborhood. This will be a fun way to see how our autumn birds stack up against other seasons.
Outdoor Hour Challenge:
This is our last mammal challenge of the month. For this challenge, you can start a life list of mammals using the running list notebook page in my freebie section. Print the page and insert it into your nature journal. Start recording every mammal you observe and keep the list going as long as possible. Printable Notebook Page My Mammal List: You can use this printable page instead of the running list notebook page if you wish to keep your mammal list by season. Reprint this page for every season and then compare your lists.
Getting Started Suggestion:
If you already own the Getting Started ebook, the challenge this week is the same as Outdoor Hour Challenge #5. This challenge in the ebook gives you some ideas for lists for your nature journal and a printable notebook page to use if you would like.
I want to thank my loyal readers who nominated and voted for me in the 2012 Homeschool Blog Awards. I feel the same way that I did last year about the award….this is truly a community award to all those who participate each month in the Outdoor Hour Challenge Blog Carnival, sharing your experiences and inspiring me to keep going with this blog.
This will be my last year as a homeschooler so next year this award will go to one of my readers, I just know it. Keep sharing your nature study experiences and encouraging other families to get outside. No matter what the future holds for this blog, the newsletter, and the Outdoor Hour Challenge, I know that all we have done together is testament to the power of spending just a few minutes outside each week.
Thank you again for your support and encouragement.
Check the up coming newsletter for a special offer as my additional way of thanking you.
Squirrel nature study happens quite frequently at our house. We tend to have squirrels that are not shy about making themselves at home in our birdfeeders and in our trees, especially the walnut tree. I knew we had a squirrel challenge to complete this month so I have been waiting for one to come along to observe. Wouldn’t you know it? We could hear them chattering up in the tree a few times over the past few weeks but we have not actually seen our resident squirrels.
Our Outdoor Time
Kona and I completed this squirrel challenge on our own today…it was a drizzly, gray day. Kona is the squirrel hunter in our family and she will chase them along the fence line and watch them from the base of the tree. She loves a good squirrel chase. Today though there was no squirrel around.
We made use of our time by trying to find some signs of squirrels. We found quite a few walnut shells which are dead giveaway. We looked up in the tree but we couldn’t see any squirrels up there. We made our way around to the side of the house and the birdfeeder where the squirrels sometimes sit and munch on seeds. No squirrels today.
We then went around the side of the house and we saw some tracks in the mud. I think they are cat tracks.
One last tree to check out…nope, no squirrels today.
Well, we didn’t see a squirrel to observe but we ended up really enjoying our time outside. I gathered a colorful leaf bouquet, watched a flock of finches in the feeder (post to come), and we got some fresh air before it really started to rain. Successful….yes!
I did pull out the field guide and look up squirrels and read through the pages. Mr. B and I will be keeping our eyes out for squirrels as the month goes by and once the leaves are all down for the season I know we will be able to see more clearly when we hear the squirrels chattering.
Don’t forget you can study any rodent this month and there is a free printable notebook page for you to use with your Handbook of Nature Study.Rodents included in the Handbook of Nature Studyare the muskrat, house mouse, woodchuck, red squirrel, and the chipmunk.
“The alert field naturalist learns to look for signs of mammals, even where there is little likelihood of seeing the animals themselves. He becomes an expert at interpreting tracks in mud, dust, or snow; at analyzing scats; at recognizing claw marks, gnaw marks, nests, houses, mounds, ridges, food piles, and other telltale indicators.” Complete Field Guide to American Wildlife by Henry Hill Collins
Outdoor Hour Challenge:
For this nature study challenge we will be looking for signs of mammals. You can look for mammal tracks, holes, scratches on tree trunks, scat, hollows in the trunk of a tree, burrow, holes in the lawn.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.
We always enjoy following tracks to see where they will lead…this is especially fun in the snow! Make a mental note to try this activity the next time you have snow in your area.
I am highly recommending this book from Amazon.com:Tracks, Scats and Signs.
I know many of you own it already and now would be the perfect time to pull it off the shelf. It is also contained in this book if you own this one instead: Fun With Nature: Take Along Guide.
Printable Notebook Page
Mammal Letter Notebook Page:After your Outdoor Hour time, write a letter to a friend or relative and tell them about your experiences. You can share anything you observed including any mammals or signs of mammals that you found. Include a sketch of your mammal, the tracks you saw, or tell a story about a mammal. If you saw some tracks, explain how you think the tracks got there. Was the animal looking for food? Finding a place to hide? You can make a copy of your letter and put it in your nature journal.
Getting Started Suggestion:
If you already own the Getting Started ebook, use the suggestions in Outdoor Hour Challenge #1 for your Outdoor Hour time. Although we are looking for signs of mammals this week, make sure to follow up any interest that comes from your time outdoors. You can use the notebook page provided in the ebook to record your experience or you can use the suggestion above to write a letter to a friend or relative about your experience. Above all, enjoy a few minutes outside in your own backyard or neighborhood.
We have fallen into a nice rhythm with the grid study printable from the monthly newsletter. For November and the mammal grid, we decided to print and place it into our nature journal as a reminder of things we could be on the lookout for as we go about our outdoor time during the month.
I had prepared a page to record my observations using the ideas from my Watercolor Block Nature Journal entry. I didn’t want to use another page so I made the grid a “flap” by taping one edge into the journal so you can lift it up and still see what is underneath.
Of course you can just adhere the grid onto a page if you want to and not worry about making a flap.
I pulled our mammal resources off the shelf- field guide to California mammals, field guide to the Sierra Nevada, and my track finder reference. Sometimes just gathering a few resources will spark a new interest in a nature study area you have covered before. This was the case for our family this month. We paged through the field guide, looking at the illustrations and discussing which animals we have seen and which animals we hoped to see in the future.
I added a short list of “hope to see” mammals in my nature journal. We realized that if we were ever going to actually see these animals in the wild we would need to do some more research about where they live, what their tracks look like, and then what their identifying features are.
Of course, none of the mammals on our list is in the Handbook of Nature Study so we are gleaning from books we have on our shelves and from the internet. I wrote our plan for preparation in my nature journal…good reminders since we will be spending a few days up in the mountains later this season and it would be the perfect time to do some observations. There may even be some snow to look for tracks!
Example of the free mammal notebook page available here on my blog.
I printed a few of the mammal notebook pages from my Freebies page and I have them all ready to go when we have a chance to observe any of the mammals from our list. I think we will use the field guide to fill in most of the factual parts of the page but them leave the observation part blank.
I think we are off to a great start on our focus on mammals for the month!
Tree study brings such a greater understanding of the cycles of life in our own backyards as we watch the changes, growth, and means of reproducing in each tree we focus on. We learn more about the animals and other creatures that live in the tree, on the tree, and use the tree for shelter or food. It gives us a way to measure time and to anticipate the coming changes.
Learning one tree at a time is an easy way to ease into nature study if you haven’t done so yet. Let your child pick a tree in your yard or neighborhood. Even if you live in a big city you can find a tree that you walk past on a regular basis, perhaps at the library, post office, or grocery store. You can make it a casual study or more in-depth and even just finding out the name of a tree can be enough to get you started.
Here are the trees we have done a formal study of since starting this project: Oak Tree 2007-2008 Sweet Gum 2008-2009 Tulip Tree 2010-2011 Birch Tree 2011-2012
Now we are continuing our study of the Cottonwood tree that we started back in July 2012: For the Love of Trees. We do not have a cottonwood in our yard but there are a few around town that we have noticed. We picked a particular tree back in July and we decided to revisit it now that the season has changed.
Autumn 2012 – Cottonwood
Our cottonwood has just begun to change color and drop its leaves. I drive past this tree every week or so and I think it will be fun for us to watch and see when it looses all its leaves as the season marches on.
Here are a few of the leaves and their color. As a sidenote, now that I know what a cottonwood tree looks like and the shape of the leaves, I am seeing more and more of them as we go about our travels in our area. I can also tell by the way the leaves blow and shimmer on the trees.
We didn’t see any birds or other animals in our tree. There wasn’t any “cotton” around this time to observe. I did collect a few leaves to press and a few to add to our nature table which is getting quite crowded. I think I need to sort through and see if I can take off a few things.
Now we will be anxious to complete our study for the winter season and see what changes there are in our cottonwood. You are always welcome to join in with a year-long tree study of your own: See this entry for some ideas on how to get started: For the Love of Treesor this Four Seasons Tree Photo Project.
I am submitting this entry to the Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival and if you have any entries you would like to submit, you can send them to this email address: charlottemasonblogs@gmail.com. The official blog carnival site is not working so you will need to send them directly to this email.
It is that time of year again! Time to start counting birds in your feeders and joining thousands of other families in reporting your data to Cornell University.
Project Feederwatch officially starts on November 10, 2012. How about a short explanatory video?
This is a project that your whole family can participate in and enjoy over the next few months. It is easy to get started by visiting the Project Feederwatch website. You can download their free instructional handbook: Project Feederwatch.
We completed our first year of Project Feederwatch last year and it was something that we totally enjoyed doing. You can see our December list of birds and some of our bird images in this entry: December Bird List With Two New Birds!
I know that participating in this project helped us learn more about our local birds, we got better at identifying our feeder birds, and we discovered some new feathered friends. Oh, and we helped Cornell University in their bird research at the same time!
Many of you participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count each year and Project Feederwatch is a way to take that experience and build on it. The commitment is very similar except that you count birds two days in a row each week (you pick the days) and then turn in your data using a personal ID number. Project Feederwatch keeps track of your results.
There is a $15 participation fee but with that you receive a big packet of information and a bird poster to hang on your wall. You can sign up here: Project Feederwatch.
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 above to pop over there now).
Free Resource!
One last resource that you can download for free: Winter Bird Highlights. I think this is an awesome resource and I have enjoyed reading it and it has me all fired up for some bird watching and counting!
by Henry Hill Collins
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