Updated 2017: This challenge was originally written for the first day of autumn 2010 but it can easily be done on any day and in any year. I hope you enjoy learning more about your early autumn world using the ideas and the printable in this challenge.
It is really hard to believe that it is already time for the fall color and fall weather. We have had an unusual summer as far as weather and growing seasons so it should be interesting to see how the autumn months unfold.
As a way to get us thinking about the change of the seasons with our children, here is a bonus challenge you can complete on the first day of Autumn, September 22nd, 2010.
Some signs to look for:
Dry grass and weeds
Seeds
Wildflowers-thistles, goldenrod
Birds eating at feeders or flying overhead to migrate
Chilly morning temperatures or dew on the grass
Fruit ripe on trees
Insects or webs
Nuts, acorns, or berries
Clouds and wind
You can use theSigns of Autumn notebook page to record your signs of autumn or you can use your own nature journal. I put together a Squidoo Lens from last year’s autumn nature/art study where you might glean some more information and inspiration this season.
Here are some ideas from year-long nature study topics we have done in the past:
The Star thistle is in full bloom and if I even see a hint of it in my hard it comes out. I do not think I will develop a loving relationship with this weed/wildflower like I did with the mullein.
They are pretty though with their happy yellow flowers. I will enjoy the view as long as it is out along our walking trail but not in my yard.
I will also enjoy the star thistle in my nature journal. 🙂
Autumn Series #1 Nature Journal-How To Get Started
“A field notebook may be made a joy to the pupil and a help to the teacher.” Handbook of Nature Study, page 13
Inside Preparation Work:
Read in the Handbook of Nature Study pages 13-15 (The Field Notebook). In this section Anna Botsford Comstock helps us with a detailed description of her idea of a field notebook or nature journal. She also states that if done properly “they represent what cannot be bought or sold, personal experience in the happy world of out-of-doors”. Make note of any suggestions you want to implement with your children.
Read page 17 in the Handbook of Nature Study (The Correlation of Nature Study and Drawing). Highlight the points that will help you with your nature journals. “Too much have we emphasized drawing as an art; it may be an art, if the one who draws is an artist; but if he is not an artist, he still has a right to draw if it pleases him to do so.”
Decide what kind of nature journal or nature notebook you will be keeping for this series of challenges. Some families prefer a blank journal to record sketches, words, and images. With this series of challenges there are notebook pages provided for each challenge and these can be inserted into a three ring binder. Some families combine blank pages with notebook pages to give variety to their nature journals and keep it in three ring binder as well. If you would like more ideas about nature journals, examples of pages, and links to more resources, you can visit my Hubpage for more information: Nature Journals-Tips for Simple Journals.
Outdoor Hour Time:
For this challenge you are going to spend 15 minutes outdoors with your children in your own yard. Take a walk around your yard or down your own street. Enjoy being outdoors. Look up at the sky, look under rocks, listen carefully for sounds, touch some leaves, sit in the grass, stand under a tree, smell a flower, collect some acorns, and just see what happens. Remember you are building your child’s powers of observation and trying to stir up some interest. Keep your words and attitude positive. If you have younger children you may need start off with just 5 minutes of outdoor time for nature study but you can gradually build up to 15 minutes or more.
“She should say frankly, ‘I do not know; let us see if we cannot together find out this mysterious thing.’ She thus conveys the right impression, that only a little about the intricate life of plants and animals is yet know; and at the same time she makes her pupils feel the thrill and zest of investigation. Nor will she lose their respect if she does it in the right spirit.” Handbook of Nature Study, page 4
Follow-Up Activity:
After you come inside, take a few minutes to follow up on any interest your child has from his observations outdoors. Listen and take note of any future nature study subjects you can cultivate from their comments. Offer to help them sketch something they observed into their nature journal and help them find a few words to describe their outdoor time. Start small and as time passes your child will have more and more to record in their journals. You can use the general notebook page provided in the Autumn 2010 ebook or your own blank nature journal to record your outdoor time.
If you would like, pull out your Handbook of Nature Study and see if the item your child is interested in is listed in the index. If it is, look up the information for yourself and then relate interesting facts to the children sometime during the next week. You can also look up information at the public library and share some books on their topic of interest. Remember it is okay to say that you don’t know the answer to a question they have but you can model how to find the answer as you gain confidence in your own nature study knowledge.
If you would like to own this ebook, it is part of the Ultimate Naturalist Library for members. You can find more details on how to get your own membership here: Join Us!
This is a visitor we had at our back door a few summers ago. We had a family of skunks and a couple of raccoons that frequented our backyard in the evenings all that long summer. The raccoon would stand at our door and look in until we would chase him off…..this is when we started keeping our cat’s food dish inside. We knew he was eating the food because he would wash the kibble in the water dish, making the water brown and his footprints would lead from the dish off to the edge of the deck.
Last summer was the summer of the skunk in our neighborhood. Just about every night we would smell the fragrance of skunk coming in the windows. This summer….nothing. No skunks at all that I have seen or smelled. What a relief! But also now that I think about it, sort of interesting and curious. Now that we have no grass in the front yard it will probably mean we no longer have a skunk digging around for something to eat….didn’t think about that aspect of our yard remodel.
Mr. B and I have spent more than the usual amount of time outdoors at night the past few weeks as part of his astronomy study. I don’t think we have heard any mammals around the yard except for our cats. We listened to crickets the other night as we sat and watched the stars. A friend of ours said they had a mountain lion on their property last week! I am happy to report we do not have a mountain lion this year like we did last year in our neighborhood. It went around knocking trash cans over and making messes on trash night.
That reminds me of a conversation we had when we were camping at Yosemite in July. My boys and I were talking about whether we were more afraid of bears or mountain lions. We all agreed that in our experience bears were far less intimidating than a mountain lion. I thought that was interesting and we talked a lot about why we were more afraid of the mountain lion. We talked about how bears appear and go about their quest looking for food. If you stay out of their way, they usually just go about their business. Mountain lions seem to be all teeth and claws and if you have heard one scream, well, it is frightening. The one in our neighborhood sounded like a loud baby crying….it totally creeped me out. It was almost as eerie as a coyote howling.
Well, that is our mammal post to wrap up our summer nature study series. We are anxious to start the autumn challenges. My husband and I have sat down to plan some field trips to enhance our studies. We may revisit bats this fall since they seem to be out in record numbers this week. There is also a resident squirrel that needs some observations and journals recorded. We realized too that we have not done a formal study of our frequent guest at the feeder, the white-breasted nuthatch so that may get done alongside our autumn bird study for the challenge.
Thank you to everyone who helped make this summer series of nature study a great success and joy.
I have had a backlog of wildflowers from our summer travels that need to be identified. These happy yellow flowers were alongside the road in northern California on the Lost Coast back in June. I stopped the car alongside the road that was running parallel to the ocean and took these photos.
They had the unusual white sticky stuff on the plants which I thought would make it easy to identify but just yesterday, while looking for something else, I found what I think is the correct identification.
The region of California that I live in gets very dry and hot in the summer. We rarely have rain between early June and late October…it is our “drought” season. Pretty much by now all the wildflowers and grasses are brown and very dry.
This is a typical landscape along our walking trail.
But with willing eyes, you can find beauty even within this dry landscape.
These are such pretty white dried-up flowers and they are everywhere right now.
Oh, see those clouds in the top photo? Not a drop of rain that day….just lots of ominous looking clouds. I was hoping we would get a shower to water the garden but I had to go out and hand water as usual.
Looking forward to another week that promises to be a little cooler.
The last few years with the Outdoor Hour Challenge have been a wonderful way to intensify nature study in our family. I know for a fact that if I had not been writing and sharing so much on this blog that our nature study might not have been so enriching and consistent. The community that has developed surrounding the Outdoor Hour Challenges has encouraged our family tremendously in our attempts to keep a love of nature study alive…I could not have done what I have done without many, many faithful readers and contributors to the Outdoor Hour Challenges.
On the personal side, Friday is always looming for me with another challenge to post and then there is the need for me to post our results. After much thought and reflection, I see our family skipping many opportunities for nature study that come up each week because it is not the assignment for the week. I feel more and more like nature study is a job and not the joy I want it to be.
I have two years left with my sons at home. Two years for them to have me as their nature study companion and me to have them as a captive audience. I don’t want to miss the chance to make nature study a meaningful part of their lives, not just another school assignment.
I also realize that I am miss the balancing part of my personality, the artistic side. I look at my art supplies sitting so near but I know my hands are busy with the computer and my heart is divided. I have one son who has a creative soul and I need some time to spend with him not only in developing his love of beauty through nature study but lots of free time and play with paints and other art supplies.
So after much thought, reflection, and prayer I have decided a few things will change, if not in practice at least in my attitude. I am wise enough to know when I need to shift gears and make a few changes. I think that comes with turning 48 years old this year….yes, I am really close to the half century mark.
The blog will not look much different for you dear readers until perhaps January once the Autumn Challenges are completed. I have some amazing ideas to work on in the meantime and I will share my list of things that I brainstormed regarding the blog and the Outdoor Hour Challenges below. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me: harmonyfinearts@yahoo.com.
To Summarize My Thoughts and Intentions
I will still be here this season with the Autumn Series of Outdoor Hour Challenges, posting on Fridays and sharing lots of great stuff with you and reading what your families are up to as you complete the Autumn Challenges. You will still have my complete support and attention.
I will be posting the Outdoor Hour Challenge Blog Carnival on the first of the month. There is nothing but joy associated with this project.
There will not be a new 2011 Winter Series of Outdoor Hour Challenges ebook. There are already two complete series of challenges available both in ebook format and listed on the blog as the Winter Wednesday series. I am still contemplating whether to write a new Winter 2011 Art and Music Appreciation ebook.
I will still be sharing what our family does with the Handbook of Nature Study as the opportunities arise and our nature study takes shape again.
Rest assured my brain is still formulating a new idea. The idea has been simmering for quite some time and I may be ready next spring to actually share with you some exciting new ways to more creative nature study and journals.
I have two new products to review and a giveaway in the works. Stay tuned for that in the next month or so….you will not want to miss them.
There is plenty to do around this blog to keep any family busy for a very long time. I just took an inventory of what is available on the blog sidebar for you to use with your family.
52 original Outdoor Hour Challenges
8 Bird Challenges
7 Crop Plant Challenges
Autumn 2009 Challenges =10
Winter 2010 Challenges =10
Spring 2010 Challenges =10
Summer 2010 Challenges =12
Autumn 2010 Challenges =10 (not listed yet but they will be over the next few months)
Winter Wednesday Challenges =9
That is a total of 128 challenges you can complete with your family!
So, there you have my thoughts for the week, month, and rest of the year. 🙂
I love what I do here on this blog and I am not going anywhere, just taking a different approach.
Mullein in our garden is about the only thing that is totally native and grows without any help or water from me. In the past, I dug it up and got rid of it but now I am converted. I leave it alone. It is rather pretty when it blossoms and the lesson in the Handbook of Nature Study has given me a new appreciation for this plant. (The lesson starts on page 537 and the study is Lesson 146.)
We actually studied mullein a little bit a few years ago and you can read about it here: Mullein.
After watching it grow in the garden, we realize now that it grows one year and blooms the next. This means that next year we will have loads of flowers from the many plants I have left in the garden this season. I am anxious to see how they survive the winter.
One thing that intrigued us from the lesson in the Handbook of Nature Study is the information on the “felt” of the leaves and stem. Anna Botsford Comstock suggests looking at it under a microscope. So….we did that and it was beautiful and enlightening. We could clearly see that the felt is actually a mat of sharp little spikes. The Handbook says that this felt also helps keep the water in the leaves from evaporating.
I have begun to open my eyes to native plants and the concept of weed vs. wildflower. There is always something new to learn about and to appreciate if we are open to the beauty right under our very own noses.
I have been going through all my photos from the summer, organizing and printing. I found several sets that I haven’t shared on the blog yet. These photos are from a dinner picnic we had at the lake. My daughter and I enjoyed a little time with watercolor pencils and paper….
Same subject, different perspectives. I love how we each have a different view but both are spectacular.
I have been neglecting my garden. I confess it and I admit it. The herbs are going to blossom and then seed because I am not cutting them regularly. (These are garlic chives.)
My strawberry patch turned brown because of lack of water but here it is coming back to life after two weeks of daily attention.
Okay…is this the prettiest little pink flower ever? I filled a couple of empty pots up with some sort of succulents from Home Depot at the beginning of the summer. I did not realize when I got this one that it would have these pretty flowers come the August heat. Gorgeous. There were about ten flowers blooming at a time on each of the plants. Wish I could remember what kind of plant this is and I would give it to all my friends. I will have to check Home Depot next time I am there.
Our sunflowers this year were quite disappointing. They bloomed for a day or two and then immediately turned brown and shriveled up. After last year’s bumper crop, we felt like we hardly had any at all to count bees on for the Great Sunflower Project. This is the Lemon Sunflower which I have come to love for its big yellow petals.
We are still picking tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, and zucchini from our garden but nearly as many as normal. The squirrels are eating or dropping all the walnuts from the tree and making a huge mess. I have already started my fall garden clean-up which is very early for us.
Our attention has been in our front yard, remodeling to remove the water thirsty grass and replacing it with plants that need less water. We removed a tree and put in a retaining wall while we were at it.
Here is the before photo:
Here is where we are now:
We are hoping to finish the basics and fill in with plants and pavers as we have time and money. My husband and the boys are doing all the work themselves. I will write up some future entries with exactly the process we have worked through to get where we are in the remodel.
That wraps up this garden update. There is always something to do and something to plan for the garden isn’t there?
