We braved a few raindrops and took to the walking trail this afternoon. The weather held out so we could enjoy the abundance of wildflowers.
Although this is an invasive plant in our area, it is just amazing right now. This Scotch broom or Common broom is bursting with color.
Just look at that color in this close-up. Does it look like a “noxious weed” to you? I know that it disturbs the ecosystem but it very pretty to look at…sigh.
And here is the first of the season….usually a long season in our area. Our Queen Anne’s Lace is in its usual spot right on the side of a particular spot on the trail.
Outdoor Hour Challenge
Spring Series #8Reptile Study-Snakes
“There are abroad in the land many erroneous beliefs concerning snakes. Most people believe that they are all venomous which is far from true. The rattlesnake still holds its own in rocky, mountainous places, and the moccasin haunts the bayous of the southern coast; however, in most localities, snakes are not only harmless but are beneficial to the farmer.” Handbook of Nature Study, page 193
Inside Preparation Time:
Snakes are a topic that most children are interested in learning more about. Read pages 193-194 in the Handbook of Nature Study. Make sure to highlight perhaps four or five points that you want to relate to your children before you observe a snake. Our local pet shop always has a few snakes available and they are eager to let us take a look and perhaps even hold one or two. Check around and see if you can find a local pet shop or a zoo that has a good reptile display as part of this Outdoor Hour Challenge.
Choose one or two snakes to learn about that you may find in your local area (Lessons 49-51)
Garter or Garden Snake pages 194-196 (This snake is the most widely distributed snake in North America.)
Milk Snake or Spotted Adder pages 197-198
Water Snake pages 198-199
Various snakes discussed with images pages 200-203
Outdoor Hour Time:
It is rare to observe snakes in the wild. This challenge is more about general knowledge and arming ourselves with some truths about a creature that perhaps we might encounter at some point in our lives.
You have two choices.
1. Take a field trip to a pet shop or zoo to observe a snake in real life. You may also know someone who has a pet snake that would be willing to let you observe their snake. Make sure to complete the inside preparation work before you go so you have some facts about snakes ready to share.
2. Talk about where a snake would live in your local area. You might need to do a little research for your particular state. Spend 15 minutes outdoors playing snake detective carefully looking for signs of snakes. You will be successful even if you just enjoy your backyard and observe anything that your child finds of interest. The most important thing is to get outdoors!
Follow-Up Activity:
Complete a notebook page for any or all of the snakes you researched during your preparation work or you observed up close. You can use the provided notebook page from the Spring Series ebook or a blank nature journal. You can look up your snake on the internet and use the image found there to draw your snake for your journal. Make sure to show the colors of your snake as best you can.
If you would like all the Spring Series Challenges in one place, I have an ebook gathered for you to purchase for your convenience. The ebook also contains art and music appreciation plans for the spring months as well as custom notebooking pages for each of the challenges. Please see this entry for more details: Spring Nature Study with Art and Music Appreciation
Our last hike took us to a new area of our local mountains. Hiking along we noticed several new wildflowers. I was anxious to get home to look them up in the field guide.
What a wonderful way to learn about a new area by getting to know its wildflowers. I marvel at each new creation that I see. These two new wildflowers now are safely recorded in my nature journal.
Has anyone else noticed that there are a lot of bees this year? It seems to me that our garden is just alive with bees and perhaps we have added enough flowering plants to attract more bees or there really are more bees like I am imagining.
In our hiking around the countryside, I have noticed more wildflowers this year as well. The clover is everywhere and perhaps with the abundance of flowers, there is a relationship with the number of bees.
I’m tired after a really busy weekend. Spring weather and the call to be outdoors getting dirt under my fingernails kept us busy, busy, busy.
Here are a few images to share a few glimpses into our weekend.
Our resident squirrel in the birdfeeder. I love his tail.
Harvesting the radishes and the first round of onions.
Blueberries growing so round and plump.
Lavender that is alive with bees.
The first round of weeding around the garden boxes is complete thanks to Mr. A. He and I have been working diligently at getting the weeds under control before the warm weather sets in for good. The boxes are all ready for the seedlings we have been nursing upstairs.
We found this guy when we were working in the roses. It was perfect timing since I am working on a cricket challenge for the Summer Series ebook. We were able to do some up close observations before we left him comfortably back on the rose bush.
Edit to add: K left me a comment saying that there is an ovipositor so my he is really a she. Thanks K.
No one says that hard work in the garden does not have its rewards. Yummy first strawberries were picked and eaten. The best ever end to a long weekend outdoors, except for maybe the grilled burgers my dear husband made us for dinner which we ate outside on our deck.
Hope you all had some time to get outdoors and enjoy whatever your world offered this weekend. I know that some of you have written to say that you don’t have an apple tree to study but you could just as well study any tree you find in the Handbook of Nature Study as a substitute or you could do a general apple study using some apples you have on hand. If all else fails, spend fifteen minutes outdoors with your children and enjoy whatever comes your way.
Our new apple tree’s blossoms. Photo from 4/22/10 taken by my son Mr. A.
Our study took a turn when we had a huge rainstorm and an inch of snow a few days later. Our weather has been very unstable so we had to postpone our plans to observe our own newly planted apple tree and then drive up the road from our house where there are apple orchards by the acre.
We were finally able to do both parts of the study yesterday.
First our tree….this is the first year we are observing this tree. It had blossoms some time ago but now I am assuming these are the baby apples.
The leaves are a nice texture and we found quite a few bugs crawling on the branches. My husband used the garden hose to spray them off and today they were still not back.
This particular tree has had different kinds of apples grafted onto one trunk. Gravenstein, Fuji, Red Delicious, and a Rome.
It will be interesting to watch this tree mature.
Now for our drive to the apple orchard.
The sky was amazing with its white billowy clouds. My boys actually told me to stop and take a photo….as we stopped the car we realized that there was a field of sweet smelling lupine on the other side of the road.
What a delight and a surprise to see this sight right near-by our home.
The orchards are all green and no longer full of blossoms.
It seems as if you could walk down the rows and feel the apples growing on the trees. I love apples.
Typing up this entry and viewing these photos makes me think that spring really is here. I can see it in the photos. Hooray for spring!
Just another note: I have seriously been lacking in my posting on this blog this week because of the time I am devoting to writing the Summer Series of Outdoor Hour Challenges. There is just so much to research and to pull together so we will have a wonderful adventure this summer with the challenges. I am really looking forward to sharing my new ideas with you soon.
Friday we took a long afternoon hike to the river near our house. This is our usual trail but we went the entire distance to see how high the river is with some of the spring runoff from the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The wildflowers are amazing right now…here are a few favorites.
This was really the star of the wildflowers on this particular hike, mustang clover. This flower is blanketing the hillsides. What a show!
Here is a photo of it along the trail.
The other wildflower making its glorious appearance is the California poppy.
We made it to the bottom of the river canyon and realized our beach is completely covered in water right now. We had to be content to sit on the rocks and watch the water rush by.
On the way back up, we stopped for a break in the shade. The insects were buzzing and we even saw our first mosquitoes of the season.
Here is a new to me wildflower on this trail, purple monkeyflower. There was a patch growing right along the trail on a moist bank.
I also saw for the very first time on this trail some pearly everlasting.
Two new wildflowers to add to our running list for this trail.
Hope you enjoyed seeing our outing. We definitely had a wonderful time on this spring afternoon.
This is our third season for studying our little patch of cattails. Actually, we are watching two different patches, one patch around the corner from our house and one on our regular walking trail. They both have sprung to life over the last few weeks.
The first spot….
This area is alongside the road and it has been easy to watch the cattails growth as we drive by a few times a week. We actually walked over to do our observations of the cattails so we could take our time and really look at them up close. Well, so much for getting up close. The grasses are about chest high and the ground is sloppy wet. The creek is running and everything is so green! We compared these photos with the ones we took in the winter and it is amazing how different the surroundings are for our little cattail patch.
Here I zoomed in with the camera a little so you can see the cattails but as far as getting close to examine them, no way. We will have to watch and see when the water levels go down and then make an update.
The second patch is green and ankle deep in water, so muddy that none of us wanted to wade over to investigate further. We did hear some red-winged blackbirds and some robins near-by as we stopped to observe the cattail’s leaves more closely.
There are quite a few growing and it seems like there are more now than when we started observing this patch in the autumn.
Here you can see the slippery mud alongside the walking trail. One thing we noticed this time is that there is a certain smell to this area, perhaps the mud has a particular odor but even just typing about it brings the scent back to mind. It is a peculiar smell and not unpleasant. Marshy growing things….if I had to pick a way to describe it.
We were treated to a reptile sighting on this walk. This sort of reptile does not bother me as much as the two rattlesnakes we saw on our walk last weekend. Rattlesnakes are a common snake in our area but I have rarely seen them out and about as we walk. Today though, this alligator lizard stopped scurrying along so I could take his photo.
Our journals are in the works but I wanted to get this entry up before this week’s challenge posts.
“The teacher may judge as to her own progress in nature study by the length of time she is glad to spend in reading from nature’s book what is therein written. As she progresses, she finds those hours spent in studying nature speed faster, until a day thus spent seems but an hour.” Handbook of Nature Study, page 7
Everyday now we spend more and more time outdoors in various activities. The sunny skies and warmer temperatures have beckoned us outside to be refreshed and inspired. Nothing like soaking up a little sun in between schoolwork and housework.
Mr. A has become my personal gardener in exchange for some pocket money. I gladly have turned over my weeding and pruning duties to him and he is rather good at making the yard look especially nice. Now I can spend my time doing the more enjoyable tasks in the garden, knowing the weeds will not be ankle deep if I ignore them.
Mr. B and I take a “tour of the garden” during our morning break and each time we find something new and interesting. Yesterday we noticed the columbine is blooming, the day before that we took time to notice the strawberry bed and its multitude of little berries, and before that we watched the bees in the lavender. Just a few minutes outdoors, nothing earth shattering but still refreshing nonetheless.
I have been keeping close watch on my “wild side“. I had to negotiate with my hubby again to keep my little strip of wildness on the side of our house. He agreed that it was an interesting experiment and granted my wish.
“She who opens her eyes and her heart nature-ward even once a week finds nature-study in the schoolroom a delight and an abiding joy….She finds, first of all, companionship with her children; and second, she finds that without planning or going on a far voyage, she has found health and strength” Handbook of Nature Study, page 3
One of the joys of writing this blog is that I can share with you my daily finds in my own backyard. As the years have rolled past, my own eyes have opened to the real beauty just waiting for me to notice.
Slowing down, I see my own yard with eyes that are full of appreciation for the colors, shapes, and the variety of life.
Sometimes I notice the birds…okay, almost every day I do that. Sometimes I notice the trees or the flowers or the insects. Gradually, I have learned to plan my garden to provide opportunities for future nature study for my children and myself.
Sometimes these plans work out very well and sometimes they are a bust. Last year’s milkweed crop was eaten by our Lovely Labrador, our pumpkins didn’t get bigger than my fist, and the corn was a joke. Sigh.
Each year I seem to get a little better at understanding our yard and its available light and space. Recently we removed two trees that were broken in the winter snow so there should be a little more sun in the back corner for our newly planted apple tree.
I am planting the milkweed in a pot and up on the deck so our Lovely Labrador will not make a snack of it. No corn planted this year but we added onions for the first time and they look great so far.
I think this is Spanish butterfly lavender or something like that….I really should make a record of each plant I add to the garden. It smells nice and the bees love it.
As summer sneaks up on us, remember to keep your eyes open for some beauty in your world. It might just be right under your nose. Take a little voyage out into your backyard. If you make a blog entry and leave me a comment, I will come peak into your garden.
