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Posted on June 27, 2008 by Barb — 10 Comments

Outdoor Hour Challenge #20 Summer Tree Study

“Besides appreciating the world, observing nature develops other mental powers-ability to focus, to tell things apart, to patiently seek answers. These things are useful in every facet of life.”
Charlotte Mason in Modern English, volume 1 page 61

With each new season we learn more about the natural world and the wonderful cycles we find in it. The seasons are a way to measure time and to learn to understand the subtle changes we find in the plants and animals that live close to home. (Gen. 1:14) We started a year-long tree study nine challenges ago and it should be a good time to make our next seasonal observation.

“And what about those six trees that the children were watching since winter? Now children will see that they also flower, although those flowers may be as green as the leaves. …This is old news to grown-ups, but a good teacher will present all knowledge as new and exciting by imagining himself in the place of the child and being amazed with him.”
Charlotte Mason in Modern English, volume 1 page 53

Your tree should have leaves for this season’s observation and if you were not able to identify your tree before, this should help you do so at this time. If you are just starting your year-long tree study, consult the Handbook of Nature Study’s table of contents for trees and see if you can find a tree that you have close by your home. Turn to the corresponding section and it will give you lots of ideas for learning about your tree. You are not limited to the trees covered in the Handbook of Nature Study but if you choose a tree not listed, you will need to find your information either at your local library or on the internet.

Outdoor Challenge #20
Seasonal Tree Observation-Summer

1. We started a tree study project way back in Outdoor Hour Challenge #11 and made our first observations of our tree. If you would like to review this section in the Handbook of Nature Study, you will find it on pages 622-626. This week the challenge includes making the next seasonal observation of your tree. If your first observation was in spring, you are now into summer and your tree should look a little different. If you are just joining the challenges, pick a tree from your yard, your street, or a near-by park to observe over the course of the next year. Check in the Handbook of Nature Study to see if your tree is listed there and then do the reading about that particular tree. There should be some suggestions for observations that you can follow. You can use the prepared seasonal tree study page to record your observations.

2. Take your 10-15 minute outdoor time to study the tree you are going to observe over the next year. You can take photos of your tree to put in your nature journal or you can sketch the tree in your journal. If you need help with tree sketching you can use this resource.
Clare Walkers Leslie’s Guide to Sketching Trees

3. If you have additional time this week, you could complete another small square activity from Challenge #9.

4. After your outdoor time, complete your Seasonal Tree Study notebook page sheet or record your tree observations in your nature journal. Take a few minutes to talk about your time outdoors to see if there is anything that your child wants to learn more about. Follow up any interest shown.

Mini-Challenge #20 Year-Long Tree Study
This challenge can be done with or without the Seasonal Tree Study notebook page. If you have limited time or are trying to combine challenges, pick your tree and make a few short observations. Spend the balance of your time reading about your tree so that during the next season you can review what you have already learned and compare your observations from season to season.

Posted on June 20, 2008 by Barb — 2 Comments

Outdoor Hour Challenge #19 Seeds and Germination

“Leigh Hunt said to imagine what if we had never seen flowers, and they were sent to us as a reward for our goodness. Imagine how carefully we’d watch the growth of the stem and every unfolding of each leaf in wonder. And then imagine our astonishment when a bud appeared, and began to unfold in all its delicate, colorful beauty. Well, we have been seeing flowers for years-but our children haven’t.”
Charlotte Mason volume 1, page 53

Before we finish up our eight week study of garden flowers, I wanted to do a little experiment that every child should do at least once their lifetime. Germinating seeds and watching the progress is something that will fascinate some children, not all but some. I encourage you to give it a try along with finishing up your garden flower journal entries with your lists of flowers observed, drawings of some garden flowers, and emptying out your flower press and putting them into your journal.

Outdoor Hour Challenge #19
Seed Germination

1. This week take a few minutes to go over the mechanics of seed germination. On pages 458-459 of the Handbook of Nature Study you will find a short explanation of how a seed really just holds a little plant struggling to get out.

Try this activity in addition to your Outdoor Hour time this week:
The Germinator
http://pbskids.org/zoom/activities/sci/germinator.html

2. Take your 10-15 minute outdoor time in your garden, yard, or a near-by park. Look to see if you can find any seeds. Remember that cones and acorns are seeds and that beans are actually seed pods. You can also look in any fruits that you eat this week for seeds like an apple, orange, grapes, or strawberries. Nuts are actually seeds too so if you eat almonds or walnuts or anything similar you can talk about seeds.

3. Add any new garden flowers to your list in your nature journal.

4. You can encourage your child to sketch some seeds in their nature journals. Or they can draw the progress of their seed germination experiment for their journals if they wish. Record your flower seeds’ growth (from challenge 12) and/or record your sunflower’s growth (challenge #16) for the week.

This challenge is part of my Garden Flowers ebook. This ebook has ten garden related challenges that will walk you through a study of garden flowers using the Handbook of Nature Study. In addition to the challenges already written, there will be more photos, nature journal examples, book lists, and totally new notebook pages designed to go with each of the Garden Flower Challenges.

Posted on June 17, 2008 by Barb — 7 Comments

Garden Update and Outdoor Hour #18 Pollen

This week has been a very busy week outdoors. We are busy tending the garden which mostly means watering and weeding.

I don’t mind watering but weeding is endless and frustrating. I have been getting up early to get outdoors before the heat but the job never seems to end. 🙂 My son has lots of herbs in his garden as usual and he loves to trim a little to add to each meal. He has oregano, basil, chives, cilantro, and dill growing. Herbs are so easy for a beginning gardener and they stick around from year to year so you don’t need to replant them.

All of our climbers are waking up and the bean poles are getting entangled with green bean vines.

The morning glories are starting to climb up too and I think I am going to have to add some string to my poles soon. The grapes are growing like crazy on the trellis and I can just imagine all the sweet little grapes we will be eating in a month or so. I plant eating grapes and not wine grapes so we can enjoy the fruits as we spend time in the yard. We have one vine that grows next to the pool deck and I love to take a swim and then enjoy a few grapes.

The garden is really growing now that the afternoon temperatures are hitting up in the 90’s.

We have baby zucchini.

Here is our first tomato of the year.

I even have okra sprouting up for the first time. I love okra and a few batches over the summer will make me happy.

The sunflowers are starting to look like sunflowers and thanks to the birds and the birdfeeders, I have volunteer sunflowers that planted themselves in the oddest places in the yard. I am letting them go for now and we shall see what happens.

Outdoor Hour Challenge #18
Now for our pollen assignment. We looked carefully for some insects on our garden plants and we were not disappointed. We saw an earwig, some ants, a grasshopper, and we heard lots of bees thanks to the lavender that is blooming like crazy.

Here is a blossom on our trumpet vine that the hummingbirds love but in this particular bloom you will see ants if you look carefully. If I were an ant, I would love to crawl into a trumpet vine blossom.

These are something new in the garden and I can’t remember quite what they are but aren’t they pretty? They are so buttery yellow and the pollen is easy to spot.

This is what happens when you leave a bag of walnuts on your back deck overnight. Some critter came and decided to have a nut-fest and leave behind all the shells. We are not sure but we think it may have been a raccoon. I am not exaggerating when I say that they ate half a grocery sack full of walnuts in one night. Oh well, I wasn’t in the mood to crack nuts anyway. 🙂

That is just a glimpse into our week this week. We had an afternoon hike at the San Francisco Bay last Thursday but I didn’t get that many photos. We were at a wildlife refuge right on the bay and it was a fantastic place to explore. We will be going back with our binoculars and field guides again soon.

https://naturestudyhomeschool.com/2009/07/new-outdoor-hour-challenge-ebook-garden_27.html

Posted on June 12, 2008 by Barb — 7 Comments

Outdoor Hour Challenge #18 Looking for Pollen

“Flowers have neither legs like some animals, nor have they wings like butterflies, therefore they cannot go after pollen; in seeking food and drink from flowers, insects carry pollen from one flower to another.” Handbook of Nature Study page 457

As the weather warms up in most areas of the world, spending time looking at and studying flowers is an enjoyable pass-time. Flowers should be beginning to bloom in a colorful rainbow in your own gardens, your neighborhood, or at a near-by park. Take advantage of the warmer weather and extend your Outdoor Hour time to possibly two 15 minute periods each week. We are spending a little time each day in our garden tending our seedlings and enjoying the sunshine.

Side lesson: If you or your child is allergic to pollen and suffers from seasonal allergies, you might want to take a few minutes to explain how humans are sometimes adversely affected by pollen in the air.
Here is a link that I found interesting that you could share with your children: Allergic Rhinitis

Outdoor Hour Challenge
#18 Looking for Pollen

1. Read pages 457-458 of the Handbook of Nature Study-Flower and Insect Partners. This section gives us two good lessons to be taught to even the youngest nature student. There is also an illustration that can help you explain about pollen and its role in the plant’s life-cycle. Simple and easy. You can easily adapt the illustration to your local area. Review the diagram on page 456 that shows where on the flower you will find the pollen so you can remind your children as they look for insects on the flower.

2. This week during your 10-15 minutes of nature study, take time to see if you can challenge your child to find an insect on a garden flower. This could be a bee, an ant, a butterfly, or a moth in most areas of the world. Share what you learned about pollen and insects in the reading of the Handbook of Nature Study using words and illustrations that your child will understand. If you can capture a bee in a clear jar, this would give you a way to observe the insect and possibly see some pollen on his body and legs. This would be best done with a magnifying glass or you could try to capture the bee with a digital photo and then enlarge it on your computer. I use the “macro” setting on my digital camera and take lots of photos in order to get a good clear one of bees. Continue to use the correct names for flower parts and for leaf parts in your discussions with your children.

3. Add any new garden flowers to your list in your nature journal.

4. This week you can draw an insect on a flower in your nature journal or draw a flower and show where the pollen is found. Record your flower seeds growth and/or record your sunflowers growth for the week.

5. Add leaves or additional flowers to your press. Pressed flowers can be put into your nature journal.

Posted on June 10, 2008 by Barb — 2 Comments

So Many Leaves- Outdoor Challenge #17

Nasturtiums just starting to sprout in the flower garden

We had fun looking for different shaped leaves in our yard this week during our Outdoor Hour time. Once you get started you begin to see so many varieties of shapes and sizes. This entry is sort of my photo nature journal entry for this week. My son worked on drawing his leaves in his journal and you can find it below.

Hydrangea leaves have a fantastic vein pattern.

The fig leaves are really big this year.

Mimosa leaves are feathery and soft.

This is the catalpa tree leaves that are really big and so colorful in the fall.

I have about twenty more photos but I will stop there. I tend to get a little enthusiastic when we are in the middle of nature study. 🙂

Here is my son’s journal entry for you to enjoy.

He came up with his own way of drawing the leaves which I will share with you. He takes the leaf and traces the outline and then he fills in the details with his pencils. It is a compromise between free-hand drawing and rubbing and it really gives great results.

Another great week and challenge.

Posted on June 8, 2008 by Barb — 4 Comments

Why Use the Handbook of Nature Study?

“A mother should read these kinds of books to herself, not just to collect little bits of knowledge to pass on to her children as they come across things she’s read about, but so that she can learn enough to answer their questions and help the children with their observations….Children will love a person who knows the things they want to find out about and such a person may influence a young mind to have a passion for nature that will be retained for life…”
Charlotte Mason, Volume 1 page 64

That is a clear reason that the Handbook of Nature Study should have a solid standing in our science and nature study materials. This book makes it so easy to look up something we observed outdoors and flip to those pages and read a little to ourselves. I know some families enjoy reading the selection together but it is not necessary. The meat of each section is the section for observations. I love to read through those questions and learn how I can better guide my child to their own understanding of the subject.

Our goal:

“And this is exactly what a child should be doing for the first few years. He should be getting familiar with the real things in his own environment.”
Charlotte Mason, Volume 1 page 66

If you need help getting started with the Handbook of Nature Study, please join us for the Outdoor Hour Challenges posted every Friday. Or if you want an example of how our family uses this book, read through our responses to each of the challenges and you will see how easy it is to use once you get the correct idea about what it is for.

So even though you might look at the copyright date of this book and wonder how it could still be relevant today, you have your answer: It helps you to your goal. Your goal of helping your child become more acquainted with nature close to their own home.

Posted on June 7, 2008 by Barb — 7 Comments

Hummingbird and Bleeding Hearts

What a treat! This hummingbird was having a meal right next to me when we were at the nursery this afternoon. He didn’t seem to care that I pulled out my camera to capture his pretty green feathers and his long black beak. He came back several times as I was browsing but he always came back to this particular plant, the bleeding heart. (make sure to click the photos to enlarge them)

“The hummingbird’s beak is exactly fitted to probe those flowers where the bird finds its food. The tongue has the outer edges curved over, making a tube on each side.”
Handbook of Nature Study, page 115

The Handbook of Nature Study has a whole section on hummingbirds, pages 115-117.

There is also section on the bleeding heart, pages 558-560.

We had a very enjoyable afternoon picking out a few new plants for our garden. I will have to share about those after I get them planted in the ground. 🙂

Posted on June 6, 2008 by Barb — 11 Comments

Outdoor Hour Challenge #17 Collecting Leaves

This week’s challenge has several layers. The task oriented part of the challenge is to learn the proper names of the leaf parts and to collect leaves to press for your nature journal. The less task oriented part of the challenge is accomplished as you sit in your garden area. It could be either your garden or a near-by park’s garden. The challenge is to sit quietly. This is a refreshing activity to adults and children alike. There is nothing like sitting and experiencing all the green things growing up around you.

“Out in this, God’s beautiful world, there is everything waiting to heal lacerated nerves, to strengthen tired muscles, to please and content the soul that is torn to shreds with duty and care.” Handbook of Nature Study, page 3.

I know, I know. This is probably the most difficult part of nature study for most of you with young families. Believe me, I have had four busy, talkative, curious children and three of them are boys so I understand. This is not something that comes easily for most young ones but it is something they can learn in very small doses. My best advice is to keep your expectations realistic. How about 10-30 seconds? Make it a game to see who can be quiet the longest. Or something that works for our family even now that the boys are older is to give them a number of things they should listen for. You could go according to the child’s age and ask them to listen for six things if they are six. You can vary this idea to suit your family. The main point is to try a little bit each time you are out for your nature study time.

Here is a video showing some tips for drawing leaves in your nature journal and also how to press the leaves in your cardboard press.

Outdoor Challenge #17
Learning the Leaf Parts

1. View the illustration in the Handbook of Nature Study on page 456-A leaf with parts named. This information is for you as the parent/nature guide so you will have the proper names for each part of the leaf. Try to use these labels when you are out looking at leaves during your nature time.

You can view more information about leaf part names, leaf shape names, and leaf arrangement examples at this link:
Wildflower Leaf Types
http://www.paulnoll.com/Oregon/Wildflower/Flora/leaf-info-choices.html

2. Take your 10-15 minute outdoor time to look for various sizes and shapes of leaves. Collect a few leaves to press in your press. An additional challenge this week is to sit quietly for a minute or maybe two in a garden area and observe the sights, sounds, and smells. Are there any insects to watch? Can you spot a bird flying overhead? Do you hear a bee buzzing? Is the weather warm or hot?

3. Add any new garden flowers to your list in your nature journal.

4. This week you can draw some leaves in your nature journal. As you draw your leaves, make sure to use the proper names for each part of the leaf so your child will begin to learn the vocabulary in a natural way. You can encourage your child to sketch some garden flowers in their journal again this week. Record your flower seeds growth and/or record your sunflowers growth for the week. You might choose to make leaf rubbings rather than draw leaves.

5. Add leaves or additional flowers to your press. Pressed flowers can be put into your nature journal.

Posted on June 4, 2008 by Barb — 3 Comments

Sunflowers Everywhere Green Hour Challenge #16

Here are last year’s sunflowers starting to bloom. This year we are going to have quite a few more to share with you but last year these ended up producing an amazing amount of seeds for the birds.

For this challenge we were to plant our sunflower seeds but since we did it early in anticipation of the challenge, we are already enjoying the fruits of our labor.

We have some that are getting to be about a foot high already. I planted a mix of seeds so and in this garden bed they are all short so they won’t cover my window where I sit at my desk and look out.

I think they will look like these from a few years ago and will be multi-colored.

I sent both boys out with their nature journals to sketch some of the sunflower seedlings and here are their entries along with mine.

I think it is interesting to note how we each have our own style of recording things in our journals.

One chose to draw a more “scientific” style drawing looking at it from the side-view. One son chose to draw it by standing and looking down at it showing the leaves. Then there is my journal where I attempt to take in one whole garden box with the beans, the rudbeckia, the marigolds, the weeds, and the sunflowers.

Well, that is how we accomplished our Outdoor Hour Challenge #16. By the end of the summer we will have quite a few sunflowers to observe and draw and share with the birds.

Posted on June 3, 2008 by Barb — 1 Comment

Morning Glories and Passion Flowers

This morning I noticed for the first time that the newly transplanted passion flower is starting to cling to the garden arch that my husband made for me a few weeks ago.

I love the twirly little way it sends out its tendrils to grab the bars of the arch.

I also was interested to find that my morning glories are starting to get their first true leaves and how differently they are shaped than the emerging leaves.

I was looking in the Handbook of Nature Study for morning glories but couldn’t find them directly listed, except for a little mention in the hedge bindweed section on pages 518-519. But the description of the leaves sounds just like the morning glory plant.

“The leaves are arrow-shaped, with two long backward and outward projecting points, or “ears”, which are often gracefully lobed. “

We are really enjoying our study of garden flowers this year. We always have a garden but this time with the focus on learning each plants name, the names of their parts, and a little about it, we are seeing so much more.

I can’t resist sharing my new birdfeeder station with you. My husband picked up the pole to hang the feeders on and I chose two different kinds of feeders, hoping to attract a different kind of bird to our yard. We are also going to be planting the Thompson Seedless grapes on a short fence in this little spot to add a little green and shelter for the birds. The vines on the fence will also hide the ugly green propane tank you see on the right of the photo. 🙂

Outdoor Hour Challenges for families since 2008!