Apples Archives

Posted on September 16, 2022September 19, 2022 by Tricia Hodges — Leave a comment

Homeschool Fall Leaf Study And Activities (perfect for all ages)

To celebrate the first day of fall or autumnal equinox, we invite you on a fall leaf study in your homeschool! There are leaf nature studies to fill an entire week!

Celebrate The First Day of Fall

Here is a fun idea for the first day of fall and your fall leaf tour!

Homeschool Fall Leaf Study And Activities

This study is designed to be completed with what you have around you. As the leaves turn, head outside, notice fall colors and collect some different colored leaves.

Compare Leaves from Two Different Trees

Leaf shape and leaf margins.
Leaf arrangement on the stem.
Leaf color, texture, and size. (You can measure if you wish.)
Come back in from your walk and follow up with a journal page.

Take a Fall Color Walk For Your Nature Study

To continue your fall leaf tour, take a fall color walk! We also start to take more hikes now that the afternoons are a bit cooler. We have our favorite trails and try to get outside every day to see what we can find of interest.

Read in the Handbook of Nature Study page 14, “The Field Excursion”. The reason I want you to read this section is so you have a better understanding of how to prepare you children for a short outdoor excursion with a purpose. Let them know ahead of time the reason you are going outdoors, have them gather their supplies, and then make the excursion outside to look for fall colors.

With our Printable Autumn Series Field Notebook included in membership, you can enjoy these studies and journal pages:

Seasonal tree study
Goldenrod
Oaks & acorns
Fall bird study
Squirrels
Mushrooms
Pumpkins
Field Notebook List

Fall Color Challenge Activity: Match Leaf Color to Your Art Supplies

A more detailed advanced study for upper level students is included in membership. Here is a peek at what you can enjoy as you continue your fall leaf tour.

Outdoor Hour Challenge founder, Barbara McCoy shared this from her family’s Color Walk one year: “I decided to make color chart in my journal with the official names from the Prismacolor pencils noted just for fun. My favorite leaves were the **pistache** leaves with their bright orange, red, and yellow…..dare I say vermillion, crimson, and chrome yellow to be more exact?”

Collect a variety of colorful leaves and bring them inside. Have fun matching the colors of the leaves to your colored pencils, chalk pastels, crayons or other art supplies. You might want to sketch your leaves in your nature journal.

Watercolor pencils on the left and regular colored pencils on the right.

Fall Homeschool Nature Study Ideas

Track Weather in Your Homeschool

Autumn seems to be a season that many of us look forward to and in my part of the world we welcome the cooler temperatures and the crisp morning air. We begin to see a few days of wet weather and one activity that seems to make its way into my nature journal is to keep track of that cooler wet weather.

Simple Fall Homeschool Nature Study Ideas with Apples, Pumpkins and Pears

Our Homeschool Nature Study members enjoy these wonderful challenges!

Apple Challenge – Simple nature study featuring apples and the Handbook of Nature Study.
Pumpkins – Study your pumpkins and then eat them too!
Pear Challenge – Yummy nature study featuring pears and the Handbook of Nature Study with advanced study options too.

Autumn Series with the Handbook of Nature Study: Outdoor Hour Challenge Curriculum

There are so many fall favorites for you to explore over the next months!

Members also enjoy access to:

NEW, weekly Outdoor Hour Challenges to bring the Handbook of Nature Study to life in your homeschool!
the annual nature study plans
matching courses with materials and journaling pages
interactive calendar with daily nature study prompts
Nature Journaling course
and MUCH more!

Join Us In Homeschool Nature Study Membership Today!

More Fall Nature Study for Your Homeschool

The Ultimate Guide to Fall Leaf Activities for Your Homeschool
Fantastic Fall Art Lessons for Kids
Bats Homeschool Nature Study – such fascinating and beneficial creatures!
The Ultimate Guide to Fall Nature Study in Your Own Backyard

Be inspired. Be encouraged. Get outdoors!

Tricia and her family fell in love with the Handbook of Nature Study and the accompanying Outdoor Hour Challenges early in their homeschooling. The simplicity and ease of the weekly outdoor hour challenges brought joy to their homeschool and opened their eyes to the world right out their own back door! She shares the art and heart of homeschooling at You ARE an ARTiST and Your Best Homeschool plus her favorite curricula at The Curriculum Choice.

Posted on September 7, 2015 by Barb — 2 Comments

Outdoor Mom’s Journal – Early Fall Thoughts

“But he learns naturally at his own pace, never tiring, and slowly learning just what he needs to know about the world around him. 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. Some day he will read about things he can’t see; how will he conceive of them without the knowledge of common objects in his experience to relate them to? Some day he will reflect, contemplate, reason. What will he have to think about without a file of knowledge collected and stored in his memory?”

Charlotte Mason in Modern English, volume 1 page 66

Renee’s Garden Seeds – Just Look at My Garden!

If you have been following the blog in the past few years, you are aware that Renee’s Garden Seeds has been a sponsor and valued part of my summer gardening experience. Not only have I enjoyed her seeds in my garden, but I have shared seeds with my dad. He has a beautiful garden and each year he tenderly nurtures his vegetables through the hot California summer. This year his pond went dry but he still kept his garden green with his well water.

Here in town I did not have that option…we are on city water and have been restricted not only in the number of days we can water but we were asked to reduce our usage by using less than last year. I took the challenge and created a container garden on my back deck and watered using only a drip system and water that I caught from our shower warm up time that I collected in a five gallon bucket. This garden has brought such joy to me over the summer. I could look out and see the insects buzzing around the blossoms and the hummingbirds stopping by for some nectar.

Hello Mr. Sunflower! So glad you joined us….the bees have spent many hours hovering and gathering at my container sunflowers.

Each morning I would check my plants for something to harvest. It could be a handful of cherry tomatoes, a zucchini to pick, or some herbs to include in my dinner plans.

I would talk to my morning glory vines and coach them to stop growing so tall and to start blooming. The first morning that I looked out my window and saw these gorgeous flowers made all the waiting worth it. They now greet me every morning with a few blue flowers…happy, happy, happy.

The zucchini at the beginning of the season were small but more of a traditional shape. As the summer has worn on, they have started to change into this interesting shape, still tasty and summery on the table at dinner.

Apple Time!

We are looking forward to apple time in the coming weeks. Not only our local orchard but our very own apple tree in our backyard! This is the first year we really have an apple “harvest” on our young tree and it surprises me that even in our drought that we have apples to eat from our own tree. We will be visiting our local apple farm to purchase apples for various treats including applesauce. The taste of autumn around here is apple!

You can do your own apple study using the Outdoor Hour Challenge: Autumn Apples Nature Study.

Join Jami over on An Oregon Cottage for her Tuesday Garden Party!

August was a great month of being outdoors for this nature loving mama. I accomplished one of my nature study goals for the year by visiting a new state park, Sugar Pine Point State Park! I will share that in an up-coming post here on the Handbook of Nature Study. The season is about to change here and that means even more time outside hiking with the cooler temperatures.

Outdoor Mom’s Journal

Whether your family spends a few minutes a week outside or hours at a time, share what is going on in your world. I hope you have enjoyed your August.

How Do You Join?

Answer all or just one of the prompts in a blog entry on your own blog or right here on my blog in a comment. If you answer on your blog, make sure to leave me a link in a comment so that I can pop over and read your responses.

During our outdoor time this week we went….
The most inspiring thing we experienced was…
Our outdoor time made us ask (or wonder about)…
In the garden, we are planning/planting/harvesting….
I added nature journal pages about….
I am reading…
I am dreaming about…
A photo I would like to share…

I will be posting my Outdoor Mom’s Journal entry once a month. Look for it during the first week of the month each month.

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Barb — 3 Comments

Apple Time – Delicious Nature Study

The best part of autumn is taking in the fruits of the season. Apples, apples, apples, and more apples. We visited the apple orchard (which has much more than apples this time of the year) and enjoyed some freshly pressed apple cider, apple doughnuts, and picking out quite a few apples to take home.

Yes, I said apple doughnuts. I don’t usually eat doughnuts but this time of year it is a tradition that I like to indulge in with my men. I eat one and they have two or three. Crumb, cinnamon sugar, glaze??? They are all delicious.

In every plant, and bird and insect there is a life-history to be learned more interesting than any story, and I would urge parents to make themselves acquainted with these life-histories by obtaining and studying some of the many admirable books on Natural History which abound in the present day. They will then be enabled to pass on the information in happy talks with their children till they become eager little naturalists, loving the book of nature and seeing in it, not only endless things to admire and wonder at, but evidences, on all sides, of the works of an all-wise and kind Creator, Who has so marvelously fitted each living thing to fill its appointed place in creation and fulfill the duties assigned to it as a part of a great harmonious whole.
Parent’s Review Volume 11, 1900, pgs. 578-584

How much more do we enjoy our apples knowing their life history from twigs and buds in the winter, to leaves and blossoms in the spring, and then fulling enjoying the taste that arrives in a neat little package in the autumn.

It is a wonderful story for children to learn and appreciate.

Applesauce was next on the apple menu…homemade from apples we gleaned from a friend’s orchard. Now we have some jars to enjoy over the next few weeks. Yum!

There are several apple related studies here on the Handbook of Nature Study:
Apple Trees
Spring Apple Blossom
Apples

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.

Posted on June 5, 2012 by Barb — 6 Comments

Garden Color and Fragrance – Early June Delights

My garden is full of promise…the promise of beautiful things to look at and delicious things to eat.

The daisies are filling in a big spot in the back cutting garden and we are anxious to study them as part of the Outdoor Hour Challenge later in the summer. There are coneflowers, sunflowers, and zinnias as well that have buds so stay tuned for some updates on those in a few weeks.

Some things are already smelling like heaven…the star jasmine is in full bloom and already needed a trimming back from the sidewalk. The cats lay under these plants since they make wonderful shade in the afternoon sun. Wouldn’t that be delightful?

Last week when I was working with the window open I could smell this rose on the gentle afternoon breeze. It is a Disneyland Rose and it has been a faithful bloomer these past few years. It is loaded with pink/peach flowers. This rose is what I imagine the perfect rose fragrance would be…a signature scent.

The hydrangeas are bursting open this week and the delicate color of the flowers on this particular bush is one of my favorites.

A few years ago, I used my watercolor pencils to capture the pastel colors of this lovely flower and then used a fine tip marker to outline it a bit. Keeping track of my favorite garden flowers in my journal is a wonderful way to pass an afternoon.

This is something new in the backyard this year and it is really taking off. We added this Jerusalem Sage to a spot that gets super hot and dry in the afternoons up against the house. So far it is thriving…I did put it on the drip system until it is established and then I think I can back off with the water. The texture of the leaves is soft and fuzzy which adds a nice layer of interest to this side of the garden.

The front yard has been joined by the blooming purple butterfly bush! The hummingbirds have been seen enjoying this particular bush…actually fighting over it in the early evening hours. My cat friend Cocoa is like my garden shadow these days. She seems to pop up wherever I go. You can see my sage growing in two spots in the background of this photo. It is just starting to bloom.

Another favorite of the hummingbirds is the Red Hot Poker plant. This is Mr. A’s favorite plant in the garden and he has been eagerly waiting for it to bloom. It looks good this year and I may end up dividing up the plant in the late fall to fill in a few spaces in the front garden.

We have started to see quite a bit of growth in our backyard fruit. The apples are looking like apples! Not too many apples on the limbs but enough for each of us to enjoy a crisp apple come the end of the summer.

Someone asked in a comment a few weeks ago whether we had any lawn left in our yard. The answer is yes and you can see it in this photo. We have a small plot of grass left in the backyard, mostly for the dog to enjoy. We use it as her ball throwing spot and she loves to lay in the shady grass on the hot afternoons. Since it gets so hot here and there is very little rain during the summer months, we do have to water this part of the yard. I have it set on a timer and it waters five minutes a day and so far that is enough to keep it green. (I need to write a post showing how we have cut our water usage to a fraction of what it was two years ago and still enjoy a lush green garden.)

Of course the figs are loaded as usual….this is not my favorite fruit but we eat a bit and then leave the rest for the birds and other critters. We have tried several times to eliminate this tree but every time we cut it down it comes back full and loaded with fruit within a year.

I do LOVE blackberries and we have our little patch just loaded with blossoms right now. This is exciting and it really seems like summer now that the berries are maturing. My blueberries are still all plant and no signs of blossoms or berries. I hope to get a bit of fruit from them this year. We shall see.

We have rain today so the garden is getting well watered but tomorrow we are going to see the end of the rain and be back to our warm temperatures. I am grateful for the rain but I am ready for the summer heat.

The June (Ocean Beach) edition of the Outdoor Hour Challenge Newsletter has published. You must be subscribed to the blog in order to receive the download link. It is a beautiful and informative edition that I know you are going to want to have in your collection. You can subscribe on the sidebar of my blog.

Jami’s Tuesday Garden Party meme is open from Tuesday to Thursday so there is still time for you to jump in and participate!

Posted on September 24, 2011 by Barb — Leave a comment

Apples Distracted Us From Our Pear Study

We have been enjoying our “apple time” of year so far with three trips to the apple orchard, fresh apple cider, apple doughnuts, and homemade apple pie. We tried a new variety of apple (Mutsu) which actually made a really good pie apple.

We really meant to do our Pear Study for the Outdoor Hour Challenge but we were distracted again this week with the wonderful weather and decided to take a drive instead. No pears were studied but we enjoyed peach and blueberry dumplings from a roadside stand. Yes, it was heavenly and I don’t regret the calories at all.

Posted on October 19, 2010 by Barb — 8 Comments

Apples-Autumn Series Challenge Day

Autumn came this past weekend to our world and we awoke to sprinkles of rain on the ground. It wasn’t much so we didn’t let it cancel our plans to head up early to the apple orchards to find some apples to sample and use as part of our apple challenge.

Our traditional autumn outing always starts off with apple cider doughnuts….there are plain, glazed, crumb, and cinnamon spice varieties to enjoy along with your big cup of steaming hot coffee. The crumb doughnuts were the first to be eaten. We were early enough to have a good spot to sit to eat and enjoy the mountain air.

Then the real business of the day was at hand, choosing a few new kinds of apples to try. We were disappointed that they did not have Honey Crisp to purchase since I had read on several blogs about their wonderful taste. In the end, we settled on Empire, Jonagold, and Mutsu.

Empire is a cross between Red delicious and McIntosh.
Jonagold is a cross between a Jonathan and a Golden Delicious.
Mutsu is also known as the Crispin.

Our official taste tests were interrupted when we decided to make the Mutsu apples into a pastry dessert. Mr. B had already created a wonderful dessert a few months ago with some apples and he repeated his recipe for us to enjoy again.

We compared the sizes, colors, shapes, and tastes of the apples, noting the seed patterns, the skin textures, and the skin thicknesses as we cut and peeled the apples for the pastry and some applesauce.

Some of the apples were so large that they would be a complete meal all by themselves! My dear husband announced that although he enjoyed the new varieties that we picked out, he still loves the Granny Smith for eating the best. Go figure.

This was a delicious challenge for our family and we learned a little more about the different local varieties of apples available for eating and baking.

Posted on May 16, 2010 by Barb — 2 Comments

Our Apple Tree Study: Spring Time

Spring Series-Apple Tree Study

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.

Tag: Apples