Family Outdoor Hour Challenge Archives

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 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 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 May 30, 2008 by Barb — 4 Comments

Sweet Peas-Green Hour Challenge #15

My daughter helped me out this week by drawing sweet peas in her nature journal. She used colored pencils to make this beautiful drawing.

We also spent some time planting more seeds in the garden this week. We are using a fantastic idea I found on Cocoa’s blog for challenge number 12. If you go over to her blog, make sure to scroll down towards the bottom of the entry to see their flower garden project.

We prepared a small flower bed next to our morning glories, put some potting soil in the wheelbarrow, opened the packets of seeds and sprinkled them. We mixed up the seeds and the soil and then took handfuls and spread them on top of our new garden bed.

Here is the flower bed all seeded and ready for some water and sunshine.

We are hoping that we get a sort of wild looking mix of flowers here over the summer.

Here is a beautiful bloomer we have in a pot on the back deck. I just love the bold colors of this flower.

We are getting quite a collection of garden flower drawings in our nature notebooks. So much color and variety are found right in our own backyard.

Posted on May 20, 2008 by Barb — 8 Comments

Our Green Hour Challenge #14 Bursting with Color: Composite Flowers

This week’s Outdoor Hour Challenge for us was very enjoyable. Our flower garden is just bursting with color and with garden flowers as our focus we decided to read and observe a special kind of flower, the composite.

“Many plants have their flowers set close together and thus make a mass of color, like the geraniums or the clovers. But there are other plants where there are different kinds of flowers in one head, those at the center doing a certain kind of work for the production of seed, and those around the edges doing another kind of work.”

“Can you see that what you call the flower consists of many flowers set together like a beautiful mosaic? Those at the center are called disc flowers; those around the edges ray flowers.”
Handbook of Nature Study, page 503

We had a great time studying these flowers and now we are going to be looking closer when we see a new flower to see if we can tell if it is a composite or not.

Here are some of our flowers that we observed.

Close up of a pink gilardia…can you see the anthers?

Yellow gilardias

Tickseed or corepesis

Pin cushion flowers where you can really see the flower parts

Pink cosmos, first one of the season

Close up of the different kinds of flowers making up the composite. Can you see the disc flowers and the ray flowers?

My son’s nature journal entry.

We then put the flowers in our press. I am planning on making a flower calendar to make a record of flowers blooming in our yard for each month of the year. This will be a beautiful way to document our flower study throughout the year by pressing some flowers blooming in each month, pressing them, and then affixing them to card stock with the month neatly labeled on each page. I will share our first month’s page when these are ready to be added.

Another great week in our garden. My son and I both learned something new and enjoyed our time outdoors with a focus and purpose.

Posted on May 16, 2008 by Barb — 6 Comments

Garden Flower-Learning Our Parts Green Hour #13

We have so many garden flowers blooming right now that it is hard to pick one to draw for our nature journal….too many choices. Not a bad problem but still not enough time to do all that we want to.

Here is my son’s day lily drawing.

Here is my azalea drawing.

We have had fun looking closely at all the flower parts and deciding how each insect is attracted to each particular flower.

That was our formal nature study this week….we have spent parts of every afternoon in the garden watering, weeding, and putting in more seeds and seedlings. Now that the hot weather has hit, we will see them come to life. The sunflowers are growing so fast I think you could sit and watch them get taller.

We will be putting some flowers in the press this week and I will share a fun project that I found to do with them in my next Outdoor Hour post.

Here is an entry from challenge #12 that I wanted to share with you. I love this idea and I am going to be doing it in my garden over the weekend.
Chocolate on My Cranium’s Challenge #12 -Focus on Flowers
Make sure to scroll down to the photo with the kids and the wheelbarrow!

Posted on May 13, 2008 by Barb — 1 Comment

Watching New Ferns Unfolding: Yosemite

This past weekend we took a hike at Yosemite National Park. The ferns were all coming to life and unrolling their new growth. I found the soft greens a delight for the eyes.

“All of the parts of the frond of a fern are tightly folded spirally within the bud and every fold of every leaflet is also folded in a spiral. But the first glance at one of these little woolly spirals gives us but small conception of its marvelous enfolding. Every part of the frond is present in that bud, even to the fruiting organs…”
Handbook of Nature Study, page 698 in the section “How a Fern Bud Unfolds”

Here is a look at what the fern looks like after it unfolds. Beautiful.

Posted on May 7, 2008 by Barb — 9 Comments

Picking New Garden Flowers-Green Hour Challenge #12

I thought I would share a little of our family’s gardening history in our Outdoor Hour post this week. We have always been a gardening sort of family and the kids have grown up with their hands in the dirt. Each child has had their own garden box and when spring rolls around they get busy planting.

This is my youngest son working in his garden in 2001….that would have made him five years old. I think the look on his face says it all.

This year he has planted a zuchinni, some spinach, and is now going to add some dill and some violoas to his box. He has herbs from last year growing…chives, oregano, and basil I think.

We went to Home Depot to look for some new things and he wanted something colorful and he wanted seeds so we found some on this really big rack of seed packets. He also picked out a pepper called “garden salsa” and this one he wanted as a seedling. I picked up some morning glories after being inspired by Jenn and I also picked out some coleus seeds for my pot on my back deck.

Our nature study this week has been filled with observing each morning the signs of a skunk in our backyard. Here is what it looks like. They make swirly holes looking for grubs and other tasty treats. I am so glad they are doing this in the unlandscaped side of our yard and not in the grass….yet.

Can you believe how busy these guys are looking for things to eat? Here is my son’s drawing for his nature journal of a striped skunk.

We had another relaxed Outdoor Hour week with a little time each day in the garden and observing birds and reptiles in our backyard. We did have one really sad incident. The baby blue jays that we had in a nest near our window were taken by some bird and then the nest was damaged so there are no longer any babies for us to observe. It has been hard on everyone to watch the “circle of life” drama this week.

I hope that everyone else has an enjoyable week for their Outdoor Hour. Remember, you do not have to focus on garden flowers if you are into another focus or you have something else in mind for your family.

Posted on May 4, 2008 by Barb — 2 Comments

Our Green Hour #11 Year-Long Tree Study

For this challenge we were to choose a tree to study for a year, observing it in each season to notice the changes. My son and I used the Tree Study sheet to prompt our observations but in the Handbook of Nature Study on page 625 there is a section on “Spring Work” to use with your own tree.

My son has suddenly taken an interest in basketball and is bouncing a ball in every spare moment. I tore him away yesterday afternoon to have him to pick his tree and do a quick observation. He picked one of the sweet gum trees that we have growing just off our back deck. We have four of these trees planted as a shade break for the hot summer afternoons. They are perfect for shading us for the late summer sun and then they loose all their leaves in the winter and allow the sun to hit our house in the winter to make it light and cheery. They also turn the most magnificent colors in the autumn and make the view out our back windows very colorful and enjoyable to look at….I can see them as I wash dishes at the kitchen sink. they are not native to our area but they are very popular as tree plantings in neighborhoods and in yards for shade and their beauty.

So here is a copy of his notebook page for his journal. I am going to slip it into a sheet protector and hopefully the leaf will survive for the year that we have ahead. At least we will have the scan of the page so we can compare on the computer if we need to.

You can print the notebook page here:
Seasonal Tree Study Notebook Page.

Here is a little sampling of photos from his tree taken on May 3, 2008.

(note the bouncing basketball….I don’t always get rapt attention for nature study)

(click this photo and you will see an ant on the bark)

You can join the Outdoor Hour Challenges at any time.

Posted on April 28, 2008 by Barb — Leave a comment

Outdoor Hour Challenge #10 Our First Outdoor Dinner/Picnic

We had been trying all week to get outdoors to have a picnic to complete Green Hour Challenge #10 but the weather just did not cooperate. It rained and then even though the sun was out, it was really still too cold to eat outside. I was determined to eat out on the deck this weekend and it could not have worked out better. We spent the whole weekend working in the backyard because the weather was perfectly perfect.

We added a few more plants to the new butterfly garden, replaced some jasmine plants that didn’t make it through the winter, and I found two new hydrangeas that I wanted in my newly made flowerbed…a pink one and a pretty blue one.

Sunday evening rolled around and we threw some steaks on the barbeque and got out the chair cushions for the deck chairs. All was going well. The kids lit the tiki torches just fine and we went inside to grab a few more things for the table. My youngest son went out on the deck and discovered that one of the torches had completely lit on fire. My husband, who is a firefighter, was so calm and ran over to try to put it out. The older children ran and got the garden hose and put the flames out.

So after the excitement died down, we really did have an enjoyable meal. The sky was beautiful and air was warm. It felt so nice to be outdoors together enjoying a nice dinner.

Here is the sky on this beautiful spring day.

Here are a few more photos from the week’s nature time.

Figs are on the tree already!

Our sunflowers have sprouted it seems like overnight and we are going to have a bumper crop.

We also continued our tree study in the woods but we are going to also pick a tree in our backyard to use for the seasonal Green Hour Challenge, more on that in another entry.

Tag: Family Outdoor Hour Challenge