Tag: Nature journal example

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Autumn Flower Study – Asters of All Kinds

White Daisy (aster)

“The asters, like the goldenrods, begin to bloom at the tip of the branches, the flower-heads nearest the central stem blooming last. All of the asters are very sensitive, and the flower-heads usually close as soon as they are gathered.” Handbook of Nature Study, page 507

I love a good flower study! Reading in the Handbook of Nature Study I learned that the aster has both a disc flower and a ray flower…like a sunflower. Aha! I can see it now that I have slowed down to really look at this pretty flower from the aster family, a Shasta Daisy or an Ox-Eye Daisy…not sure which

We happened to be at the beautiful summer garden found at Tallac Historic Site and I was excited to find a whole range of asters to observe.  We had been on a quest to find some goldenrod but settled for any flowers in the aster family we could find. (We did find some goldenrod…see last flower photo.)

Can you see the disc and ray flowers?

I think you can really see the disc flowers once the ray flowers wilt back. This daisy helps show the way the different kinds of flowers grow in this daisy flower head. Point that out to your kids the next time you see an aster.

Purple Coneflower

How about this flower in the aster family? The Purple Coneflower is one of my favorites and I grow it in my garden every year….well actually it just comes back to life in the spring so I don’t have to do too much to it.

So now come a bunch of images that show the variety that this flower family can produce. Starting with this really large yellow aster with the long ray flowers.

These were some of my favorites! I love the multi-colored flowers and the Black-eyed Susans all mixed together. I am going to make sure to plant an area of my garden with seeds like these so I can enjoy their beauty all summer long.

Drooping ray flowers really show this flower off at its best! I am going to put this one in my nature journal…watercolors or markers? Not sure yet.

Edit to add my journal—I ended up with colored pencils.

This aster was not in the garden at Tallac but was on the trail around over by Taylor Creek. There was a whole section of them blooming. I love the classic lavender and yellow color combination. This may need to go in my nature journal too.

Eureka! We finally saw some goldenrod in bloom. We had seen lots of dried up goldenrod during our hike but this was the first blooming plant we spied. The goldenrod completed our hunt for all kinds of flowers in the aster family.

NOTE: If you haven’t read the narrative section in the Handbook of Nature Study on the goldenrod plant, you are missing out. Make sure to read the Teacher’s Story for Lesson 132 before you study your goldenrod flowers.

Here we are…the intrepid aster hunters. My oldest and youngest went with me this time and it was great to have them along. They are both a lot of fun.

Mr. B took a break from flower hunting to stack some rocks and strike a pose. Like I said, always a lot of fun with these nature-loving kids.

Don’t miss out on the chance to do your own goldenrod, aster, or chrysanthemum study this month. Pop over to the challenge and print out the free Autumn Garden Nursery Mini-Book printable if you need to make this a quick and easy nature study week.

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Mountain Chickadee – New Bird #3

Mountain Chickadee
Poecile gambeli

Location: Lake Tahoe, evergreen forest habitat
Fieldmarks: white stripe over eyes
Song: chicka-dee-dee or tsick-adee-adee

This busy bird is always seen and heard along our favorite hiking and biking trails at Lake Tahoe, especially in the Fallen Leaf Lake and Tallac areas of the Tahoe Basin. I have grown to know the sweet little song of the chickadee and regularly hear it during each of the seasons, even winter during the snowy months.

I created a nature journal page and used the coloring book image from Cornell’s bird coloring book to make an accurate drawing of this bird. This is an easy way to cut and past a line drawing to use for your journal if you are not confident about your drawing skills.
Feeder Birds Coloring Book

Still working on my nature study goals for 2013…learning ten new birds and their calls during the year.

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Hawaiian Fish in My Nature Journal

Fish are a more difficult nature study topic for our family than I expected! We have been several places where there are fish but we have not seen any up close and personal. Since last week’s challenge was to draw fish, I remembered that I had a journal page with a variety of fish so I decided to share that with you.
Which led me on a merry chase to find some images to share with you too!


I drew lots of fish in my nature journal last November (2012) during our trip to Hawaii. We went snorkeling quite a few times and I was trying to keep a record of some of the more beautiful fish we encountered. Snorkeling is a fantastic way to observe fish in their natural environment which on the Big Island of Hawaii is the coral reef.

All of the photos in this post are from the past….once I started digging through old photos I actually found quite a few to share with you.


Snorkeling is one of those activities that all my children enjoy. It is a really frugal way to spend time in the water and have nature study at the same time! We taught all the kids to snorkel in the swimming pool and when they felt comfortable we ventured into the ocean. My kids are all confident swimmers and they all caught on really fast. We rented their gear the first time but now we all have our own and we pack it along for every trip.

We have seen many fantastic things snorkeling like Green Sea Turtles, eels, Spinner Dolphins, and a rainbow of tropical reef fish. There is nothing more surreal than swimming along side by side with a big sea turtle. They are just as curious about you as you are about them!

My favorite are the Yellow Tangs! There can be whole schools of them along the reef if you are lucky. I think these photos are from the Big Island, Kona side at a place called Kahalu’u. The water is shallow, there is a sandy entrance and it is perfect for beginners to try. This is where I learned to snorkel.

This is a video I found on YouTube and it gives you a really good idea of what snorkeling at Kahalu’u is like…including what it sounds like. All those little snapping sounds are what you hear and if you want to know what it is you can click over here: Little Pistol Shrimp...

This is our favorite place to snorkel on the Big Island of Hawaii….Honaunau Bay or Two-Step Beach.  It is an easy two steps into the water from the rock’s ledges. It is an amazing place…can’t recommend it highly enough.

Here is the view from the shore looking out into the bay. This was a busy weekend afternoon and there are lots of people enjoying the snorkeling. My boys are in the center of the photo walking on the rocks. The water you see off the rocks is a calm area where there are lots of fish and sea turtles. You can see a person sitting on the edge of the rocks towards the left side of the photo and that is where the ledge is to step into and out of the water easily.

The last time we were here there was a pod of resting spinner dolphins just out in the bay. Amazing!

Moorish Idol

I wish I knew the names of all the fish but I decided it is a life project and try to learn a few new fish each time we snorkel. I purchased a field guide and page through it to identify fish I remember seeing.

Some of the fish are really big and don’t seem afraid of you at all.

Some fish swim in large schools and even though the photos don’t show it, they sparkle and shimmer in the sunlight. Sometimes if the light is just right, you see lots of fish and can get carried away swimming after them.

So even though I haven’t found any fish this week to draw in my nature journal, I had lots of fun going through all my images from past snorkeling trips to share with you. I encourage you to try snorkeling if you ever have the opportunity.

Have you seen any fish this week?

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Our Oregon Coast Wildflower and Weed Grid

This is the Oregon Coast Edition of the Wildflower and Weed Grid Study! I had a fun-filled week of hiking and beach-combing in Oregon and we had our eyes out for as many wildflowers as we could possible find. It wasn’t hard because each trail had an abundance of wildflowers for us to enjoy.

I tried to capture as man of them as I could to share with you in this post.

Blue Oregon Iris – These are a frequent flower along the trail.

Sea pinks along the shore…blowing in the wind, casting cool shadows.

Our campsite was filled with clover and daisies. Imagine…daisies so plentiful they seem like weeds!

Cow parsnip lines the roads and pops up along the shore. Some of these plants are super tall and the flower heads are enormous.

Inside Out Flower was found in the shady spots and it is one of my favorites from this trip. I decided to include a special page in my nature journal for it (see below).

We found patches of lupine along the Humbug Mountain Trail. This trail was a new one for us and what a view! It was a lot of fun to adventure up and we look forward to taking this trail again.

The Monkey flower was amazing! There were areas along the moist gully that just screamed yellow from this pretty flower.

A familiar sight along any redwood forest trail this time of year is the rhododendron….this one was a pale pink. This was spotted along the Shrader Old Growth Trail. This is a fun hike out of Gold Beach and worth the long dusty dirt road to get there. We had the trail all to ourselves on this morning. There is nothing like being out in the wilderness hiking along hearing the birds and nothing else.

One day we visited Crissey Field State Park which has an awesome visitor’s center and several trails. The beach there is wide and open which invites you to walk a long way next to the shore. This Sea Verbena was growing along the sandy dunes. My boys were entranced by all the driftwood and they spent about an hour just hunting among the piles for interesting shapes. Boys.

These are pretty little Seaside daisies….another one I really like and will be adding to my nature journal. I think the delicate fringe-like petals are the best part of this flower.

Smith’s Fairybells…another shade loving plant we saw a lot of as we hiked.

It always makes me happy to see where flowers naturally grow to make pretty color combinations. These sweet peas and daisies were found right along the edge of the bank in our campground.

Seaside Tansy…the interesting part of this plant are the fern-like leaves. They also grow right along the dry cliffside going down to the beaches.

This Tiger Lily was actually in Del Norte County, California. The drive up Hwy 101 takes you through Redwoods National Park where the Tiger Lilies are blooming profusely along the road. I had to stop and capture one for you! Gorgeous!

We found Wild Bleeding Hearts too! We have these planted in our garden here at home but it was fun to see them growing in their natural environment.

Aren’t these lovely? Western Azaleas grow in Harris Beach State Park and we always look forward to seeing their happy blossoms.

We saw many Wild Cucumbers blooming but this one had its fruit already formed. Isn’t it interesting? It is in the gourd family and you can see why when you see the fruits.

Here are the flowers from the Wild Cucumber.

I know this is a non-native invasive plant but we saw it on many of the trails. Wild Radish comes in a variety of colors…white, soft pink, light lavender.

This is my first unidentified wildflower…if anyone knows what it is you can leave me a comment.
EDIT: I think this is Yellow Parentucellia...figwort family. Range: Western Washington to NW California.

This is my second unidentified wildflower…yellow ones stump me for some reason.

This we saw in a pond at Lagoon Creek which is technically in California. Yellow Pond Lilies were blooming all over the pond.

So there you have all the interesting images that I could pull from my camera. We did see quite a few more and if you look closely at my Wildflower Grid nature journal page you will see them listed.

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Garden Flowers Focus – Using Notebooking Pages

We have studied many of the garden flowers listed in the Handbook of Nature Study over the years. Using the simple ideas in each lesson make it enjoyable and memorable. For this challenge (Focus on Garden Flowers), we picked just two flowers to study more in-depth- Salvia and Petunias (which will be the star of the next OHC this Friday).

Guess what? We have never had salvia in our garden before so a trip to Home Depot was taken and we found several varieties of salvia to choose from. We picked this purple salvia which we are hoping will apply to the salvia in the Handbook of Nature Study. From the label we learned it needs a sunny spot (6 hours of sun) and water every other day. It blooms summer to fall and will grow to a height of 10-36″.

I decided to plant my saliva in a pot so I won’t forget to water it and so I can watch it grow and blossom and hopefully watch the bees in it. It is a perennial so I will eventually add it to the flower garden.

From the lesson in the Handbook of Nature Study (Lesson 161), we looked closely at the flowers, looking for the corolla-tubes, stamens, and anthers as described in the narrative. The bees apparently have to push their heads agains the inner arms of the stamesn to lift them which causes the anthers to leave a streak of pllen along the bee’s fuzzy sides. The bees then have to crawl almost inside the tubes to get the nectar. I’m not sure that my variety of salvia will provide such a show but we will be watching.

I will be on the lookout for some Saliva as described in the Handbook of Nature Study so we can really get a good look. I printed the salvia notebook page from NotebookingPages.com’s Wildflowers, Weeds, and Garden Flowers set.


While we were at Home Depot, I picked up some more seeds to plant in the garden. They had some larkspur seeds and I will plant those and use along with the lesson in the Handbook of Nature Study, hopefully later this summer. There were two other seeds that caught my eye and I will be planting those today along my fence-line- Hollyhocks and Black-Eyed Susans!

Our garden is all planted and I hope to get a garden entry done sometime in the next week to share all the lovely Renee’s Garden seeds that we have tucked into their garden beds…just waiting!

I am an affiliate for NotebookingPages.com and highly recommend this set for your Wildflower, Weeds, and Garden Flowers study.

Use discount code = discount5 to save $5 on your $10+ purchase at NotebookingPages.com

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California Shrub: Chamise

I have identified my first shrub of 2013- Chamise or Greasewood (Adenostoma fasciculatum). This is a shrub that is just about everywhere we go in our hiking and walking locally. It has such a sweet smell that many times it is overwhelming as you hike through a patch of it. The white clusters of flowers are so pretty in the early spring and in our area they are at their peak right now.

Clouds and Chamise
This is my favorite photo of chamise taken a few years ago on our walking trail.

Chamise (or Greasewood)

  • Rose Family
  • Shrub 2 to 10 feet tall.
  • The white flowers cluster at the ends of the stems.
  • Leaves are short and green.
  • Most common shrubs of the chaparral habitat.
  • Forms dense clusters of shrubs where small animals find protection.
  • Common name comes from the resinous foliage. This quality is what contributes to it being great fuel for brush fires.

We have had fun observing it and finding it in more and more places since we were aware of it…now it is safely tucked into our nature journals as well.

So how am I doing on my Nature Study Goals for 2013?

  • Learn about ten new birds, including nature journal entries and learning their calls. – 2 birds done
  • Learn about five new trees in my local area. – 1 in the works
  • Learn about five scrubs that I see along my walking trail or our favorite hiking trail. – 1 finished, 2 in the works
  • Take four new hikes. (These are tentatively planned in my planner along with maps.) – 1 completed
  • 15 Rocks in the book: Rocks, Fossils, and Arrowheads – 2 down

I think I better get busy…now that the weather is warmer I may be able to tackle a few each month. I will of course share with you as I complete them.

How are your nature study goals going for 2013?

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Our Extraordinary Fungi Study – Turkey Tail

We wrapped up our month-long mushroom, moss, and lichen study with a final hike last Friday. Guess what? We saw the first really nice mushroom of the month! I had pretty much given up hope that we would see any actual mushrooms and was resigned to completing our study in a future month when a specimen presented itself.

Well, we were able to complete the month with a great observation session of this big guy! I love the texture of the cap and the size was amazing…about six inches across. There were several smaller mushrooms nearby but we focused on the creamy brownish one.

I created a two page journal entry with March’s grid study (cut apart) and some photos of lichen, the mushroom, and a glorious fungus we found a couple of weeks ago. I love the bands of color and the way it looks like a colorful skirt…natural beauty is hard to beat.

I decided that this would be my Extraordinary in the Ordinary subject for the last challenge of March. Turns out…this was a really good choice.

Doing research about this fungus, which we identified as Turkey Tail, we learned it was being used in treating cancer patients. Who would have thought? There are amazing things to learn all the time when you really dig a little deeper.

Mushrooms, lichen, and moss were a fantastic focus for all of us….if you read the entries in the latest blog carnival I’m sure you realized that too. Looking forward to what April is going to bring with reptiles and amphibians.

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Thanks to March’s Sponsor! NotebookingPages.Com!

March has been filled with lots of free notebooking pages, giveaways, and inspiration from NotebookingPages.com. I want to thank Debra one last time for having such an innovative company that is always trying to take notebooking to the next level. There are so many things I love about notebooking both for homeschooling and for nature journaling and this company always has just the right page for us to use.

Notebooking Opportunities For My Readers
I would love for my readers to take advantage of the 50% off discount code for any nature or science sets: nature50. Please note: add all items to cart before applying the discount code.


I encourage you to become a free member and have access to many notebooking pages to get started if you aren’t sure about this method of keeping your nature journal.

I invite you to one last giveaway coming up this Friday for the Nature Study Bundle of notebooking pages.
Congrats to the three winners so far this month!

  • Jen G
  • Gail F
  • Dianne O

I loved sharing my enthusiasm for notebooking this month and NotebookingPages.com is my preferred supplier of pages for our nature journals.

You can read more about our notebooking in our nature journal here:
Nature Journal Organization - tabs

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NotebookingPages.Com Review-Nature Journal Options

Keeping a nature journal using notebooking pages has been a part of our routine for many years. Each page is a treasure, showing some aspect of our personalized learning. Taking the time to slow down and record a memory, an experience, or an interesting fact takes nature study to a higher level.

But, it is always easier to have a stock of pages on hand to quickly print when the mood strikes. That is where this month’s blog sponsor comes in….NotebookingPages.com has a huge library of pages you can use that are ready to go. Although I use many, many of their pages in our homeschool, I will introduce the nature study sets we use in our home for you to get a taste of. You will see just a sampling of the pages available and for most topics there are multiple choices with lines or no lines, some with illustrations and some with a variety of sketch boxes. There will always be a notebooking page you can adapt to your area and topic.

Notebooking Pages Free Membership

Note: If you have visited NotebookingPages.com before and been overwhelmed, please note that they have done a complete makeover and navigation of their many resources is now much easier and simpler. 

How to Personalize Your Pages

  • Use colored pencils or watercolors
  • Add an image from your study
  • Use the pages to keep your life list of birds
  • Keep track of your garden plants
  • Complete a four season nature study project
  • Add your own stories to the page…front or back


I have always had a Treasury Membership which gives me access to all the notebooking pages on the website plus all the new pages she adds during the membership year. There is no need to download every page when you purchase your membership because along with the membership comes access to all those pages forever.

But, if you are just looking to add access to pages for your nature journal and aren’t ready to jump into a full membership, you can purchase individual sets to build up a library of pages to choose from for your nature journal.

Tip: If you purchase a set of notebooking pages, print out the table of contents as a reference. This way you will have a complete list of available notebooking pages and you will be able to quickly find the page you need when the time comes.


Basic Nature Study Set
Click over and see all 292 pages in this set for your to choose from: plants, trees, flowers, rocks, weather, etc. There are primary and regular lined pages with a variety of borders, boxes, lines, and prompts. You will have access to cover pages, bordered pages, and a special Creation Notebook set too. Follow the link above and view every page you will get in this Basic Nature Study Set. $10.95 (Take 50% off with the discount code: nature50 during the month of March 2013).

 

Nature Study Notebooking Pages


Birds: 
North American 
This is the set we use the most in our family with 97 different birds and over 280 pages available at this time. $8.95 (Take 50% off with the discount code: nature50 during the month of March 2013).
World 
This set adds 30 more birds and over 680 pages available at this time. $5.95 (Take 50% off with the discount code: nature50 during the month of March 2013).
Tropical
This set adds 43 tropicalbirds for your nature study. $5.95 (Take 50% off with the discount code: nature50 during the month of March 2013).
All About Birds 
This set of 55 pages is a must have for any family that is studying birds. It includes pages for parts of the bird, feathers, migration, and plenty of general birds pages to make it valuable as a reference. $2.95 (Take 50% off with the discount code: nature50 during the month of March 2013).

Birds - Basic Study Pages

Birds of North America Notebooking Pages

 

Tropical Birds Notebooking Pages

Birds of the World Notebooking Pages

 
 

Wildflowers, Weeds, and Garden Flowers
This set includes pages for 45 plants featured in the Handbook of Nature Study. I love the variety of pages that are offered for each plant including coloring pages, lined pages in both primary and regular-8 different styles for each plant. $12.95

Wildflowers, Weeds, & Garden Flowers Notebooking Pages
Please note: If you already own the Notebooking Treasury Membership, you have access to all these pages already and can find them in your Member Download Center.

 

NotebookingPages.com is this month’s blog sponsor. Please note that I have used affiliate links in this post and other places on my blog for NotebookingPages.com.

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Shale Nature Study – Rock Update #2

Our local landscape is full of rocks…the area was settled by gold miners in the California Gold Rush and even today there are gold mines in our area that are back into production (the price of gold is up enough that they can make money). There is a park in our neighborhood that has an exposed bank next to the road and that is where we found our shale to study as part of my on-going year-long focus on rocks.


This is our official first rock from the list which we pulled from the book Rocks, Fossils and Arrowheads (Take-Along Guides). See last month’s entry for my preparation for this project where I will be attempted to locate and collect as many of the rocks from the book as  possible during 2013: Rock Update.

This is what our local shale looks like….like wafers that are either horizontal or vertical. The color varies but mostly the out-croppings we have seen are light colored from a light gray or red or even green. Doing some research has revealed that it is the organic materials in the shale that give it its color: iron oxide, hematite, geothite, or mica.

This is the piece of shale that is shown sticking out in the photo above. I could just slide it out.

Shale is a sedimentary rock that is mostly composed of clay and is sometimes called mudstone. It can easily be scratched with a knife and has a quality that is listed as “laminated”. This means that the rock is made up of many thin layers.

The mystery rock from last month’s entry turns out to be slate which is the metamorphic form of shale. Guess what next month’s rock will be? You guessed….slate! I will explain how you can tell the difference because in the process of identifying the shale I also learned quite a bit about slate.

You can read all my 2013 nature study goals here on my blog.