Notebooking Archives

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Barb — 3 Comments

Our Spring Fern Nature Study

Taken May 3, 2012

We actually started our fern nature study way back in January during our Silent Nature Winter Walk.

This week we walked the same trail to view our ferns. We tried to remember how many ferns there were back in January and there seems to be more ferns now and they are larger. Comparing photos I think we are correct.

Magnificent ferns on our hiking trail.

I was interested in the Western sword fern but Mr. B was interested in the California Maidenhair fern. Both are plants that we have looked at closely before. The Maidenhair fern is interesting because it has a black stem and looks like lace…sometimes you have to look twice because you think the green parts are floating in air but really they are attached with delicate black stems.

More Nature Study Book #3 Fern Study Notebook Page

We had a field guide to consult and to glean a few new facts from. Mr. B did a nature journal page for the California Maidenhair fern from our hiking trail. He thought the stalk was a purple/black…I will have to look closer the next time we hike down the trail.

California Maidenhair Fern – March 2010 (Best photo I have that shows the stalk.)

Now do you want to see some of our California wildflowers from further up the trail? We were busy this time stopping and noting all the colorful flowers there are right now.

This is a colorful time of year in our part of the world.

I am keeping a running list of wildflowers seen on this particular trail for the whole year of 2012.

Keeping a list…nothing fancy about this page in my journal.

I just add to my list in my nature journal when we get back from our hike. It is interesting to see the patterns and successions of blooms.

Making fern prints with ink. See link below.

We will be revisiting ferns again this summer as we visit several spots in California that have ferns. I think it will be fun to add to our collection of fern prints that we started back in January.

It is not too late to join in with your own fern nature study….. If you own the More Nature Study Book #3 for spring, there are plenty of simple ideas to glean more information about your local ferns or prepare for the future when you may encounter ferns during your travels.

I am linking up to a new to me monthly meme at The Homeschool Scientist. Click over and join in.

Posted on May 7, 2012 by Barb — 1 Comment

Newsletter Challenge: Extraordinary in the Ordinary

Extraordinary Defined:

Going beyond what is usual, regular, or customary.

Noteworthy or remarkable.

The Handbook of Nature Study Newsletter for May 2012 builds on the theme of Noticing Nature in the Everyday. One of the activities from the newsletter is to find something extraordinary in the ordinary….by using the May Grid and Printable Bookmark. I encourage you to spend time in your own backyard, helping your children find something of interest.

I wanted to expand that a bit with this post and offer a printable notebook page to use to follow-up your Extraordinary in the Ordinary outdoor time. I challenge you to find at least one thing to take a closer look and to then complete a notebook page or nature journal showing what you learned. My family will be participating in this challenge too!

See if you can find something extraordinary right under your noses.

You can see a past example from my post: Extraordinary in the Ordinary.

Free Printable Notebook Page: Extraordinary in the Ordinary – In Your Own Backyard.

Posted on April 18, 2012 by Barb — 5 Comments

Spring Wildflowers- California Poppy Nature Study

“One of the most interesting performances to watch that I know is the way this poppy takes off its cap before it bows to the world. Like magic the cap loosens around the base; it is then pushed off by the swelling, expanding petals until completely loosened, and finally drops off.”
Handbook of Nature Study, page 563

Way back when I was planning the challenges for the More Nature Study Book #3, I had no way of knowing what perfect timing I would have with this particular Poppies and Buttercups Challenge. We were treated to two events this week in connection with our poppy study.

1. We took a day trip to Yosemite National Park and even though parts of the park still have quite a bit of snow, when we left the park through the southern El Portal entrance and out Hwy 140 there were millions of poppies blooming along the hills that run alongside the Merced River. It was breathtaking! I have lived in California all my life and I have never seen such a display of poppies…miles and miles of poppies in bloom.

2. The California Poppies in our front yard garden decided to start blooming on Monday. I am serious….Monday, right on cue! We took some time to closely observe the way the caps tip to reveal the petals (see the top photo in this entry). We marveled at the light shining through the bright orange petals. We peered into the inside flower parts and remembered Anna Botsford Comstock’s remarks about sleeping inside a poppy. We observed the lacy leaves and decided to do some sketches and rubbings of the leaves in our nature journals. You can view a previous more thorough study of poppies in this blog entry: CA Poppies-Using the Handbook of Nature Study.

“The insects in California take advantage of the closing petals and often get a night’s lodging within them, where they are cozily housed with plenty of pollen for supper and breakfast..”
Handbook of Nature Study, page 564

As part of the advanced study suggestions for this challenge, we are keeping a spring list of wildflowers in our nature journals.

Advanced Study Notebook Page – More Nature Study Book #3 Spring

Mr. B also completed an additional notebook page for the Hound’s Tongue wildflower that we saw blooming this week on our hiking trail. This is one of the early wildflowers that we see in our local area. It’s distinctive leaves make it an easy flower to identify. The flowers are almost blue which is unusual and beautiful.

I enjoyed the lupine on the way home from our Yosemite trip. We had a wonderful week of focusing on wildflowers, increasing our desire for spring to really come and stay in our part of the world.

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Barb — 1 Comment

Buds and Catkins – Our Spring Nature Study

We still have plenty of tree buds to use in our nature study this week as part of the More Nature Study Book 3 study of Buds, Catkins, and Blossoms assignment. We went out after dinner last night to observe and gather some specimens for our study. Can I just say that we were intrigued with the variety we have right in our own backyard?

Mr. B and I both sketched buds into our nature journal. There has to be no better way to really see what a bud looks like than to try to sketch it in detail. Picking the correct color and seeing the different ways that buds are shaped lead to really truly *seeing* the subject.

Advanced Study Notebook Page from More Nature Study Book 3

Mr. B used the advanced notebook page from the ebook to try his hand at sketching an enlarged bud using the grid paper. He thought this was hard…..I think he just needs a little practice.

Sweet Gum Tree Bud

What a glorious bud he chose to sketch! This is the sweet gum tree bud…it looks like it is ready to burst open at any moment. We placed it in a glass of water to see if we could get it to open up in our window sill.

The vertical twig hanging down has our string on it…still no leaves.

We also observed the birch catkins we have on our backyard tree. This was the same tree we used in our twig study and we found the branch with the string marker. Not much of a change yet so we will continue to watch our twig as the season progresses.

New leaves on this twig of the birch tree and some catkins too.

Currently there are no tree blossoms in our yard. The plum is done and the pear and apple are not yet blossoming. We found a few more interesting things to gather and bring inside for our bud study.

Walnut Tree Twig with Buds

The most interesting thing from our study is the walnut tree twig with its unusual buds…both color and shape. We had never taken the time to really examine the walnut tree bud before so it was a surprise. It was a fun exercise to try to get the sketch right in my journal. It helps to know a little bit about twig anatomy so you notice all the important parts like the leaf scars and the lenticels.

Silver Maple Buds and Key

The maple tree buds are all burst open and you can see the keys in the image above. If you are interested in doing your own Spring Maple Tree Study, you can look back to a previous study we had here on this blog. You may wish to use the free printable: Spring Maple Tree Notebook Page

Birch Tree Catkin – April 2012

So this was another wonderful study with my teen. He did a little grumbling at first about doing the study this week since he thought there wasn’t much to learn but as you see above once we got started there were many things to be interested in. If all that he gleaned from this study was that all tree buds are unique and we can identify trees from twigs and buds, then I am a happy mama.

Posted on February 27, 2012 by Barb — 5 Comments

Updated Free Nature Notebooking Pages

When I released the very first Outdoor Hour Challenge ebook, there was also a set of free notebook pages that was offered by my friend Tina Joyce. Since then the files were somehow deleted from Lulu.com and it was not until this week that I was able to get them uploaded to my file share site.

Thanks so much Tina.

You should now be able to download each page for free.

Blank Nature Journal Page #2
Blank Nature Walk Journal Page
Blank Nature Journal Page for Older Children
Running List of Thinks Observed (I use this one all the time!)
Record of Things Collected
Mammal Outdoor Hour Challenge Notebook Page

You will find more free pages here: Handbook of Nature Study Free Downloads.

Posted on February 20, 2012January 10, 2022 by Barb — 1 Comment

Gall Dwelling Insects – Our Winter Study

Our gall study has been going on for several months now and we have gathered quite a few different kinds of galls during our hikes. Some of the galls are really small but once we know what we are looking for we can look for the signs on the oaks. During the winter, the galls are more noticeable because there are far fewer leaves to deal with. Our local forest is a mix of evergreen and deciduous oaks so we still have plenty of leaves to check but not as many as the middle of summer.

I think the key to finding galls is to know what you are looking for. Check the links in the original challenge if you have any trouble getting started.

The California Gall Wasp is only 1/8″ to 1/4″ in size…far too small to probably ever be recognized or identified but we do know what their gall looks like. It is the big gall in the top image and you can clearly see the exit holes. Fascinating stuff.

We took time to observe the smaller galls under our microscope. It truly is a completely different world under the lens of a microscope. Amazing…even a hand lens will open that world up.

Empty Galls Image Credit: Christine Lynch Flickr

There is so much to learn about this topic, reaching into insect study and tree study.

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Barb — 1 Comment

Learning About Wool – More Nature Study

More Nature Study Book 2 – Sheep/Wool Study

Since we don’t have access to a sheep to observe up close, we opted to study wool instead. Mr. B was not all that excited about this particular challenge but once we started we had some fun with it. We did notice some sheep in a pasture over the weekend but that was about as close as we got to a real sheep.

We started off with the video on YouTube showing how wool is made and we also watched a few videos on shearing sheep. This led to a few more videos on spinning yarn from the wool roving. Now we have more of an appreciation for the wool yarn that goes into our hats and scarves.
With new interest, Mr. B completed his research into the Artiodactyla order and Bovidae family of animals, finishing off with a written narration of his investigation. Links found in the original challenge. If you want an interesting discussion, try to find some information online that discusses the Artiodactyla order and whales. It led to some interesting thoughts in our home. (You can Google “Cetartiodactyla”.)
Lastly we looked at wool under the microscope…amazing to see up close. I encourage you to give it a try if you have a microscope.

Sometimes our nature study is not of the outdoor variety but I knew that when I included sheep in this series of challenges. We chose a rainy day to complete this study and it was fun to think about wool when we were out on our snowshoe hike recently. Nature study can connect many real life experiences if we give it a chance. I look forward to seeing if any other families took this challenge and found a way to make it successful with their family.

If you want to look at other mammal using the Outdoor Hour Challenges, you can find a list here on this page: Outdoor Hour Challenges – Mammals

You may also be interested in another Winter Mammal Challenge found here on the Handbook of Nature Study.

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Barb — 3 Comments

Winter Twigs – Noticing the Details, Training Our Eyes

Notebook Page from More Nature Study Book #2

This was the study I was most interested in when I wrote the new More Nature Study ebook. It truly is something we have never studied before and I was interested to see what we would learn.

We chose three of our backyard trees to collect twigs from: sweet gum, white birch, and pear. Later we added a twig from our silver maple and a few branches from our forsythia bushes. All week I have been enjoying just looking at them in the vases…still not taking the time to do the study.

Well, the time finally came to actually do the formal study after we had done lots of casual observations. We pulled out the new ebook, printed off the notebook pages, gathered our tree field guide, and fired up the internet. I love doing nature study with older kids since they can ask and then answer many of their own questions with the tools we have at our disposal.

Here are some of our observations:

1. Mr. A cut the twigs with his knife so we could observe the shape of the pith inside. They were all round inside.
2. Each of the twigs had different shaped terminal buds, with completely different colors.
3. We have never noticed the leaf scars before and now we know what to look for.
4. The lenticels on each twig were very different. Now we can use this observation to identify a tree since we know what we are looking for.

Stay Tuned for a Bud Study in the new Spring Ebook 3/5/12

This study has brought into focus once again the design of each living thing around us. Who would have thought that you could identify a tree by looking at its twigs and buds? I enjoyed getting to know how to use a new tool with the Winter Tree Finder guide. All of us are going to look at twigs with a new eye now and some new vocabulary as well. This study would be a perfect supplement to a high school biology course.

If you are looking for more winter tree study ideas, you can click over to Winter Series Challenge #2.

We were sitting outside in the warm afternoon sunshine and noticed that the silver maple has burst open its buds. We then noticed that there were probably a hundred bees buzzing in the top of the tree. Is it early for the bees to be so busy in the trees? I’m not sure. This is where a nature journal record is valuable. Stay tuned next week for a free printable to keep track of your seasonal “firsts”.

Posted on January 17, 2012January 14, 2022 by Barb — 3 Comments

Winter Feeder Birds – Our Sierra Foothills Friends

We spend a lot of time observing feeder birds as part of Project Feederwatch so this week’s focus on winter feeder birds is a perfect way to dig a little deeper. We have developed quite a list of backyard birds as part of this project. You can see our list here: Handbook of Nature Study – December Bird List. We have never seen a chickadee at our feeder but we still did the research as part of this Winter Bird Study Challenge.

We stared our nature study time focused on Chickadees as suggested in the More Nature Study Book 2 challenge. We pulled out the field guides and looked up to see what kind of chickadees we may see in our area.
My son also used Cornell’s All About Birds site to read more on the Mountain Chickadee which appears to be the only chickadee we may possibly observe. He completed the advanced notebook page from the ebook using information from the website.

We have heard the Mountain Chickadee on hikes up the mountain but have never actually seen one that I can remember. You can be sure we will keep our ears and eyes alert when we are out in that area again.

Since we didn’t get to observe a chickadee this week, I gave them the option to choose one of our feeder birds to learn a little more about and complete a notebook page recording their findings.

I chose the Mourning Dove which is a regular visitor to our front and backyard feeders. If I see one dove, I always look for the mate. They travel in pairs and seem to look out for each other as they bob along eating seed that has fallen from the platform feeders. I used a coloring page from Cornell’s Feeder Bird coloring book. I always feel so clumsy when I try to sketch a bird so having the simple outline to work from makes my journaling more enjoyable.

There is a past Outdoor Hour Challenge for brown birds including the mourning dove here: Outdoor Hour Challenge- Gray Birds: House Sparrow, House Wren, and Mourning Dove. Our entry for the challenge is found here: Brown Birds.

My son did my Project Feederwatch bird count with me today as part of this challenge. He looked up three additional birds in the field guide to complete his winter bird study.

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Barb — 8 Comments

Silent Nature Walk – Winter Nature Study with the OHC

Assignment:

Take a Winter Weather Walk and observe as many things in your neighborhood as possible that are special about the winter season.
Advanced study: Challenge yourself to take a walk keeping completely silent. Go as a family or all alone.

After checking our weather for the next few weeks, we realized that a winter weather nature walk was not going to happen any time soon. Our Winter Wonder Walk became our Silent Nature Walk instead. This was part of the advanced study suggested for the first challenge from the More Nature Study Book 2 ebook plans.

We loaded up the Kona dog and headed to our favorite local trail. Mr. B started off ahead of me so we wouldn’t be tempted to talk. This was a good plan since it also separated us a little as we walked and it seemed that we were all alone which allowed the sounds of the woods to be easily heard.

A few of the things I observed on our Silent Nature Walk:
1. Greenness of the ferns growing alongside the trail on the hillside.
2. Dry trail with acorns..crunching leaves.
3. Birds singing in the woods. The only one I recognized is the Northern Flicker. I also heard some wing flutters coming from the bushes lining the path.
4. The buzz of an insect which I couldn’t see.
5. I noticed a pile of feathers where some forest animal had made a meal.

Mr. B wrote his observations on a notebook page when we got home and I was impressed with the different things he noted that I missed as noted below:
1. He heard five birds.
2. He noticed the river’s rushing sound and how it changed as we walked down the canyon.
3. Scrunch of the needles and the pat of the dirt.

He brought home an acorn to sketch into his journal and I brought home a few samples of ferns, an acorn, a weed, and a feather.

I was fascinated by the spores on the back of the ferns. I won’t detail here all I learned from the Handbook of Nature Study on ferns but we will in the future have a challenge featuring ferns. I found a wealth of information in Lesson 195 on the fruiting of the fern. There is always something new and interesting to learn.

I identified my ferns as the Wood Fern, the Western Sword Fern, and California Maidenhair Fern.

Silence. It is a great way to glean a little more from a walk if you can give it a try. I have to admit that several times on the walk when I couldn’t see Mr. B or the Kona dog that I was a little uneasy. It can be too quiet sometimes. I think we become accustomed to having background noise in our life from the computers, the clocks, music, traffic, and each other. Seeking out the quiet is something I think we should do on a regular basis and I will be adding this to future challenges, at least for the advanced study option. I encourage you to grow your children into the habit of spending a least a few minutes of every outdoor nature study time being silent and really listening.

It is not too late to join us for this new series of nature study challenges using the Handbook of Nature Study. All of the challenges for this series are gathered into an ebook format along with custom made notebook pages. Click over and see the details and join us this week for a new posted challenge on Friday.

Tag: Notebooking