Weather, Weather, Weather….Nature Study in the Day to Day

We all have weather…..no doubt about it. Our family seems to notice the weather everyday and we often talk about how cold or how dry or how windy it is in comparison to last year or to the previous season. Sort of related this week, two family members came to me at separate times to tell me that the days are definitely getting longer. I had actually noticed it in the mornings and this morning in particular I realized that I did not need to turn the back lights on when I took the dog outside. The sky was just tinged with blue and the only luminary that I saw was Venus…nice and bright!

Weather Chart from the Autumn Series Ebook

We started this week keeping a daily record of our temperatures, sometimes several times a day just to see the variation. We compared this to our autumn study record that we kept in November 2010. There is virtually no difference except for perhaps we had more rain in November. We are going to keep going with our chart and see when we have a change in our weather.

Our tree silhouette study goes pretty much all winter so I had to try to come up with a new aspect to offer to the boys this week. We decided to note tree buds and to bring in some twigs from the forsythia bush to see if we can force some blooms.

Our sweet gum tree is already making some changes…the buds look like this right now.

Our birch is looking pretty much the same, it is in a shadier and cooler part of the yard.

The forsythia twigs are all gathered in a vase, sitting in the front window. I will let you know when and if they blossom.

Hope you had a great week of winter nature study and are getting outdoors a little each week to discover some interesting things in your part of the world.