Green Hour Challenge 6 and 7

We did these challenges during separate weeks, but I am just getting around to posting about them. I am excited about this weeks challenge: Up Close and Personal. With this challenge #8, we will be looking at different things with a magnifying glass. How cool is that!

We have been seeing so many things from nature our eyes weren't tuned into as before. A different shaped leaf, an unusual shaped rock, an unknown flower, an animal, and more... We have been blessed to see many different types of animal in our yard lately. Here are some highlights:

We have seen a Opossum (not dead in the middle of the road, but a real live one!) and Raccoons on our deck late at night.

The kids found two Long-Toed salamanders and they made a little habitat for him for a couple hours.

A bird is building a nest in our newspaper box. We don't get the paper, so it is fine by us. It is at a perfect height so we can see the nest building process and hopefully see some eggs and baby birdies. We saw the mom with a twig in her beak one day and we now that this bird is a Mountain Chickadee (great site with eggs in the nest). The next day after we took the picture below, it looked like someone reached their hand in and destroyed the nest. We thought this oppertunity was all over now. But a few days later it was built up again (see pictres for challenge 7). We will be sharing more pictures each weeks as we watch this birds nest.

Challenge 6: Starting a Collection

I asked the kids what things they would like to collect. I can't say we have gotten to far with this.

Holly: She has been collecting sea shells and wants to add to her collection.

Question: Would it be ok to purchase a pack of sea shells from a craft store and help her to identify them? Or would that be cheating? Or does she need to find them on her own at the beach?

Jessica wants to start a insect collection. UM... I haven't been to keen on encouraging this. Bad mommy. But I don't care much for bugs. But she does... I need to have her start gathering the bugs she would like to "kill" and get this project started. I will do better at encouraging this... I will, I will, I will...

Timmy: He doesn't know... Don't think his is interested in collecting anything. And know what... That is ok.

Jake: Pressed flowers... Now this one I like. We have already pressed a couple flowers he has plucked from the ground.

We did a Mini-Study on the salamander as well as our Green Hour Notebooking Page.

I drew a picture of a Alstroemeria in my sketch book.

Challenge 7: Your Own Field Guide

We don't have a color printer and I don't think I am up to creating our own field guide yet. Love the idea though. We do keep track of birds we see in our yard and add them to our list. Recently we added a Black-Capped Chickadee to our list.

While Jessica and Timmy were out dirt bike riding, Timmy saw a black tailed deer next to the path. He stopped his bike and the deer ran about 5 feet in front of him, crossing his path. He thought that was AMAZING! (see Weekly Report for pictures)

Holly did a sketch entry of the opossum in her nature journal.

We did a Mini-Study on the opossum and also did our Green Hour Notebooking Page.

As a extra bonus, we watched Kristen's Fairy House (this site has some neat coloring pages and other activities to do). It was a cute movie that really touched on nature studies. It was neat watching the aunt sketch in her notebook (of a tree) while her niece built a fairy house. I saw it as a wonderful example of how to sketch in our journals. These sketches were used for the aunts books. We checked out the video from our local library.

The next day Holly set off into the woods and made her own Fairy House. She had a lot of fun making it. I was really impressed at what she choose to use. She even used some shells from her sea shell collection.

Holly also was happy to find a bee with pollen on it and she wanted to keep it until dad got home so he could see the pollen on its legs.




We have had some really bazaar weather around her lately. As we were driving home one evening, the clouds above the Olympic Mountains looked amazing. There was a little light showing between 2 peeks and dark clouds all round it. When we got home, Jessica went to her nature journal and sketch what she saw.


And here is a picture of what the nest looks like as of 2 days ago:



We also went on a nature walk with the folks from Koinonia Academy and another family. What an experience this was. We got hailed on! And not just a little either. When we arrived it was nice and sunny. I took a few pictures of the clouds in the skies because I thought they looked neat. Little did I know what they were really holding in them. I should have known. LOL Enjoy some of the pictures from our walk in the slide show below. To read captions, just click on slide and scroll over the picture.

And that concludes our 2 weeks in review of our Green Hour Challenges!

~*~Have A Wonderful Week~*~

Green Hour Challenge Assignment #5

This week we took a walk around our backyard looking for signs of spring.Here is a LIST of what we found: * new bud growing on a Rhododendron Bush * Fig Tree: new fig growing * Rose Bushes: new buds forming * an unknown tree & bush (need to figure these out) with new buds * new flowers in full bloom * and ants scurrying all over their ant hill.

Here is a video of our ants. We watched them for a while and they were moving twigs and other things around on their nest. Boy are they busy little ants. Sorry I am not the best video person around... but this will give you a general idea of what they are doing.



It just finished raining and we headed outside to see what the ants nest is up to. Here is what we saw:



We decided to learn more about our precious little friend, the ant. We have determined they are Western Thatching Ants. We read the information at this link and were amazed at all it told us about our ant friends. We know they are beneficial ants and help to contral the insect population. I LOVE THEM. LOL We read the section in Handbook of Nature Study where Anna talks about Ants (pg 369-373). The discussion questions she provides are wonderful. I think I am finally understanding how to use this book. I asked the kids what they have seen the ants eat and they said: worms, tomato's, different types of ants, sow bugs, part of a flower, & spider. Here is their notebooking page they did:




























On a different note, here is some nature journaling Holly and Jake did on the Western Gray Squirrel:


















We made a list of things we would like to learn about in our yard: * Ants * Fig Tree * Rhododendron's * Tree in the front yard (don't know the name) * Birds that visit our yard (so far we have Mountain Chickadee & Steller's Jay) * Insects

To view more Green Hour Challenges, click HERE. If you would like to participate in these challenges, it isn't to late. You can join at any time. Just click HERE to learn more about Green Hour Challenges.

Green Hour Challenge Assignment #4

We were supposed to meet with our dear friends on Monday, but we pushed it off to Tuesday due to me being sick. That day didn’t work either. We will just meet next Monday for Green Hour Challenge #5. My kids were bummed, but I assured them we would still do some sort of walk outside this week, even though I am a bit under the weather.

I have to admit, this Challenge #4 left me feeling like I didn’t quite know what to do. I like guidance. Tell me what to do and I will do it. But give me a “Focus Area” assignment, and I am unsure of what to do next. I talked about this with the kids, giving examples of what a “Focus Area” might include. We decided on birds this time around since that is what we are learning about in Zoology 1.

But then as Monday evening drew near, I had another idea. I asked the kids, “What to you think if our “Focus Area” is our backyard? We could go around looking for things in our own yard we would like to learn more about. Turn over some rocks, look up what type of plants we have, etc.” They all liked that idea, though Holly didn’t want to see what creatures live under the rocks. LOL My little girly girl.

So how am I going to accomplish this challenge, when I feel the way I do. Here is what I decided to do:

Monday: We did our Cattails notebooking page. Here is Jessica’s page:


In the morning, we watched a squirrel jump on one of the bird feeders the kids made and down went the feeder and the gray squirrel. Poor little guy ran up the tree so fast. Here is a picture of the gray squirrel resting at the top of the dead tree that is next to the tree the feeder was hanging from:


We also discovered that the Western Gray Squirrel was put on the threatened species list in 1993 here in Washington State. We have so many of them around us, I never knew this bit of information before. The kids were amazed as well. We will be journaling about this furry friend in a few days.

Jessica spotted a bird at our feeder and she quickly grabbed the bird chart and figured out it was a Mountain Chickadee based on the types of field marking it had.

Later in the evening Timmy and Jessica said they both would like to spend some time outside just drawing in their nature journals, trying to figure out what type of birds we have in our area. I told them that sounded good to me, as long as it isn’t raining. Sketch books and rain don’t mix. They laughed and said, “Yes, mom.”

Wednesday: I sent the kids (we had a couple extra friends join in the fun) outside on a nature scavenger hunt. After an allotted amount of time, they brought their treasures back on the deck and we talked about what each team found. We used a really neat poem I found online and then created a notebooking page with it.


And there you have it. Short and simple… I think I am really going to like this “Focus Area” assignment after all.


(NOTE: Head on over to The Heart Of Harmony's Green Hour Challenges to see other wonderful posts and/or to join in the fun!)

Free Mini Lesson on Cattails

Over the past few weeks we have been participating in a wonderful Green Hour Challenge hosted by Barb at The Heart of Harmony. Our family has been heading outdoors on a regular basis to discover the wonderful world around us.

Part of this challenge is to take short walks with my children. During a couple different outings we have seen a plant that is pretty familiar to our family: The Cattail. The kids have grown up seeing this plant at Grandma and Grandpa's house, but we never knew much about it. When we returned home from one of our walks, we decided to take a closer look at this marvelous plant.

I created a mini lesson on Cattails for my children and want to share it. It includes a notebooking page where you label the parts of a cattail, as well as a few lines for other information, such as, where you would find them at, how big they get, etc.

There is also a section where you can fill in the blank with the many interesting facts about the uses of the Cattail plant. It is amazing what folks over the years have done with this plant. For example, the Native Americans used to roast the flower of the Cattail and eat it like corn on the cob. YUM... or maybe not... LOL

There are a couple links provided to help fill in the blanks on the notebook page. And with one of the links, there is a very neat science experiment using the Cattail.

CATTAIL MINI LESSON

The link can also be found underneath the Green Hour Challenge Logo on the right side bar of this blog. A picture of the notebooking page can be found in a post HERE.

Happy Nature Studying!

Green Hour Challenge Assignment #3

What a wonderful Nature Study we had a this week. I am really enjoying the fact that "I" am heading out to enjoy the great outdoors with my beautiful children. And the bonus is I get to spend extra special time with my friend {{Lisa}} and her wonderful girls.

While I was reading our Green Hour#3 assignments, I ran across something that really spoke to me. I want to share what I read from Handbook of Nature Study:

"... and these (children's nature journal drawings) were universally so excellent that most people regarded them as an exhibition from the art department; and yet many of these pupils never had had lessons in drawing. They had learned to draw because they liked to make pictures of the living objects which they had studied." pg 17

"Too much have we emphasized drawing as an art; it may be an art, if the one who draws is an artist; but if he is not an artist, he still has a right to draw if it pleases him to do so. We might as well declare that a child should not speak unless he put his words into poetry, as to declare that he should not draw because his drawing are not artistic." pg 17

We were asked some optional questions in regards to Nature Studies. Here are my responses:

1. Has it changed since starting these challenges? YES. I never got around to doing this before. Always wanted to, but didn't. I really appreciate having something to guide me to accomplish this "subject" I have always wanted to do with the kids, but never got around to it.

2. Are you committed to keeping up your Green Hour time because you see the benefits stacking up in your family? YES. Last night while I was tucking Jake into bed he asked if we could go on another nature walk tomorrow. They love this time out. I love this time out with them. I see a desire steering with in my children to want to learn about God's wonderful world.

3. Have you started keeping your own nature journal or photo album of you experiences outdoors with your children? Yes. I did my first journal sketch this week. I plan on adding pictures from our walk into their nature journals and/or notebooks. And dream of all dreams, I hope to scrapbook our nature walks. If anything, this blog is a virtual scrapbook.

Now onto the happen'ins of our Nature Walk. We meet at the Clear Creek Trail, but this time it we walked the middle section of the trail. One more Clear Creek Trail meeting and we have walked the whole trail. YIPPEE! And then we will go to a new place for our nature walks. We are blessed to live in an area with lots of wonderful places to go nearby. Or we could even head out our door too. We don't have to go anywhere, we just enjoy these outings, especially with another family.

Here are a few things we heard on our walk: birds chirping, creek flowing, frogs croaking, people talking (oops, must have been mom), & the wind.

Here are some things we saw: frog, bird, 2 dogs, people, grass, tree, many different plants.

Here are some things we touched: Fuzzy leaves, hard acorns, slimy frogs, rocks, trees, wood, water, flowers, people (ok... I must let you know that this is Timmy giving this answer each time... LOL), and moss.

Holly & Timmy wanted to learn more about the tree frog. We discovered (from reading HNS pg 177), that they don't have suction cups on the ends of their toes like we all thought. In fact they secrete a substance from the little round disks at the end of their toes that allow them to cling vertically to surfaces. We never knew that.

UPDATE 3-7-08: Jake wants to learn more about his acorn he found. Ok we know it is from an oak tree. Surprise, surprise. LOL But which one... It is hard to tell. What I am learning is that we need to look a the leaves from which the acron has fallen off of. And look at the bark, etc. We will just have to go back and take a closer look to help us identify it.

UPDATE: 3-7-08: Jessica wants to learn more about cattails. She wanted know how tall a Cattail can get. The type we have in our area is called a "Common Cattail" and can grow 5-9 feet tall. She also did a fun fact: The speices of CA, TX, Mexico, and Argentina can grow to be about 18 feet high! WOW! She also went onto draw one in her sketch journal and is adding her information to her journal page.

* We read a couple books: Crinkleroot's Visit to Crinkle Cove (wonderful read aloud book) & Crinkleroot's 25 More Animals Every Child Should Know.
* I had the kids lay out their treasures on colored paper and I took a picture of them. I will add this picture to their nature journal or notebook in a few days. They had so much fun looking at each item again and arranging them in their own special way so we could capture this memory with a picture. And this is a great way to record all their treasures they brought home.
* Each child picked an item out and we placed them in a book to be pressed. We will add them to their nature journals after they are done drying. (for more information read blog comments)
* We filled out our notebooking pages and did a little journaling in our nature journals .

Below is a slide show of our Nature Walk and Journal time at home.

To read more wonderful Nature Walk Adventures, please visit Barb's Blog at The Heart of Harmony, Green Hour Challenges.

Thanks for stopping by!

Green Hour Challenge Assignment #2

For Green Hour Challenge #2, hosted by Barb over at The Heart of Harmony, we hooked up with the wonderful family from Koinonia Academy and meet them at Clear Creek Trail. This trail is very large and we decided to break it up into 3 sections. This time we visited the southern part of the trail which included Dyes Inlet and played on the beach for a while.

My Assignment/Thoughts:

Part of our (parent) assignment was do read different sections of of Handbook of Nature Study. I am soaking up all the reading I am doing and am LOVING it. I also read the Optional Assignment which goes into greater detail on how to use the book HNS to it's fullest. What "I" need to work on now is to call the things we learn about by their names, such as parts of a tree, plant, etc. I have some learning to do myself. I need to make a couple cheat sheets and keep them with me as we go on our walks so when the kids spot a flower I can pull it out and ask them what color is the corolla, what color are the leaves of the spray on that tree, etc. This will be my major assignment over the next few weeks, or months, or how ever long it takes me to remember the names. *Ü*

Here are some quotes from the book I wanted to share.

Page 15: "Certain questions and lines of investigation should be given the pupils before starting and given in such a manner as to make them thoroughly interested in discovering the facts."

Page 23: "Make the lesson and investigation and make the pupils feel that they are investigators." and "If the questions do not inspire the child to investigate, they are useless."

I veered off the reading assignment and read about, "The Field Notebook". It has some great pointers about keeping a Field Notebook. Here are some tidbits of the pointers:

a. "The book should be considered the personal property of the child and should never be criticized by the teacher except as a matter of encouragement."
b. "The making of drawing to illustrate what is observed should be encouraged."
c. "The notebook should not be regarded as port of the work in English." (don't correct spelling, grammar, etc.)
d. "As occasion offers, outlines for observing certain plants or animals may be placed in the notebook." (this one is a must for me... I can't remember everything and having a page with the top things to achieve really helps me in accomplishing our goals)
e. "No child should be compelled to have a notebook." (This one I was a little puzzled with. .. After all, I want my children to have a sketch book, field guide, and journal. I made neat notebooking pages, etc. and by golly they are going to do it. LOL *Ü* But really, what this point spoke to me to me is that it shouldn't be forced. If they don't want to draw, write down their findings, etc. don't force it. Maybe this week (or 2 or 3), might be their week(s) when they don't want to record information, etc. And that is ok. I say again for my own acknowledgement/reinforcement... That is ok! It isn't like we would stop our nature study because they don't want to record anything in their journal. I know they are learning as we are out walking and observing. For me, the notebooking pages are just there as prompts to record their findings. And not all sections are filled out by each child. And... That is ok! )

With that covered, now I will share our finding from Assignment #2:

We started off our day with some time at the beach where they had a blast over turning rocks (and turned them back over again) to see what creatures were hiding under them. Then we headed into the mouth of the creek (where the fresh and salt water meet). There were all types of plants here and lots of birds. Here is a slide show of our day:

One word descriptions of what they heard: Tweet (Holly, Timmy & Jake), Splashing (Jessica)

Two word description of what they saw: Bird Nest (Timmy), Gray Heron (Jake), Clam Shells (Holly), flying birds (Jessica)

Three word description of something they felt: Soft White Sand (Timmy), Fast Moving Crabs (Jake), Tall Tall Tree (Holly), Fuzzy Pussy Willows (Jessica)

Jessica wanted to learn more about the Pussy Willow by discovering how it got the name "Pussy Willow". Click HERE to learn more about it. For her notebooking page she drew a picture of the waves splashing on the rocks. She also drew a Pussy Willow branch with pollen (closer look) in her sketch book.

Timmy wanted to learn more about crabs. We discovered the type of crabs he saw are Purple Shore Crabs. He drew a picture on his notebooking page of an army of crabs running away trying to hide under a rock again.

Holly wanted to learn about The Great Blue Heron. She read more about this bird in the Smithsonian Kids' Field Guides: Birds of North America West. For her notebook page, she drew one perched on a branch looking for its food below. She also drew one in her sketch book and labeled the parts.
















Jake wanted to find out the type of clam shells he brought home with him. After our research, we found they are called Native Little Neck or Steamer Clams. He also drew a picture on his notebook page to show the inside of the clams. They have a purple tint around the outside edges.

To read more wonderful Green Hour Challenges for Assignment #2 click HERE.

Green Hour Challenge Assignment #1

Barb from The Heart of Harmony as started this wonderful nature study challenge: Green Hour Challenge. If you have wanted to do nature studies with your children, but always seemed to put them off for one reason or another, this challenge is for you.

One thing (among many) I really appreciate is the fact that she is teaching us how to use Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Comstock (here is a free downloadable version). I had this book for quite some time, but the size scared me to death. Barb is suggesting a few pages at a time from different sections of the book. It really is giving me a better understanding what a Nature Study is all about.

Here are a few quotes that stuck out to me, encouraged me, and inspired me:

"Nature-study cultivates in the child a love of the beautiful."

"Nature-study cultivates the child's imagination, since there are so many wonderful and true stories that he may read with his own eyes..."

"...more than all, nature-study give the child a sense of companionship..."

"In nature-study any teacher can with honor say, "I do not know"; for perhaps the question asked is as yet unanswered by the great scientists."

"Moreover, the teacher, in confessing her ignorance and at the same time her interest in a subject, establishes between herself and her pupils a sense of companionship which relieves the strain of discipline, and give her a new and intimate relation with her pupils which will surely prove a potent element in her success."

There was more I underlined or highlighted, but those above really stuck out to me.

For this assignment we went into our back yard and wondered around for about 10-15 min look at different items from nature that might be of interest to the kids. Is there a plant they see and they wonderful what the name is? How long does it take for a tree to grow? What tree does this leaf come from? And other possible questions.

I created notebooking pages for this assignment (and have assignments 2 notebooking page already done as well). This way they will keep a nature journal about our nature studies. I will place them in a 3 ring notebook and divide up the notebook into sections: Plants, Trees, Animals, Birds, Insects, etc...

Here were our results...

Timmy:

Question 1: What did you see: leaves, tree, rock, & grass
Question 2: What was interesting about them: He left this area blank. When I asked him about this verbally, he said, "Mom, it is my backyard. I play here all the time and didn't see anything new." Ok... Think to myself... He has a point there, but we will work on different approaches to seeing things as we go along on our nature studies.
Question 3: Did you bring anything back with you? No
Question 4: What would you like to investigate further? The Fig Tree
Question 5: What did you discover? Common Fig : Figs were a common foodsource for the Romans and were used to fatten geese.

Here is a picture of him hanging from one of the branches of the fig tree. And yes, it produces a ton of figs. Unfortunately a lot of them go to waste. I can't get past the part of what they look like when you open them up. YUCK!

Jessica:

Question 1: What did you see: grass, wisteria, pond, rocks

Question 2: What was interesting about what you saw? Grass-There was a lot of it. Wisteria- had no leaves on it and it looked dead. Pond- had not that much water in it. Rocks- they were around the pond.

Question 3: Did you bring anything back with you? A small branch with buds and a leaves attached to it.

Question 4: What would you like to investigate further? What color are ht buds when they bloom & what is the name of the plant

Question 5: What did you discover? It is the flower buds of a White Lilac.

Ok after I went outside to varify the plant type, I know it isn't a lilac. I will have to search for the "real" name. This is a learning process for us all. :o)

We have finally figured out what this lovely plant is offically called. This is a Cliftonia Monophylla. We also have that has redish belled flowers. They are very pretty when they are in full bloom.

Ok... 3rd time is a charm, right. After searching through more books on nature study and identifying, we are almost certain this is a (drum roll please...), a Japanese andromdeda (Pieris).

Holly:
Question 1: What did you see: leaf, new sprouts coming up from the ground
Question 2: What was interesting about them: Buds-They were dark green
Question 3: Did you bring anything back with you? No
Question 4: What would you like to investigate further? Find out the name of the flower
Question 5: What did you discover? This is a Mealy Cup Sage, will have purple flower spikes; blooms spring, summer, fall; shear occasionally; full sun; 2 to 3 feet.


Jake:
Question 1: What did you see: leaf & tree
Question 2: What was interesting about them: leaf- it was green.
Question 3: Did you bring anything back with you? No
Question 4: What would you like to investigate further? Find out the name of the tree
Question 5: What did you discover? This is a Rubber Tree/Plant.


For Green Hour Challenge #2, we will be heading the the Clear Creek Trail with some friends.

PS: If anyone would like a copy of my notebooking page, you can download them by clicking the link below the Green Hour Challenge Logo on the right side bar, or Here to get to them directly.