Are You Looking For Sketch Tuesday?

Looking For Green Hour Challenges?

Clarification on the Big Move

Big Changes at The Heart of Harmony

Green Hour #12:New Focus on Garden Flowers

Many of you have expressed the desire to have a group focus for the Green Hour Challenges. I hesitated at first because among the participants there are such a variety of habitats involved in the Green Hour Challenges. We have those participants that live in the rainy Northwest, some live in the hot Southwest, many live in urban areas, and then there are families that are just getting their feet wet with nature study all around the world.   After much thought and consideration, I managed to convince myself that we could all share in a focus area to some extent and if you choose not to participate in the group focus, you are certainly welcome to pick your own focus area and share with everyone week by week as well. I want the Green Hour Challenges to be positive and encouraging and I will strive to maintain that goal. If you are new to gardening and need some tips, I will give you some easy instructions. Growing plants from seeds is easy. We use yogurt cups filled with a little potting soil to start our seeds. Follow the directions on the seed packet for seed planting depth, watering, and transplanting. Good first choices are sunflowers, zinnias, marigolds, and petunias. In general you can grow just about anything in a little cup or pot as long as it gets some sun and a little water each day. If it is still cold at night where you live, you may want to sprout your seeds indoors. Our weather has warmed up so we are growing ours on our back deck. As an experiment you could keep some cups outdoors and some indoors just to see the difference in their growth. (That's extra credit.) Green Hour Challenge #12 Start Your Engines…I Mean Seeds 1. Begin an eight week focus on garden flowers. Follow along with us as we adventure into the garden, whether it is your own flower pot with seeds in it, a square foot garden, a park with some flowers to observe, or anything in between. Read pages 453-456 in the Handbook of Nature Study-How to Begin The Study of Plants and Their Flowers. “The only right way to begin plant study with young children is through awakening their interest in and love for flowers.” Handbook of Nature Study, page 453 This would be a great week to take a field trip to a garden nursery to observe the variety of colors and textures in garden flowers that are available in your local area. While you are there, let your child pick out a flower to add to your home garden. You can pick out seeds to grow, a plant already growing in a pot, or both. If you haven’t started a garden yet, pick a flower that you can grow in a container either on your back porch or in a window. (Please note that in week 16 we will all be starting sunflowers and you may wish to pick those seeds up while you are at the nursery.) If you are starting some garden flowers from seed, make sure to water them according to the directions on the package. In general you will want to keep them moist during the germination period (until you see the plant popping out of the ground). 2. Take your 10-15 minute outdoor time to look for some garden flowers in your own area. If you already have some of your own garden flowers blooming, pick one to identify and see if it is listed in the Handbook of Nature Study. 3. Start a new list in your nature journal of garden flowers that you have planted or that you have seen while on your field trip or during your outdoor time. Make sure as you start this study of garden flowers that you turn to the Handbook of Nature Study’s table of contents to the “Garden Flowers” section and mark or highlight those garden flowers listed that you think you will encounter during your nature study time. Each week pick one flower to read about before you have your Green Hour time and this will help you have some interesting information to share with your children. If you found a new flower during your nature time, be sure to follow up with a reading in the Handbook of Nature Study if it is listed in the book. 4. Give an opportunity for a nature journal entry. Drawing flowers is a very enjoyable experience for most children. In week 15 we will be concentrating on how to draw flowers. 5. If you are going to make field guide cards for your garden flowers, start those this week. Try to make one card per week and at the end of this focus period you will have eight cards completed. 6. Post an entry on your blog sharing your experiences and then come back to the Green Hour Challenge post and add your blog link to Mr. Linky. All the challenges are listed in a drop-down menu on the sidebar of my blog. Please note: Mr. Linky is for linking to your Green Hour Challenge blog post only. Please do not link to your blog in general because then when others want to read your challenge post, they have to dig around in your blog to find it. Here is the challenge in PDF format for you to download. Green Hour Challenge #12 Start Your Engines....I Mean Seeds Barb-Harmony Art Mom Tina at Jetihoja Academy has put together notebook pages to go along with the Green Hour Challenges that she would love to share with you all. Green Hour Assignment Notebook Pages Melissa at In the Sparrow's Nest has graciously offered to share her bird list download with all of us. Taking Note of Birds List Please note that the "Green Hour" is a term from the National Wildlife Federation that I have used to describe my nature study blog posts. www.GreenHour.org If you wish to use their banner, here is a link: Green Hour official banners The "No Child Left Inside" slogan is not one that I came up with either. You can read more about where the term came from here: No Child Left Inside

Comments (3) Post A Comment! Permanent Link

Update on HFA, CM Blog Carnival, Hearts and Trees, Green Hour

First of all, the Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival has been posted at Freedom Academy and I encourage you all to pop over for a few minutes and read the entries. Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival Next, I wanted to update those families that have purchased Harmony Fine Arts Grade One from me since the revision. I was just informed last week that the boxed set of Masters of Classical Music CDs is no longer available at Amazon.com. I have checked high and low all over the internet and I have yet to find another source for this boxed set. However, you can still purchase the individual CDs on Amazon.com used. This is the best solution I have come up with for the present time. Here is a link to the materials page on Harmony Fine Arts that will give you the information you will need to purchase these separately. Currently there is a huge stock of these used at a reasonable price so it should not be a problem for those that are purchasing materials for next school year to use along with the Grade One plan. Materials Page for Grade One with the New CD Links I know that many of my readers have had an interest in my daughter's Hearts and Trees Art, Nature, and Handicraft Kits. She is currently getting down to the last of the spring kits.  If you were still thinking about purchasing one, you probably should do so soon or they will be all gone. I know that some have mentioned that she raised the price of the kit this time but you might want to note that even with the slight increase in price, the overall price of a kit went down since the postage is less. This kit is significantly lighter than the previous kits so she was able to go First Class instead of Priority. I think it is a fantastic deal and would have loved to have these kits available when my children were younger and I had less time to pull the materials and ideas together. Spring Kits at Hearts and Trees One last thing, if you have not kept up with reading the Mr. Linky links for the Green Hour Challenges, you are missing out. There are so many great experiences that families from all over the world are sharing. I can't tell you how encouraging it has been to me to read every single link. I am proud of everyone's efforts and would love for you to read more. Here's how: On my sidebar there is a drop down menu for every Green Hour Challenge. Click the individual challenge, scroll down to the bottom of the post to Mr. Linky, and then follow the links. Here's a rundown of how many links there are: Challenge 1-68 links Challenge 2-45 links Challenge 3-35 links Challenge 4-33 links Challenge 5-25 links Challenge 6-19 links Challenge 7-16 links Challenge 8-15 links Challenge 9-16 links Challenge 10-11 links Challenge 11-2 links That is a lot of nature study going on in homeschooling families! Have fun reading the links. That's all for the odds and ends post....trying hard to keep current. Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Comments (3) Post A Comment! Permanent Link

Artist Study for Jan van Eyck

The Arnolfini Marriage, 1434. Jan van Eyck We loosely follow the Ambleside Online's picture study schedule each term. This term's artist is Jan van Eyck. If you want to know more about Ambleside Online's Charlotte Mason approach to artist study, here is the link. Ambleside Online Artist Study As the next term progresses, I will sharing with my boys a little bit about the artist Jan van Eyck. I looked over my shelves and I found the following books had information that we could use. I thought I would share what I found so if you happen to have these books sitting on your shelf or you have access to them at your local library, you will not need to dig through for yourself. Discovering Great Artists by MaryAnn Kohl: Page 15 has a short biography and a follow-up project. The Art Fraud Detective by Anna Nilsen: Ninth painting in the Museum of Art Catalog The Usborne Introduction to Art by Rosie Dickins: Pages 42-43 has info about The Arnolfini Portrait The Usborne Book of Art by Rosie Dickins: Pages 46-47 has info about The Arnolfini Portrait Annotated Art by Robert Cumming: pages 14-15 has info about van Eyck and The Arnolfini Marriage Or if you would like to view more of his paintings online, here are some links. www.artchive.com www.abcgallery.com CGFA website artinthepicture.com That will be enough to get us started and I hope it helps you too. Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Comments (0) Post A Comment! Permanent Link

Sketch Tuesday: Looking Out A Window