So get out there and stock those feeders and don't forget to dust off your binoculars!! Don't have any bird feeders ready to go? Don't worry you still have a little over 2 weeks and I have a couple of great bird feeders that you and your family will love to make! Try our:
You can count the birds in as many different spots in your yard as you like but only once each day. Every day plan to observe your feeders for about 15 minutes each, recording the largest number of each species you see visiting at one time. Once you have completed your days count make sure you go over to the GBBC website to enter you information!
If you know a family that would like to participate but doesn't have access to the internet there is a PDF file of what you will be entering on the BGGC website that can be printed out, filled in and mailed. This is really great because everyone can participate then :)
The kids and I have been enjoying our little feathered visitors to our feeders and I thought that it would be fun to make a new treat for them to munch on during these cold snowy months. So we raided our pinecone stash picking out some nice large ones and coated them with peanut butter and then rolled them in birdseed. For a more nutrituous touch we added sliced rounds from apples and oranges and strung them onto the string to. They are so pretty to look at and they are a big hit. The smaller Juncoes and Sparrows land right on them and spin around wildly while eating and the Stellar's Jays dive bomb them *grin*, ripping of whatever they can catch as they swoop past :) Great entertainment!!
This week's assignment was to read the first chapter in our Discover Nature in Winter book and then observe colors in nature that are more noticeable because of the white snowy landscape and barren trees. So we trekked outdoors today in the high winds and bitter cold *grin*, to see if we could spot some brightly colored nature :)
The first observation that the kids made was that there were no brightly colored plants visible since everything around us is completely covered with over a foot of snow right now :) So I encouraged them to look more closely at some of the trees and shrubbery that we walked past. Under a giant cedar tree they found huge masses of moss, wonderful furry moss that was soft to the touch.
And growing along with that wonderful moss was some silver colored lichens which were definitely more scratchy and rough to the touch. We've got a bit of a touch and fell theme going on today *grin*.
We also found lots of tree branches and leaves littered on top of the snow as we walked, blown down by the winds today. Above L is holding a chunk of a cedar branch. We also observed a blue sky the color of robin eggs and not a cloud in sight :)
And just as we were about to head inside we stumbled upon some of the beautiful bright red berries of the Cotoneaster bush poking out from beneath the snow. Sorry for the bad photo. It was so far up on the hillside, that I had to zoom all the way in to get it and sacrifice quality :(
Hope you enjoyed discovering winter colors with us :)
I have sadly neglected my blog for quite a few months but I think we are all ready to throw ourselves back into some good old nature fun!! And wouldn't you know it, Barb aka Harmony Art Mom is hosting a really fun sounding Winter Wednesday nature study starting today and we're joining in :)
She will be posting a weekly assignment to follow or use as a guideline using the book Discover Nature in Winter. I ordered a copy of it on the weekend but it hasn't arrived yet, but I did find it through google books and it lets you preview the first chapter! So this will help us get started this week until our copy arrives and if you are interested in joining you may want to use that to until you can find a copy of your own :)
I am so incredibly excited to finally have a copy of Anna Botsford Comstock's Handbook of Nature Study!! I have wanted to buy it for a long time, but for some reason that time just never came.
While we were visiting Salt Spring Island in the fall I came across a rare and antique book store and thought I would just have a gander and maybe find a neat old gem for our nature studies. Well, I found a gem alright! This copy was published in 1911 and is stamped inside by 'The Normal School' which opened in 1908 in Stratford, Ontario inside of it. Now that's quite the name for a school *grin*.
It has definitely seen better days but we'll treat it lovingly :)
Currclick has a great freebie this week. They are offering for download a Basic Bird Study with notebook pages.
It has a fantastic diagram labeling all the parts of the bird as well as blank bird anatomy charts for your child to fill in themselves. There are also notebooking or journal pages for feathers, flight, migration, songs, homes and nests and more. The pages are geared to all writing levels with single or double spaced lines available so the whole family can enjoy them.
It is a perfect time to start a bird nature study since they are starting to return to our feeders in full force again. They are done raising their young and have more free time to socialize at the feeders. *grin*
Make sure you hurry and get them. They're only available for one week :)
I just found out about a neat site called EcoBrain ~ Green Books for Green Living. There are tons of great books there especially in the nature section *grin* and it is quite similar to CurrClick, giving away freebies quite often as well.
The current freebie is the above book on how to compost with worms. Super neat! All you need to do is to sign up as a member which is completely free, make sure you have Adobe Reader (you will need it to read the downloaded PDF) and that's it. You will now have access to download the worm book and any future ones :)
This week Unplug Your Kids' weekly unplugged project was about INSECTS so we thought we'd do a little bug hunting and the kids even built a little bug habitat for our finds :) Armed with jars we set out to see what we could catch.
K found tons of beetles and a really neat millipede. The millipede isn't actually an insect though because they have more than 6 legs :)
All L wanted to catch was a grasshopper and it was a real barrel of laughs watching her hop around the yard after them as they leaped one step ahead of her each time *grin*. Big brother K had to help her catch one in the end :)
For some reason grasshoppers love to crawl on our front window so we got to have a close up look at the underside of them. The kids thought that their thorax (check out grasshopper anatomy here) looked like a jigsaw puzzle :)
After K & L were done capturing their insects they really wanted to keep them but I knew that they wouldn't last long in the jars so the kids decided to make them a cozy little habitat to live in for an extra day :) We took a small cardboard box and they filled it with dirt, rocks, leaves, and even dug up a piece of grass to plant in it so that they would have something to eat while staying in their insect-topia *grin*.
It was interesting to watch how they reacted in their new home. The beetles scurried around the walls eventually finding refuge underneath the rocks and the grasshopper planted itself on top of the leaf and was very content munching on it. A couple of hours later when we went back to check on them the grasshopper had actually ate quite a few holes out of the leaf! And the millipede had wound itself into the root system of the grass that was still above the dirt level. At first they were disappointed thinking that it had gotten away but after a little searching that was where they found it :) We'll check on them again tomorrow and then set them free. I'm definitely not going to be keeping them as pets! L thought that her grasshopper would make a lovely pet for her room. LOL. Have fun creating an insect-topia of your own!
This week Unplug Your Kids' weekly unplugged project is about TREES. We started by borrowing the above book, the take along guide Trees, Leaves and Bark by Diane L. Burns from the library. This is a fantastic book which looks at 16 different trees describing where to find them, what they are used for, lifespan and more all with absolutely superb drawings of each tree's leaves, bark and seeds! There are also some great projects tucked inside as well. I had originally thought that we would do some rubbings or perhaps a leaf mobile but the kids had something entirely different in mind! *grin*
They decided to raid the scrap pile where Opa is building in search of chunks of wood to build with. The found cedar, fir, hemlock and even some roots :) Above is L's playground. The piece of wood on the left side of the picture has her slide (triangular piece of wood), a trampoline (the round section of a limb), the monkey bars (a chunk of root), and her playhouse. I just love her imagination!
K found some old siding that he cut into the deck of a pirate ship with his hand saw and the masts are actually made from apple tree branches that he salvaged and peeled the bark off of from the damage we recently had due to black bear troubles.
Then they really started to get creative and started to build stables for their ponies and playmobil horses :) Above is L's, complete with hay in the stalls and the doors swing open on little nail hinges :) It's so cute and she was so excited to show me. She built it entirely on her own!
K's stable went one step further with the addition of a roof :)
He even put the names of his horses on the stall doors *grin*. Of course all the names could only be 3 letters long so that they would fit. LOL. I love how this project evolved from nature study exploration, studying different trees, their leaves and bark to using the wood that trees provide in a hands on project full of imagination :)
Our third nature walk to the Oyster River Nature Park wasn't only fun but it brought with it the joy of a new friendship :) L met A through the random coincidence that they both happened to wear exactly the same lime green boots on the same day! They were inseparable from that moment on *grin*.
This is a really easy trail that takes you alongside the UBC farmlands where we peaked through the brush in hopes of catching a glimpse of the cows, crossed a really cool wooden bridge, and got to stop and take in the scenery at a lookout spot alongside the oyster river :)
In between all of the huckleberry picking there was an awful lot of stump climbing and they were mighty big I might add :) I think that in the above photo K had spied a huckleberry laden branch that he just had to have and of course it just happened to be on top of the stump!
"Look what I can do mom!"
Our one really interesting find for the day was the above caterpillar. It is completely hairless with a hard body, little bumps, a black stripe and those few black spots you can see along its side in the photo. I did some searching on the internet to see if I could identify it for the kids and it seems that this isn't actually a caterpillar at all.
Now I may be incorrect and please tell me if I am so I can correct this but the closest thing that I found to it was an Elm Sawfly larvae ~ Cimbex americana.
We must have been having way to much fun on this walk because that's about it for photos! I don't even have one of them filling in their nature notebooks this time around *grin*
'I cannot tell what you say, green leaves,
I cannot tell what you say;
But I know that there is a spirit in you,
And a word in you this day.
I cannot tell what you say, brown streams,
I cannot tell what you say;
But I know that in you too a spirit both doth live,
And a word doth speak this day.
'Oh green is the color of faith and truth,
And rose the color of love and youth
And brown of the fruitful day.
Sweet Earth is faithful and fruitful and young,
And her bridal day shall come ere long,
And you shall know what the rivers and the streams
And the whispering woodlands say.'
Our second nature walk took us to the tidal pools of Pt. Holmes during one of the lowest tides of the year. We had never been there before so we weren't exactly sure of what to expect. At first glance it appeared to be very rocky and not to inviting but there was some amazing exploring awaiting us further out at the point!
We didn't make it far before the exploring began in the shallow water along the beach.
There were hermit crabs, rock crabs, kelp crabs like the above one and multitudes of sea stars.
It was great! There were about 50 parents and children all over the beach and you could hear excitement everywhere as someone found a new creature to study :)
When we finally reached the rocky point where the best tide pools were it was absolutely stunning. You had to climb up onto the rocks as it was raised up higher than the shore and in amongst the rocky piles were huge seaweed covered tidal pools just full of discoveries! It was a totally different experience than the regular low tide excursions we usually take part in.
I can't remember the last time I saw this many sea stars in one place at the same time. When I was younger (at least a good 20 years ago) I used to spend my summers in Powell River and my cousins and I would collect sea stars by the hundreds literally. By the end of the day all of the skin on our fingertips would be completely shredded from picking up Ochre Stars ~ Pisaster ochraceus as a result of grabbing them along the white spines that cover them *grin*. They are one of the most common sea stars found in tidal pools. It was fantastic that the kids got to experience that to! Not the shredded fingertips but the sight of so many of them. LOL
We went from the ordinary to the extremely strange when we came across the above creatures. I'm guessing that they are some sort of sea slug but so far haven't been able to identify them. Anyone know what they are?
Then there were the not so ordinary Leather Stars ~ Dermasterias imbricata which have a very strange smooth and leathery back. Apparently you don't come across these sea stars very often so they were a great find :)
And this was tiniest sea star found for the day :)
I think that these were my favorite find for the day though, a colony of Green Anemone ~ Anthopleura elegantissima. They were closed up of course since they weren't in the water and were actually burrowing into the mucky ground to try and retain moisture as they don't tolerate dry conditions very well. We would have loved to have seen them open but maybe another time :)
Having conquered the tidal pools and with the rising tide threatening our safety we started to retreat back to the only teeny tiny patch of sand that there was for snack time.
A bunch of us had brought large beach umbrellas to act as shade for the kids since there was not one sliver of shade to be found anywhere otherwise....
and there we sat to snack on apples and grapes, sip water from our canteens and of course check off the items we had found in our nature notebooks so that they could get them punched for another successful nature outing :)
This week Unplug Your Kids' weekly unplugged project is all about Rough. I was completely stumped at first! I'm usually pretty good at thinking outside the box when it comes to crafty projects but it took me all week to get a real 'lightbulb' moment *grin* and at last our pinecone art project was created! There are tons of pinecones all around us here and we actually have scads of them in bags in our garage as well for such an occasion as this. They're rough and prickly to the touch so I think they fit perfectly into the 'rough' category :)
We started by picking out the nicest cones we had in a variety of sizes and colors. I wanted ones that had nice sturdy scales that would hold up to some rough and tough twisting as we pulled them apart for our project. You'll know which ones are not good for this project because as you pull at the scales on the cone they crumble and split, you don't want to use those :)
We laid down a layer of newspaper over the kitchen table before we started to catch all of the dust, dirt, and pinecone bits that dropped or flew in some cases all over :) and sorted them into small, medium & large categories. This made it easier to find the right sizes later when we started working with them on our paper as we didn't have to do a lot of searching through a big pile looking for the right ones :)
When I thought of pinecones and their rough textural appearance I immediately thought of an owl, so I sketched out a nice fat owl on each of our papers so that we had an outline to follow :) Using a fair amount of regular white glue we started to fill in sections of our owls with it and then placed layers of pinecones into the glue.
You can get really creative with your pinecone pieces to by defining different areas of your picture by changing the direction of the pinecone scales in different sections or by using half pinecones like I did for the eyes in the above photo so you get a 3D effect as well :)
Here's another one of our 'rough' pinecone owls :) I just love them! I can't wait until the glue is completely dry so we can hang them on the wall in our nature corner :) Have fun making your own pinecone creatures!
It's been an awful long time since I updated you on our Space Tomatoes aka Tomatosphere Tomatoes :) They are doing fabulously! I decided to give them to my mom so that she could plant them in her greenhouse since we don't have one and that way give them the extra heat they need to grow really well. As you can see they are doing well and are growing nice and tall now.
They've even set fruit! We still don't know exactly what type of tomato they are or if packet 'A' or 'B' is the true space tomato since we haven't finished the project yet and sent in results :) It's still a mystery *grin* They look like they are Roma tomatoes though by their shape. What do you think? We can't wait until they're ripe.
This week Unplug Your Kids' weekly unplugged project is Flat. Well, a lot of things are flat or can be flattened so we decided to do painted flower prints that we pressed 'flat' on our 'flat' paper. *grin*
We raided Omi's garden for a fun assortment of roses, daisies, geraniums, chive blooms, yarrow, ladies mantle leaves, primrose leaves, allium seed heads and then collected our painting supplies. We have an old burl coffee table in the backyard that works perfectly for crafting on that we covered with newspaper and used some of our rock creatures to hold our painting paper 'flat' :)
L started with a pretty rose and brushed on the paint. You don't want to put the paint on to thick if you can help it. The thinner the paint the clearer the print of your flower will be, thick paint just prints a big blob :)
And that's it, just paint and press 'flat'.
Primrose leaves create a really neat looking texture because all of the veins show up really well....
and the allium seed heads make a fireworks effect that is super neat :)
Get crazy with your colors to, mix and match them in a tye dye effect for even more fun. When the centers of the daisies are pressed 'flat' they make a really cool stipple effect. So when you've worn out your daisy and the petals just can't take another coat of paint, pluck them off and keep on printing the centers :)
You can even use this project to teach a little color blending lesson *grin* by watching how your rinse water changes color each time you add a new paint to it :)
Here are some of our 'flattened' flower prints :) Hope you have fun making some of your own.
By sheer luck we found out about these absolutely fantastic nature walks that were happening close to where we live and were able to sign up for the summer round of adventures to local trails and beaches :) Our first excursion took us to the MacDonald Wood Nature Park where we met up with a group of moms, some dads and a whole crew of children from babies in slings to school age children. Each child also received a super cute nature notebook that was stamped with 5 items that they had to locate along the walk and at the end of the afternoon they would get their books punched showing completion :)
Off we went with the first leg of our trip starting out along a winding wooded trail. Of course I didn't want to miss out on any possibility of nature journaling while we explored, so when K spotted this really neat fungus we were prepared with journal pages, colored pencils, sharpeners and erasers. *grin* Thank goodness that stuff is light and doesn't take up much space in backpacks! LOL.
Hooray the first find on our list, a Salmonberry ~ Rubus spectabilis.
As we neared the end of the trail leading to the beach we came upon a wooden boardwalk stretching along the top of the beach equipped with benches. Dh was quite happy with this find as he plunked himself down to enjoy the shady breeze as we continued on to explore the tide pools :)
It was great to see the kids running around excitedly as they explored the shallow pools of water observing crabs, poking at barnacles, inspecting pieces of clam shells and more.
And then there is my little water bug! He just can't resist getting wet and ran in with his socks and sneakers on while I watched from the edge of the water. I was completely prepared to have to go wading in after him foregoing dry feet in the process but luckily we were able to persuade him to come back to shore. *grin*
As we explored some more we couldn't help but be drawn to the huge patches of bright green seaweed, but it wasn't like the regular seaweed you normally see. This was like fine hair all matted together, very spongy and acted very similar to a sponge in the way that as you lifted your foot off of it the water had been squeezed out from that spot and the individual hairs became very distinct.
I did some searching in our Pacific Reef & Shore guide book and discovered that I think it is actually Sea Hair (Tubeweed) ~ Enteromorpha spp. which is actually a genus of green algae!
Where the sea hair had been out of the water longer and had had a chance to dry you could pick it up in giant sheets. It reminded me of homemade paper with it's rough texture and it was super light and thin. You had to be careful with it though, it fell apart very easily :)
As we neared the end of our walk there was time to sit, rehydrate after all of the hot sun exposure, enjoy a snack....
and to check out some of the cool beach finds that had been found :)
With one last look we were off through the trees again in anticipation of next weeks walk :)
I am so pleased I was able to get a few more good shots of the hummingbirds that we have :) If you have never heard what one sounds like when it is flying you have to listen to it here! Some days they fly very close to us and they can be quite aggressive over territory and food so you will be sitting outside eating lunch and there will be 2 hummingbirds dive bombing each other and just a chattering at each other on high speed around your head! *grin* Listen to this link to hear them chattering :)
Did you know that a Hummingbird is capable of flying at speeds up to 100 km/hr? Amazing isn't it!
When flying they can beat their wings up to 80 times per second and that is why when you watch them their wings appear to be invisible or only partially there. They also have a very high body temperature and heart rate. Their teeny tiny hearts can beat up to 1200 times per minute! All of that flying and flapping takes a lot of food and energy so they can eat as much as 2/3 of their body weight each day. The main staple of their diet is sugar which comes from flower nectar and tree sap but they also need protein to keep and help build their muscles so they also eat insects and pollen.
Did you know that a Hummingbird has a really great memory? Well they do and can remember where there are good food sources from even a couple of years ago! So it's a good idea to keep your feeder in the same spot each year and they will be sure to return there first while they wait for all of the flowers in your garden to bloom :)
We were in Hummingbird heaven today :) There were tons of them in the flower garden this afternoon! I believe that both of the Hummingbirds in the these photos are a Selasphorus rufus or Rufous Hummingbird. I love the above photo because the background is so blurred that it looks like the wings have beat so fast the background smeared *grin*
The above hummer's wings are beating so fast that aren't even visible in the picture!! Look at its beautiful green back. It's catching the sunlight and you can even see a tinge of purple showing up as well.
This week Unplug Your Kids' weekly Unplugged Project is Stone. I was a little stumped at first *grin* What in the world could I come up with that would use a stone!? Luckily I had an aha moment and thought of 'stepping' stones :)
What we used
One 18kg bag of Ready Mix Cement
3 Cardboard boxes
Assortment of colored ceramic dishes
1 large garbage bag
Scissors
Tape
Hammer
Rubber Gloves
We started by getting our boxes ready since they were going to be the forms for our stepping stones. Bulk cereal boxes (cut off the lower portion about 3 inches from the bottom) work well for this or yogurt flats, basically any box that has good sturdy sides to hold up to the weight of the cement. Next take your garbage bag, cut it open and fit it inside of your box to create a liner.
Using your tape secure all of the sides so that the plastic won't slip down later when you add your cement to the box.
Here are our 3 boxes all lined and ready for our cement :)
Now came the fun part! Smashing up all of the bowls and mugs to create a colorful array of chunks for our mosaic designs we were going to be creating :) We picked up all of our dishes at a garage sale for less than $5. The kids absolutely loved this part. *Warning* Make sure that the children and yourself are wearing sunglasses or some other form of eye protection, little bits of ceramic do fly up into the air when they are hit with the hammer so you want to make sure you don't get hurt.
After a good 10 minutes of smashing and crashing we had a rainbow of colors :)
Next we called in our master cement mixer aka Daddy *grin*. Using a large 5 gallon bucket he poured in the Ready Mix cement, added the appropriate amount of water per the bag instructions and mixed it thoroughly. The beauty of the Ready Mix cement is that you don't need to add sand or fine gravel to the mix like you do with regular cement!
With our cement ready it was time to fill our forms with it...
and K put on some rubber gloves so that he could press the cement down into the boxes really well so that it filled the corners evenly and smoothed the top.
Now you just let your creativity flow or as my 4 yr. old daughter did just plunk them in by how pretty the colors are *grin*
Here's her finished stone, multi colored and very eye catching!
My son found a neat lid that had 3 Spaniards on it which he thought looked like pirates. He loves pirates so they formed the centerpiece of his stone :)
And here's mine. As I look at it next to theirs I think I'm lacking severely in the color department!! But I was having fun using the top of a creamer as the circle for my flower and I managed to get the handle of a tea cup in one piece for one of the leaves and little rosettes off another piece as my accent pieces *grin* I was trying to make a picture with mine :)
They're still in the garage drying since we made them this evening and we are going to give them to Omi for her garden since she loves making stepping stones. They can't wait to add theirs to her collection :) Hope you have fun making some of your own!
