Nov. 4, 2009 Learning about Oak Trees
It seems that oak trees live everywhere in the States. However different types tend to prefer different climates. We were able to actually to observe oaks in two parts of the country, some in the Pacific Northwest and some in the Midwest.
We identified the Oak tree that we saw in Kansas as the Bur Oak We found this tree at a little park where we stopped for lunch one day. We hunted and hunted for acorns on the tree and on the ground. We found a couple of misshaped nuts. We concluded that the people in the neighborhood must have collected all of the acorns before we visited the park.
Unfortunately, due to the fact that my camera is broken, we weren't able to get pictures of the trees that we checked out in the Pacific Northwest. My kids, along with some of their friends, collected leaves from these oaks as well as all the other bushes and trees in the immediate area and this is one of the last pictures that I got before my camera went crazy.
We had a hard time identifying the oak that we saw in Washington state, as it matched most closely with the California Black Oak, it seems to me. However, the furthest north that the California Black Oak grows is southern Oregon. The only oak that we could find that is supposed to grow in Western Washington is the Oregon White Oak, but our leaves and acorns did not match this oak. The lobes on the leaves of our trees came to a point and had a little barb on the end. Maybe these trees were planted and were not native to this area or maybe there is more variation to the White Oak than we saw in our field guide.
The kids both chose to illustrate the tree closer to home.
Zippy was the only one who did an illustration of the tree. Both chose to do illustrations of the leaves and acorns.
By JD Boy (age 6)
By Zippy (age 9)
I nearly forgot to say that we found a couple of excellent books on trees. The illustrations are just beautiful and the information and writing style is charming as well. They are The Big Tree and My Favorite Tree: Terrific Trees of North America (Sharing Nature With Children Book) . I promise that if you have children the ages of my children, you will love both books and no matter what age you are, you'll love the second book.
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Oct. 16, 2009 End of Gardening Season
We have really enjoyed having a garden this year. This is really our first year to successfully have a garden. To a large extent this was my husband's project, but I sure enjoyed the fruit of his labors. The kids were very involved in the whole process. They helped plant. They helped water. They helped weed. And they helped pick. Every day at lunch, I could just say, do we have any such and such in the garden, and they would race up there to see who could find what I needed the fastest. What a blessing gardens are, not just to the stomach, but also to the soul.
Here are a few pictures taken over the summer of our garden.
Our very own radishes. (They were a bit hot though. So we're going to have to work on those a bit.)
Our first peppers! Woohoo! Maybe next year we'll grow enough to can some salsa.
Three of our umpteen and some zucchini and yellow squash that we harvested. We ate either zucchini or yellow squash nearly every single day for a few weeks, then we just had to have a break. But I've found a couple ways of fixing them that I think are absolutely delicious.
Our squash jungle about ready to swallow G'tums!
We even did some nature study in the garden. Since we were studying about garden flowers, we decided that this eggplant flower could qualify as a garden flower.
Here is our last picture from the garden season. My daughter took this picture when we were in the garden doing some nature study.
They're in the bus and we're in the garden. And now you know why we are--drum roll--homeschoolers!!! |
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Oct. 14, 2009 Autumn Tree Study
We did another nature study from the Handbook of Nature Study blog. For this challenge we were to choose a tree that we are to study through the seasons for a year. We've studied about some trees around our house during the last year or so, but this will be our start to studying one tree for a year. My kids spent quite a bit of time trying to decide which tree they wanted to study. (We have a lot of trees to choose from.) They finally decided that they would each do their own tree.
Besides reading from the Handbook of Nature Study , we also enjoyed looking at our trees in a few really neat books: My Favorite Tree: Terrific Trees of North America and More Fun with Nature . These are both really great books for younger kids. They have really nice illustrations and good, but simple information.
JD Boy chose to study a Ponderosa Pine.
Our Western Ponderosa Pine (Pinus benthamiana). The tallest Western Ponderosa that has been measured was 275 feet tall. Ours is quite a long ways from that.
A close-up of the needles. Ponderosa needles grow in clumps of three and 6-12 inches in length.
My little tree-hugger with his tree.
Zippy chose to study a cedar behind our house.
Our Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata). I don't know if you can tell from this picture that this tree gets brown patches in it during the autumn.
A close-up of the bark.
Zippy climbing her tree. It makes me nervous when the kids climb this tree. If they come down, they'll land on our fence. This is definitely their favorite climbing tree though, so I'll try to keep being brave and watch them climb.
"A wholesome tongue is a tree of life: but perverseness therein is a breach in the spirit." Proverbs 15:4. |
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Oct. 7, 2009 Outdoor Challenge -- Cattails
We decided that we definitely wanted to join in the Autumn Outdoor Hour Challenges, but we've been a bit behind in actually accomplishing this, so here is our first Autumn study from the challenges--cattails. Partly why we're behind is that our first attempt to find cattails turned out to be in vain, but we did eventually find some. Actually, we found lots of them along roads that didn't have a good shoulder to pull off on, but now that we've found some, we've found bunches. I guess, we just didn't really pay attention to them before.
However, the ones that we took pictures of are a bit sentimental. A few days ago, I was able to take my kids back to the town I lived in when I was their age and there was a bunch of cattails that I always loved to look at when I was a kid. So I drove right to that spot to see if there were still cattails. Were there! They have definitely been very successful there and had multiplied considerably. So while I'm sure that these won't be the same cattails that we'll study throughout the year, it was fun to have my kids study cattails from the same place that I used be intrigued by them when I was a kid myself.
We read about cattails from two books: Handbook of Nature Study and Discover Nature in Water and Wetlands. I can't remember which one taught us what, but we learned some interesting things about cattails. The part that seemed to be the most intriguing to the kids was that somebody somewhere found a hundred cattails all part of the same organism. Even though cattails produce seeds and can multiply by spreading their seeds, they also spread out rhizomes and send up new shoots from the bottom (like strawberries do).
We all enjoyed looking closely at the cattails and pulling them apart: looking at the seeds, the cross sections of the leaf and stem of the cattail. I remember when I was a kid, breaking apart the leaves just because they were so interesting on the inside; so different from any other leaves that I was familiar with. We even saved a piece to take home and look at under our microscope.
Here are our nature journal entries. (Even I did one this time. One of the things that I love about the Outdooor Hour Challenges is that I get to participate. It's not just an assignment that I give my kids, but it's something that we all do together and we all learn. I have started to really enjoy keeping my own nature journal too.)
By Zippy (age 9)
By JD Boy (age 6)
By Me (age...you thought I would tell, didn't you!!) |
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Sep. 15, 2009 Botany with the Outdoor Hour Challenges
At the beginning of the summer we decided that we wanted to learn about plants and flowers. If you have followed my blog for awhile, you may remember that we decided to use the Apologia's Botany book. Well, to make a long story short, it wasn't for us. I think that it is geared for an older audience than what my kids are. It was too wordy or technical or something like that.
Since we were already on the flower quest and had decided to continue that for our summertime nature study, we were very thrilled when the Handbook of Nature Study blog released the ebook for studying garden flowers. This is a great and simple series of nature challenges. I highly recommend it. The ebook is very inexpensive. The depth of study was just perfect for us. Granted we didn't learn a lot of latin terms, but we had fun playing with and learning about flowers. My kids have already decided that they want to do these challenges again next year. This is partly because, since we started them a ways into the summer, we weren't able to do every single one. Anyway, if you're looking to do some Botany with your family, check out the ebook here. By the way, you can find and look at the challenges for free on the Handbook of Nature Study blog, but the ebook comes with some really nice notebook pages to accompany the study.
Some of the notebook pages that we did from the Garden Flower Challenges. (One of those is from the Crop Plant Challenges.)
Of course, the favorite thing for the kids out of these challenges was to grow flowers.
A close inspection of our Geranium plant.
We had quite a lot of fun looking closely at the flowers. Even my youngest really enjoyed learning about flowers.
An exciting addition to our study was a microscope. After quite a bit of consideration and researching, I purchased this stereo microscope from Tobin's Lab. This is one of the neatest things we've ever got. I was a bit afraid that the kids would bore with it quickly, so I emailed Tammy at Tobin's Lab and asked her if my kids were too young for a microscope. She recommended this one and said that people from 3 - 93 love this one. She's right. We keep it out and look at all kinds of things, but we really enjoyed looking at the flower parts and the pollen with the microscope.
The kids looked at the plants through the microscope over and over.
Another fun thing we did was to soak beans and look at the cotyledon. My daughter liked to look at the bean through the magnifying glass. The rest of us just used our naked eye.
Learning about pollen was fun too. As per the instructions of the Garden Flower Challenges, we took Q'tips and gathered pollen with them and then rubbed the pollen on notebook pages to have a closer look.
You can't really see the pollen in this picture, but it's in the upper right hand corner. We also spent some time watching the bees--the master pollinators.
Then we did one plant experiment was not part of the challenges, because we'd seen somebody else do it and my kids were very intrigued by it.
We put various amounts of food coloring in the water for these white carnations and then waited to see what happened. You can see what happened: Our carnations began changing colors. We did notice that the carnations with the higher concentration of food coloring had a bit more red in them. And as for the green food coloring, we couldn't see any green in that carnation.
And last but not least, we just really enjoyed the flowers around our house. Here are a few of my favorite shots.
We have hydrangeas all around our house. I love that they still have flowers on them, this late in the summer.
We have a whole row of these pink rhododendrons behind our house. When they're in bloom, it's like our patio is on fire.
We don't have many azaleas, but we appreciate them, because they are the flowers that announce that summer is about here.
I should have posted about our flower studies as we did them, because we did so much more and I've got a long post now and don't think I should add another thing. We sure did enjoy learning about flowers and we hope to cultivate even more flowers next summer than we did this summer. And don't forget to check out the Garden Flower Ourdoor Hour Challenges. |
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