My Family

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We finally completed the tenth Outdoor Hour Challenge assignment, which was to have a picnic. This one took me a while to get to; every time I planned to eat outdoors, it rained. I guess I will have to learn to be a bit more spontaneous with our picnicking!

We had a family fishing trip planned in northern Michigan over Memorial Day weekend, complete with outdoor eats, so we finally had our "picnic." We did get some pictures of hot dogs being roasted, but forgot to take pics of people eating them (probably because we were too busy eating ourselves).

Rob and I saw a beautiful snail and a spider on a walk in the woods (click on an image for a larger pic).

We did see some insect life to go with our focus area, some still to be identified.

As an added bonus from kingdom Animalia, we saw two green frogs (one of which was my buddy for the weekend; I was able to identify him by his banjo-like call), a baby painted turtle, and a turtle egg (I think something must have dug into the nest and eaten the other eggs since the nest was open and there was only one egg).

Look at these beautiful red-winged blackbirds! The brown one is the female, and the black one is the male (and, no, I didn't know what the brown bird was until we looked it up at home).

I almost forgot the fish (probably because I didn't catch any)!

Moving onto kingdom Plantae, I was able to capture pictures of ferns in three different stages of development!

Here is some more plant life:

My sister found a morel, and her boyfriend found a patch of about five of them. Yummy!

Kathryn and I collected several rocks that we will work on identifying.

We finally had time to pull out our field guides and work on identification, but we were unable to identify everything in one session.

If you are looking for a simple and gentle way to incorporate nature study into your schedule, I highly recommend the Outdoor Hour Challenge. This is the first time I have been successful at sticking with nature study for a decent length of time. Thanks so much for hosting these challenges, Barb!

~Andrea

In the ninth Outdoor Hour Challenge assignment, HarmonyArtMom encourages us to observe as much as we can in one square foot of space. It was kind of like a nature scavenger hunt on a diminutive scale.

When I went to pull out the magnifying lenses I discovered that a little girl I was baby-sitting over the last several months took them home with her one day! She must have liked them (I can't say that I blame her). :-) Kathryn was determined to get a close look, so she took out a pair of binoculars and her bug container with the magnifying lid. We headed outside with trowels and everyone staked out their square foot plots. Unfortunately, the battery in my camera died after taking two pictures.

The kids saw ants, a couple of ground beetles, earthworms, common flies, and mosquitoes. Nathan made a nature journal entry, drawing a beetle that he found. Kathryn also made a journal page detailing her observations. The girls are really enjoying our nature studies. We took some time to read about insect taxonomy in Christian Kids Explore Biology. As soon as the ground is warm enough, our insect studies will move into the garden.

~Andrea

The eighth Outdoor Hour Challenge assignment emphasizes the use of lenses and close observation in nature study.

We read about spiders and cobwebs in The Handbook of Nature Study and discussed basic spider anatomy in comparison with insect anatomy before heading outdoors. I asked the kids to get our magnifying glasses, but we were so anxious to be outside that we forgot about them. We did remember a bug container that has a magnifying glass built into the lid.

We had to look indoors for cobwebs. Either it was too bright to see them or it is too early in the spring for a ton of spider activity outside. Here are some pictures of a cobweb we found in the garage:

Here are a couple of blooms:

I don't have much to show in the way of pictures from our outing. We didn't do any journal pages because the kids ended up staying outside observing insects all afternoon; they were doing a wonderful nature study on their own and I didn't want to stifle them. We did see at least two different spiders that we will identify this week. I would like to have the kids begin their field guide cards once we identify the spiders.

~Andrea

The seventh Outdoor Hour Challenge assignment encourages us to begin a personal field guide. What a wonderful idea! Barb even includes a sample information form to use for your field guide cards.

We read about snails in The Handbook of Nature Study and proceeded to the backyard to make some observations. We are also making tentative plans to construct a sunflower house if Rob gives me permission to dig up more of the yard. It was such a beautiful day! We lifted up a patio stone and struck... invertebrates! Woo hoo!

Here's a picture of a centipede that we happened upon.
He wasn't very happy to be disturbed!

There is a pill bug in this dark crevice, although it is difficult to see.

The girls put together a collection of rocks, dead leaves, and branches from some bushes on a bed of moss, using a wicker paper plate holder, one of Barb's suggestions from Challenge #6.

The girls each did a nature journal page. I have to print out some more pages for this; Kathryn used lined paper. Of course, Nathan wants lined paper for his nature journal - to each his own, right?

We also sighted some spiders, but we didn't get pics. I think we'll move on to spiders next week, then insects. I have some grasshoppers to dissect! :-)

We didn't make field guide cards today, but I think my children will want to do this activity, especially when I show them the sample at the Handbook of Nature Study blog. We seem to finally be settling into a nature study routine. This challenge has been extremely helpful for our family!

~Andrea

The sixth Green Hour Challenge assignment was to start a collection. We do have some rocks that we could organize, but we ended up doing a worm dissection yesterday, so I didn't do anything with the collection idea.

Our plan is to read about and look for garden snails and spiders, then move on to insects. We will continue to observe our wormery (click link for instructions), but now that the dissection is done we're ready to move on. :-) We didn't see much on Thursday, although we found a pill bug that died. I will see if the kids want to start an insect collection to go with our nature study. Here are some pics from Thursday's outdoor time:

bull thistle.

A bud on our flowering pear tree!

Although this isn't technically nature-related, I had to add the picture of Nathan and Jordan dancing on the picnic table.

~Andrea

We didn't get out at all for the Green Hour Challenge last week. I'm hoping to do two days this week now that it is getting warmer. The fifth Green Hour Challenge assignment was to make a list of things you observed that are in your area of focus. We only found some earthworms, but that is what we are focusing on this week anyway. Here are some other items that we observed:

moss:

half of a walnut:

There is a worm in here, although you can't see it very well:

We are making a wormery to observe how worms mix soil. :-) I will post pics and worm links as soon as we are done with the experiment.

~Andrea

Well, I'm a bit late on my Green Hour Challenge post, but better late than never, right? The fourth Green Hour Challenge assignment was to choose a focus for the next six to eight weeks, of course staying flexible if our children find something else of interest. The kids were on vacation with my mom for a few days last week, so I wasn't even sure if we would get to our nature study at all. They were in northern Michigan, so they got to spend a lot of time outdoors. We did end up going out as a family on Saturday to the same park we went to for our last assignment. It was late on Saturday when we went for our walk, so we didn't get to the nature journals yet. We watched the ducks for a while again. They were pretty active, so it was a really fun time. It was nice to have Rob there too - he took TONS of pics!

Our focus for the next few weeks is going to be invertebrates since we have some worms to dissect that I haven't gotten to yet. We didn't see any worms or snails, but the Canadian Geese were eating something in some mud.... .

Here's another squirrel:

Some pods that lasted through winter:

This was pretty funny! The ducks were flying into the water and sliding on the water. Here are a couple of pics, although it was much more fun to watch!

One of the interesting things we noticed was that the roots of many of the trees were much more prominent on the river side of the trees. Not all of the trees were like that, but there were enough to draw our attention to it. Here is an example:

I was immediately reminded of Jeremiah 17:7-8

"But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
whose confidence is in him.

He will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit."

~Andrea

The third Green Hour Challenge assignment was to take another 10- to 15-minute nature walk. We were to focus on being quiet again and try to do a nature journal entry. The weather was perfect for being outside yesterday! We went to a park with a nature trail and spent about an hour outside. We didn't get to the nature journal entries, although we talked about them and are planning to begin them. We had a wonderful time, though. It was definitely a success! Since we didn't work on nature journals, I'll share our finds in pictures here.

The first thing we saw was this squirrel:

Next we came upon some ducks!

Hanging around with the ducks were some Canadian Geese.

Look at these beauties!

As if that wasn't enough, we came upon a tree that a beaver had worked on!

Although we didn't get to the journal entries, we had quite a fun outdoor adventure this week! Thanks again for hosting this, Barb!

~Andrea

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