Posted in Nature Studies
We have really enjoyed our spring break this week. We did not go to the beach like we had planned but we did our second Nature Challenge in our back yard. This weeks nature challenge was to listen and observe nature more closely. I was very excited that my oldest daughter decided to join us on this one. Here are the plants that we focused on in our backyard.
Rebekah focused on the elephant ears that we have in a pot in our backyard. Because there are so many varieties of elephant ears we just looked up the family name Alocasia.
Sarah focused on the cocoa plant. The scientific name is Theobroma cacoa. We saw on a video about how to make chocolate from the Cocoa seeds so Sarah and Joshua have been eating the fleshy pulp so that we can try our hand at making homemade chocolate. In Portuguese it is called the Cacau (kuh-kow) plant.
Abigail had fun with the kitties.
Rachel drew a picture of a cone flower. We had fun looking this one up on the internet. It was difficult to find this one because all we had was a description we had no idea of the name. The scientific name is Zingiber zerumbet. This is one of my favorite plants in our yard.
I focused on a coconut palm in our back yard. We have several different types of palms in our yard. This is a Cocos nucifera
We had a fun time observing. Then we came in and talked about what we heard and saw while we were outside. Because we had just had a nice rain there were a lot of bird chirping and the wind was blowing and they noticed the rustleing of leaves in the trees. In addition to that we heard a lot of sounds of the city. I will bring this discussion up again I enjoyed having them tell me what they saw and heard verbally.
For more information on the Nature Hour Challenge see my previous post about Nature study.
Posted by Anonymous
