Aug. 28, 2009
Outdoor Hour Challenge #2/Nature Walk 8-28-2009
We went to Beaver Lake after supper tonight so the kids could do some nature hiking. This is some of the stuff we found:
We are going to display some of our finds on a shelf in the living room with a magnifying glass.
The most beautiful thistle I've ever seen was obtained by my 10 yo dd, Snow Crystal. Isn't it gorgeous?
I'm especially pround of her drawing of it in her nature journal. This by a girl who usually ends up drawing people on our nature walks!
This cattail was a big hit with 5 yo DoraGirl and 2 yo Little Critter:
My dh snapped this shot of a dragonfly:
Doragirl decided to draw one of the many daisies that were abundantly decorating the paths:
11 yo Mountain Princess, on the other hand chose a "shrew" to put in her nature journal.
On our way home we discussed the things the children "heard" or "saw" or "smelled". It was cute to hear my two year old say "pone corn" for pine cone! The bigger girls talked about how they had observed the rings the water makes when you throw rocks in it, and how they tested the rate at which two things fall, no matter the weight... It was an unusually quiet night, but they found that if they took the time to listen they could observe much more.
I spent much of my time with my five year old dd. She at first wanted to draw the first clump of daisies that she found. I talked her into doing her observing first, which she did enjoy, although her mouth had a hard time keeping itself closed long enough to listen!
We did this activity as the second lesson of "The Outdoor Hour". If things go as plan, I hope to use Fridays as a time for doing more of these activities. If you aren't familiar with this program, you should go to http://handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com/ and check it out. I'm really excited about some of the challenges she has put together for free for people to use along with Anna Comstock's Nature Study Handbook.
Aug. 28, 2009
Wildlife seen on our vacation - August 2009
We saw this coyote (or several similar coyotes) several times along the main road at Mesa Verde.
Many deer hung out near our campsite at Mesa Verde. If you look close here you can see a doe and two fawns.
Road runner at Dead Horse Ranch State Park near Cottonwood, AZ. Tim saw a tarantula at this campground one night, and there were many quail (so cute) running around the campground too. Poor Little Critter (ds2) got eaten alive by "no see 'ems". They bit the rest of us, but this little guy got tiny blisters where they got him that looked a lot like chicken pox! (He reacts big to mosquito bites too).
The three girls completed Junior Ranger Programs at Mesa Verde and Dead Horse Ranch State Park.
A couple of weeks ago I shot these pics of some of the herons that have created a rookery at the bottom of our road. Every April we start looking for them, and sure enough they come and spend the spring with us, lay their eggs and hang out until the young are old enough to move on with them. It is always thrilling to watch.
Next, we have another spring visitor, well, in this case it is actually a couple. These sage grouse come each spring and court one another. The male is the one all decked out. The female is the one you can hardly see in the pics because she is so well camouflaged.
These are some of the birds we've seen around here, mostly in march. The top ones were juncos and the bottom ones flickers. The flicker was hammering right around my big picture window in the living room. We also get a lot of sparrows. Last year I got a lot more. It's probably getting to be about that time to put out hummingbird feeders, but we just have the bear issues...
If you'd like to join us with Show and Tell, click on the picture at the top, and follow Mary's directions.
Vascular plants have veins called xylem that carry water and chemicals to the parts of the plants and phloem that carry things away (similar to our veins and arteries). Here is an example of a vascular plant:
Nonvascular plants get their water by absorbing it through its outside and the water spreading through the plant. Examples of nonvascular plants are moss and lichen:
This mama and her two children were coming up our driveway for a visit Saturday afternoon. The one in the back on the right is the mama. The other two are her cubs. We were fascinated watching them, then decided to all go out on the deck and yell at them, then they ran off. Tim later got on his four-wheeler with his shot gun and shot the mama with rubber bullets to scare them some more so they hopefully won't keep coming back. I hope they don't since we're now out of rubber bullets!
