I have been thinking about something most of the summer...having a weekly Nature Study on Tuesdays, which is one of S5's 5 weekly non-school days.  I have used Barb's Handbook of Nature Outdoor Challenges in the past, as well as the seasonal scavenger hunts from her daughter's wonderful site. I also purchased a copy of The Little Hands Nature Book by Nancy Castaldo, which has fun ideas.  I know the most important thing is to just be outside noticing the world around us.  What scares me is consistency.  We don't really have a good routine around here.  I just do things when I feel like doing them or when I can't put them off any longer (which is why I need a list of goals for S's education). 

So the idea that has been in my head most of the summer is to invite S's class from latin school (12 total) to come to a set place at a set time each week and I will have something planned for a guided exploration of nature.  I can't get this idea out of my head even though I am filled with fear and questions at the thought of it.  What if I don't "feel like" going on the arranged day/time?  What if no one else comes?  What if they come once and then never come back?  What if I forget to have something planned until the last minute?  What if the weather is bad?  Would it be better to just do this with S and forget about the distraction of the other kids?  If I plan to do this with only S, will I find excuses each week not to do it without the accountability of knowing other people are counting on me? 

The book review part comes from having checked out another book about nature study from the library, "Sharing Nature With Children" by Joseph Cornell.  This was written for teachers or parents with lots of kids, so it once more got me thinking about the above idea.  However, the ideas were so simple and fun and most of them could be done with one child and one parent.  I definitely recommend reading it if your library has it.  I think it would be a good resource to own if the ideas fit your plan for nature study.  I am not purchasing it yet, but then I am a fond user of the library and I keep a list of books I like from the library and check them out again and again, not necessarily concurrently.

Well, as much as I love Barb's Green Hour Challenge, I have to say that I have decided to depart from it.  I am still going to follow a "Green Hour", but pretty much stick to the ideas from the earlier challenges.  This is mainly because Samuel is, well, 4, and my focus is not so much on "assignments" as on exposure.  So, I have taken the word "challenge" out of my title headings, but will still record some, or maybe all, of our green hours.  I do not think Barb will mind because I believe her intent for her challenges is mainly to get more people studying nature, and in our case, she has succeeded.

Today, we discovered a nature preserve nearby.  We went as a family, the boys sticking together as usual, but I do love to see the love between them.  We went for an advertised Blue Bird hike.  However, the advertisement worked a little too well and the crowd was too large for us to #1 hear anything the guide said or #2 see anything the guide might have pointed out to us.  So we decided to head out on our own.  There are several little trails and we followed one that followed a small creek and then back again behind the visitor's center (which was the home of the family which set up the nature preserve) where there was a spring house and a very old barn and some goats.  I also saw what I think may have been the foundation for a stone silo, but Hubby said it was probably their old hot tub, and so of course Samuel agreed.

While no major discoveries were found on this walk, I think we have found a new place to explore and the hour we spent as a family out-of-doors was well worth it.  So, one last "thank you" to Barb for inspiring us to go outside and study the nature all around us.

Before another few days of rain hit, we set out yesterday to do this week's Green Hour.  We are about 2 1/2 weeks behind, but I feel sure when "April Showers" are over, we will more than catch-up.  Bug (this is my new nickname for him...since he was born, I have called him Pumpkin, Little Pickle, Pickle Juice, Sweetie Pie, and probably many more that my tired brain just can't remember right now) is really catching on as some of the photos will show.

First I really want to know if anyone can tell me what this wildflower/weed is.  I know I have seen them before, but none of my internet field guide searches have found it.  If location matters we are in Kentucky.

Now, about our walk.  It really turned more into a celebration of nature.  We were headed to the fence line of our condo property which is "wild" and where we do some of our nature exploring.  Before we got there however, Bug claimed his special spot in the shade of a pine tree where some tiny white wildflowers have shot up (our landscaping company hasn't been out yet...I know this will be well-manicured soon).  He spent quite some time just "being".

Then he had a lot of fun dancing in the shadows -

We concluded our walk by going around the back of the property where we saw a mated pair of ducks swimming in a ditch to the front where we saw a hawk "looking for food".  Finally, we had a tortoise and the hare race to our front door.  I was the tortoise who kept walking in an even pace.  Bug was the hare who would run ahead and then stop and rest until I had passed him.  Still he's a little boy and wanted to win, so even though he let me pass him several times, he did beat me to the door!

When S4 decided he wanted to fly his homemade kite outside today, I asked if he wanted to go on a nature walk after he "flew" it (it was a very short string, so this mainly consisted of running with his arm up in the air).  His answer was that he would rather play than take a "boring old nature walk".  So after a few attempts to point out some cool things - like, the "berries" we found in Green Hour #2 had "turned" into flowers.  Oh well, we have both really enjoyed the young person's field guide on berries, nuts, and seeds we got from the library as a result.  I still don't know what that bush is.  I also pointed out that the pear trees that line our street are getting ready to bloom.

Anyway, we played with an orange bouncy ball he found in his pocket for a while and then I made another attempt to turn it into a nature walk by pointing out some purple wildflowers (that I don't know the name of).  Then he really started to get into it and found a white wildflower that I didn't know the name of and a dandelion getting ready to open up (finally, I knew the name of something, but then again, so did he!).  He also found some acorns around a small tree, so we knew from our recent "Berries, Nuts, and Seeds" guide that the tree must be an oak.  I told him it would get VERY tall eventually.  Then he decided a house sparrow lived in the tree and started putting presents for the bird on the tree.  One was a hat made from the top of an acorn and the other was a bouquet of wildflowers.

So, I'm thinking, even though to him it wasn't a "nature walk", it really turned into an observation of nature.  And it really was more of a Green "Hour" which is another point of this challenge.

The focus of this week's challenge was about finding a focus area to study, but I think that at 4, focus is not the thing I'm worried about.  But if I have to say something, I'm going back to the seeing the vulture post.  The book we found at the library was one of a series of six books on scavengers.  S decided he wanted to read all of them - so far we have read "Vultures", "Army Ants", "Wolverines", and "Jackals".  We are reading "Tasmanian Devils" now and "Hyenas" is waiting for us at the library.  Recently we discovered there is a "Prey" series and a "Predator" series, so S has decided he wants to read those as well. 

Now, back to those wildflowers I didn't know the name of.  I have spent some time trying to find them using google, but have had no luck, although I did find a great site by Birdmom that listed different wildflowers by color.  She just didn't have my flower.  If anyone knows how to go about identifying items you find on your walks, please feel free to share with me.

I don't what is happening.  This is the second entry I lost and am having to re-create!  So this is not going to be as good as my last one, but I'll try to do ok.

We are fortunate to have a wonderful local zoo (and botanical gardens) to which we have a membership.  This is great since S is so interested in animals.  He knows most of the animals there.  In fact, today we saw a babirusa and another little boy came up and said, "Look Mommy - a hippo!" and S turned to him and said, "no, it's a babirusa".  Of course, the little boy just looked at him like he was crazy. 

Well, today was such a beautiful day that I decided to kill two bird with one stone and take S to the zoo which he loves and add a Green Hour Challenge since we are 3 weeks behind.  Before going in, I told him to look for three things to feel, three things to hear, and three things to see.  I then tried pointing out different things to him to meet these requirements.  Most of these answers were all his though.

Three Things I Heard

1. Wind in the bamboo leaves
2. Canadian goose honking
3. I didn't hear anything else.  Me - did you hear any birds singing?  Him - No...moving on

Three Things I Felt

1. Smooth bamboo stem
2. Smooth tree trunk
3. Fuzzy green moss in a crack in the sidewalk

Three Things I Saw

1. Squirrel trying to get in a garbage can
2. Bamboo "trees"
3. Baby Siamangs - This was the first time we had seen them and it was very exciting.  Last year we had one brand new baby Siamang whose parents both died very unexpectedly.  Since Siamangs are very social, the zoo looked for an adoptive family and found two more orphaned babies and brought them to our zoo to form a little "sibling" group.  They don't have them on display very often since they require a zookeeper "parent" most of the time.

I picked two things to learn more about:

1. Moss - a small soft plant with no flowers and no seeds (I picked this because he usually finds moss on our nature walks.
2. Bamboo - the fastest growing woody plant in the world; most of the plant can be used in different kinds of cooking.  There are actually a lot more interesting facts about this plant, but this is all I picked to talk about this time.

We didn't draw anything, but I did let Samuel take several pictures of the siamangs with the digital camera. 

I'm still almost a week behind, but here goes with Green Hour Challenge #2:  The main challenge of this challenge was explaining to a 4.5 year old how to be quiet during this nature walk, so this was maybe our shortest walk yet, keeping close to the 10 - 15 minute time frame (actually probably about 20 - 25 minutes).  I would love to have more short walks instead of just a few longer ones. 

The recent rain and our muddy experience last week led me to want to stay on a paved path and I suggested going to a park, but Samuel wanted to stay in the neighborhood, so I figure we have trees and grass which are part of nature, so why not.  Well, I was actually surprised by what we (mostly Samuel) found.

First thing out the door, he looks up and sees these "striped clouds", so I take a picture.  Clouds end up being one of the things he wants to learn more about so we looked up clouds on wikipedia and read a few of the less technical aspects and then asked for him to tell me something interesting about clouds.  His sentence was "Clouds can be different shapes and different colors."  I also went online and requested some books with clouds in the title.

I took a several pictures this time.  I pointed out some berries and had him touch a prickly leaf on a bush.  He noticed a nest in a tree, some moss on a rock in the ground, and a robin.  The next thing he wanted to learn more about were the berries:

I wasn't as happy with wikipedia on looking up "berries" as it mainly talked about berries as fruit.  Hopefully the books we get from the library will be better.  His sentence about berries - "Berries grow on bushes."  I don't even know if this is accurate, but I'm going to find out.

Now I'm going a little backwards in the challenge, but here are Samuel's descriptive words, which were slightly coached since he doesn't know what descriptive words even are.

• One word for something you heard - chirping
• Two words for something you saw - tall trees
• Three words for something you felt - fuzzy green moss

He opted not to do his own journal, but I used Tina's Notebooking Pages and I will print out some of the pictures and make him a Green Hour Challenge binder that maybe someday he will want to add to.

Harmony Art Mom has issued the Green Hour Challenge.  Well, I'm a week late, but decided to start from the beginning and maybe catch up with two in one week.  My goal is to have the Nature Walk on Tuesday with a Thursday or Friday raindate.

We cheated a little and used the Winter Nature Walk Scavenger Hunt from Harmony Art Mom's daughter over at Hearts and Trees.  Scroll down on the right and click on the Winter Nature Walk Worksheet.

It was a sunny day, but very muddy.  S4.5 is a clean freak (NOT a neat freak...it's very difficult getting him to put away him toys, but hard to keep him from washing his hands in the middle of a meal), but he was fascinated by the mud which was both wet and slimy for the checklist.  I looked it up on wikipedia and we learned that some animals use mud as a habitat and some take a bath in it to keep cool.    Edited March 6:  I did a search for "mud" in our library's online catalog and put a request in for some of the titles not really knowing what they would be.  They came in today and you can read about them in this post.

The only things we couldn't find were a bird or an insect.   We did find an empty nest which was close enough for me to reach and we looked at it closer and discovered that the builder had used twigs and a dryer sheet to build it.

We also noticed moss growing on the ground next to a rock, a pretty purple and green vine, and a bush with no leaves - only some purple berries.  Next time I think I will take my camera out of my pocket to record some of these things.

I don't own Comstock's Nature handbook, but I did check it out from the library a while ago and read through the first few pages and skimmed through the rest.  I'm still undecided about purchasing it.  Our library is pretty good and I think I can find good information about anything we want to know more about from the internet and the library. 

It was such a pretty day here yesterday, sunny and upper 50's/low 60's, if a little windy.  Hubby decided spur of the moment that we needed a family day at the zoo.  I was reminded of how much we need to pay attention to our children's interests.  Most kids zoom through the zoo, running from one animal to the next.  Even as  an adult, I want to move fairly quickly so "we can see more animals".  However, S4 has always wanted to study the animals, not just look at them and head on.  This is why I'm glad we have a zoo membership because we NEVER make it through the whole zoo on a single trip.

Yesterday's animal of interest was the giraffe.  Three out of the four giraffes were inside, so they were closer to us than we normally see.  We spent probably 15 minutes inside and then 5 minutes more watching the one outside.

We're still reading about vultures and he's also asking about other scavengers, but I think we may look for a book on giraffes next trip to the library.  I just love his curiosity.

One of the best things about the CM philosophy of education is learning from nature.  Yesterday (on the way to the library) I spotted two vultures eating an animal by the side of the road.  I turned the car around and pulled over near them to give S4 an impromptu lesson.  Well I know nothing about vultures, but what I said was that they are God's cleaning crew for animals that have died.  Then we tried to guess what animal they were eating.  S4 was the first to smell it....a skunk!

Now, since we were on our way to the library, I looked in the online catalog for the dewey decimal number for vultures (598.something), and headed to the juvenile non-fiction section.  Imagine my surprise when I noticed two books on vultures already pulled from the shelves!  Had someone else seen those vultures a few minutes earlier than us?

Well, we checked one out and found that one of the photos matched our vultures (Black Vulture) and read a few pages on scavengers and Old World vs New World vultures. 

Today, I used the word "janitor" which he asked me to define.  Then he said that vultures were like janitors.  I love watching how his mind makes connections...sometimes when they don't even exist, but somehow listening to him explain himself, they make perfect sense!

We have a wonderful zoo here in our town.  Every year, the in-laws give us a membership for Christmas.  Samuel loves animals, so we go quite often, usually 2-3 times a month in good weather.

So today was great weather and Samuel and I headed off.  After our almost mandatory ride on the Conservation Carousel, I steered him to the part of the zoo we had not seen the last trip.  I actually hadn't been there in a while because his favorite animals are on the other side of the zoo and we spend a lot of time there.

Anyway, we are going through and I am reading the animal info plaques and then he starts telling me about some of the animals!  I am really pretty amozed by his memory and grasp of facts sometimes.  Children are just amozing.

Thanks to AWANA we had a great idea for our nature walk this week.  Samuel was supposed to go outside and list 10 things he could see that God created.  I did not prompt him in any way...the only editing came when he listed car and sidewalk.

1. Spider Web
2. Plants
3. Trees
4. Dirts
5. Grass
6. Clouds
7. Sun
8. Bush
9. Moon (although he didn't really see this during the walk, he did see it on our way to church this morning)
10. Flower

Hubby gets tired from his job during the week and usually wants to spend the weekend being lazy.  Well, since he has an extra day off this weekend, I talked him into heading to one of our local parks for a picnic.  This is a park we used to live near BP (before Parenthood), but had not been to since Sonny was born.

It was a hot day, but there was a slight breeze and we found a picnic table in the shade and spread out our bounty of peanut butter sandwiches, grapes, goldfish, and animal crackers and proceeded to chow down.  After eating, Hubby and Sonny raced each other to the playground, while I got a chance to people watch and just enjoy being outside.

I had printed out a Nature Scavenger Hunt list from the files of the CM Nature Study Yahoo Group, and when they came back for me because they had found a trail to explore, I knew I had my opening to make this fun and educational.

Sonny loves checklists (we usually make one before we head to our local zoo of the animals we want to make sure we see).  We all had a great time finding items on the list and probably saw more than any of us would have if we had been alone.  All of us agreed on the way home that we should do this more often.  Score!  And no one but me knew I was counting this as school