Nature Notes From Above - Homeschool Blogger

The Great Backyard Bird Count 2009

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 02:42:00 -0600

The Great Backyard Bird Count is just around the corner starting February 13th!!!

So get out there and stock those feeders and don't forget to dust off your binoculars!! Don't have any bird feeders ready to go? Don't worry you still have a little over 2 weeks and I have a couple of great bird feeders that you and your family will love to make! Try our:

Fruit Bowl Bird Feeder
or
Fruity Pinecone Bird Feeders

You can count the birds in as many different spots in your yard as you like but only once each day. Every day plan to observe your feeders for about 15 minutes each, recording the largest number of each species you see visiting at one time. Once you have completed your days count make sure you go over to the GBBC website to enter you information!

If you know a family that would like to participate but doesn't have access to the internet there is a PDF file of what you will be entering on the BGGC website that can be printed out, filled in and mailed. This is really great because everyone can participate then :)

Have fun!

Fruity Pinecone Bird Feeders

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 23:14:00 -0600

The kids and I have been enjoying our little feathered visitors to our feeders and I thought that it would be fun to make a new treat for them to munch on during these cold snowy months. So we raided our pinecone stash picking out some nice large ones and coated them with peanut butter and then rolled them in birdseed. For a more nutrituous touch we added sliced rounds from apples and oranges and strung them onto the string to. They are so pretty to look at and they are a big hit. The smaller Juncoes and Sparrows land right on them and spin around wildly while eating and the Stellar's Jays dive bomb them *grin*, ripping of whatever they can catch as they swoop past :) Great entertainment!!

What sort of feeders do you have up right now?

Winter Wednesday ~ Week 1

Fri, 9 Jan 2009 02:06:00 -0600

This week's assignment was to read the first chapter in our Discover Nature in Winter book and then observe colors in nature that are more noticeable because of the white snowy landscape and barren trees. So we trekked outdoors today in the high winds and bitter cold *grin*, to see if we could spot some brightly colored nature :)

The first observation that the kids made was that there were no brightly colored plants visible since everything around us is completely covered with over a foot of snow right now :) So I encouraged them to look more closely at some of the trees and shrubbery that we walked past. Under a giant cedar tree they found huge masses of moss, wonderful furry moss that was soft to the touch.

And growing along with that wonderful moss was some silver colored lichens which were definitely more scratchy and rough to the touch. We've got a bit of a touch and fell theme going on today *grin*.

We also found lots of tree branches and leaves littered on top of the snow as we walked, blown down by the winds today. Above L is holding a chunk of a cedar branch. We also observed a blue sky the color of robin eggs and not a cloud in sight :)

And just as we were about to head inside we stumbled upon some of the beautiful bright red berries of the Cotoneaster bush poking out from beneath the snow. Sorry for the bad photo. It was so far up on the hillside, that I had to zoom all the way in to get it and sacrifice quality :(

Hope you enjoyed discovering winter colors with us :)

Winter Wednesday

Thu, 8 Jan 2009 01:11:00 -0600

I have sadly neglected my blog for quite a few months but I think we are all ready to throw ourselves back into some good old nature fun!! And wouldn't you know it, Barb aka Harmony Art Mom is hosting a really fun sounding Winter Wednesday nature study starting today and we're joining in :)

She will be posting a weekly assignment to follow or use as a guideline using the book Discover Nature in Winter. I ordered a copy of it on the weekend but it hasn't arrived yet, but I did find it through google books and it lets you preview the first chapter! So this will help us get started this week until our copy arrives and if you are interested in joining you may want to use that to until you can find a copy of your own :)

Dark-Eyed Junco

Wed, 7 Jan 2009 00:26:00 -0600

A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song. ~Chinese Proverb

Handbook of Nature Study

Tue, 6 Jan 2009 02:34:00 -0600

I am so incredibly excited to finally have a copy of Anna Botsford Comstock's Handbook of Nature Study!! I have wanted to buy it for a long time, but for some reason that time just never came.

While we were visiting Salt Spring Island in the fall I came across a rare and antique book store and thought I would just have a gander and maybe find a neat old gem for our nature studies. Well, I found a gem alright! This copy was published in 1911 and is stamped inside by 'The Normal School' which opened in 1908 in Stratford, Ontario inside of it. Now that's quite the name for a school *grin*.

It has definitely seen better days but we'll treat it lovingly :)

FREE ~ Basic Bird Nature Study

Tue, 7 Oct 2008 01:12:00 -0500

Currclick has a great freebie this week. They are offering for download a Basic Bird Study with notebook pages.

It has a fantastic diagram labeling all the parts of the bird as well as blank bird anatomy charts for your child to fill in themselves. There are also notebooking or journal pages for feathers, flight, migration, songs, homes and nests and more. The pages are geared to all writing levels with single or double spaced lines available so the whole family can enjoy them.

It is a perfect time to start a bird nature study since they are starting to return to our feeders in full force again. They are done raising their young and have more free time to socialize at the feeders. *grin*

Make sure you hurry and get them. They're only available for one week :)

Green Books for Green Living

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 15:41:00 -0500

I just found out about a neat site called EcoBrain ~ Green Books for Green Living. There are tons of great books there especially in the nature section *grin* and it is quite similar to CurrClick, giving away freebies quite often as well.

The current freebie is the above book on how to compost with worms. Super neat! All you need to do is to sign up as a member which is completely free, make sure you have Adobe Reader (you will need it to read the downloaded PDF) and that's it. You will now have access to download the worm book and any future ones :)

Unplugged Project ~ Insect (Habitat)

Mon, 1 Sep 2008 00:31:00 -0500

This week Unplug Your Kids' weekly unplugged project was about INSECTS so we thought we'd do a little bug hunting and the kids even built a little bug habitat for our finds :) Armed with jars we set out to see what we could catch.

K found tons of beetles and a really neat millipede. The millipede isn't actually an insect though because they have more than 6 legs :)

All L wanted to catch was a grasshopper and it was a real barrel of laughs watching her hop around the yard after them as they leaped one step ahead of her each time *grin*. Big brother K had to help her catch one in the end :)

For some reason grasshoppers love to crawl on our front window so we got to have a close up look at the underside of them. The kids thought that their thorax (check out grasshopper anatomy here) looked like a jigsaw puzzle :)

After K & L were done capturing their insects they really wanted to keep them but I knew that they wouldn't last long in the jars so the kids decided to make them a cozy little habitat to live in for an extra day :) We took a small cardboard box and they filled it with dirt, rocks, leaves, and even dug up a piece of grass to plant in it so that they would have something to eat while staying in their insect-topia *grin*.

It was interesting to watch how they reacted in their new home. The beetles scurried around the walls eventually finding refuge underneath the rocks and the grasshopper planted itself on top of the leaf and was very content munching on it. A couple of hours later when we went back to check on them the grasshopper had actually ate quite a few holes out of the leaf! And the millipede had wound itself into the root system of the grass that was still above the dirt level. At first they were disappointed thinking that it had gotten away but after a little searching that was where they found it :) We'll check on them again tomorrow and then set them free. I'm definitely not going to be keeping them as pets! L thought that her grasshopper would make a lovely pet for her room. LOL. Have fun creating an insect-topia of your own!

Unplugged Project ~ Trees

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 23:27:00 -0500

This week Unplug Your Kids' weekly unplugged project is about TREES. We started by borrowing the above book, the take along guide Trees, Leaves and Bark by Diane L. Burns from the library. This is a fantastic book which looks at 16 different trees describing where to find them, what they are used for, lifespan and more all with absolutely superb drawings of each tree's leaves, bark and seeds! There are also some great projects tucked inside as well. I had originally thought that we would do some rubbings or perhaps a leaf mobile but the kids had something entirely different in mind! *grin*

They decided to raid the scrap pile where Opa is building in search of chunks of wood to build with. The found cedar, fir, hemlock and even some roots :) Above is L's playground. The piece of wood on the left side of the picture has her slide (triangular piece of wood), a trampoline (the round section of a limb), the monkey bars (a chunk of root), and her playhouse. I just love her imagination!

K found some old siding that he cut into the deck of a pirate ship with his hand saw and the masts are actually made from apple tree branches that he salvaged and peeled the bark off of from the damage we recently had due to black bear troubles.

Then they really started to get creative and started to build stables for their ponies and playmobil horses :) Above is L's, complete with hay in the stalls and the doors swing open on little nail hinges :) It's so cute and she was so excited to show me. She built it entirely on her own!

K's stable went one step further with the addition of a roof :)

He even put the names of his horses on the stall doors *grin*. Of course all the names could only be 3 letters long so that they would fit. LOL. I love how this project evolved from nature study exploration, studying different trees, their leaves and bark to using the wood that trees provide in a hands on project full of imagination :)