Snow!

A bowl of fresh snow.

 I love snow!  This year has been pretty snowy and I just can't get enough.  I love it!!  Anyway, in The Winter Nature Study E-book there is a suggestion to collect some snow and then melt it and compare the volume.  I finally remembered to do this at the start of the storm rather than after it was over.  I wanted it to just collect in the bowl but Emma didn't know that and filled it up with the snow and packed it in.

She filled this can that was in the recycling bin too.

So I packed snow in a quart jar

Starting to melt..you can see how it is "shrinking"

Looking at the snow with a magnifying glass

melting

This is how much water we got in the can.

This is the amount of water in the jar.
When we started Emma estimated
it would be half full.

This was a fun experiment.  I am hoping for lots more snow to play with before the winter is over!

Winter Wednesday-Color Walk

The Handbook of Nature Study Blog is having Winter Wednesday Challenges.

We took our challenge today since we had a large snowstorm all day yesterday.  This is week 1 and the challenge was to take a color walk.  So today Emma and I went outside and looked for colors.  There was plenty of white..that is for sure!  Here is what we saw:

It's hard to see in the picture but there is green lichen on the tree.

more green (and white)

rust colored leaves

red berries but I'm not sure what kind of tree
this is in my neighbor's yard.

The beautiful blue sky and the MOON!

yellow and brown grasses sticking up in the snow

a pink bird...oh wait..that is Emma

We didn't see as much color as I would have liked but we were very limited because there is too much snow for us to even walk in the woods.  I actually tried to walk to the middle of my yard and ended up with my boots full of snow!  OUCH!  I think I need taller boots!  I was hoping to see a cardinal or blue jay but not today.

This is my neighbor.  He drove up and wanted to know what we were taking pictures of so I told him and he said his uniform could be the black and gray.  Thanks Mike! :)

Here are a few pictures of our bird feeders: (this is what I was doing when I filled my boots with snow!)

Emma tying our pine cone bird feeders we made
 yesterday to the tree.

The birds have been very busy at all of our feeders.  Even the snowman
is a feeder.  Ryan sprinkles him with birdseed and hung a couple of pine cone
feeders on his arms.

I am really enjoying our nature study.  You can too.  Head over to the Handbook of Nature Study blog and get started.  In case you missed my earlier blog post on this, I purchased the Winter Nature Study ebook to help us with our nature study.  It also includes art and music.  I think it is well worth it but you do not have to purchase anything to do the challenges.  They are all right there on the blog free of charge.  Thank you Barbara!!

Winter Nature Study

A month or so ago I purchased Winter Nature Study with Art and Music Appreciation by Barbara McCoy at the Handbook of Nature Study blog.  I loved the idea of having the challenges all in one place AND especially the addition of art and music study.

We completed the first challenge on Friday.  I had planned to do the cattail study in the autumn but we never got around to it.  I only pointed them out a few times when we drove by.  I made an effort last week to make sure we did this as I knew we had snow coming and we wouldn't be able to do it.

We weren't there too long.  It was COLD.  But we observed then Emma drew a very quick sketch and we went to the library where it was nice and warm.  I am looking forward to observing the changes of the cattails over the course of the year.

cattails in a tiny bit of snow

cattails..there is a tiny stream running through here

cattails lining both sides of the icy water

close up of the cattail

This week we've been listening to Vivaldi's Winter along with some other "winter" classical music on a CD I got from the library.  Emma (almost 8) really likes it.  She even comes out asking me where the CD is so she can listen to it.  (I find that shocking....don't ask me why, I just do.)  We haven't started our art study yet but we will soon.