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.

Outdoor Hour-Challenge #2

This weekend we took advantage of the beautiful weather and went to a local hiking area.  It was our first time there and a nice change from our usual "backyard" forest adventures.  One of the nice things was a regular path.  In our backwoods we are mainly just trekking through the woods without a path.

In this challenge, I read from the Handbook of Nature Study (just to myself not the kids).  We collected a ton of leaves along with a few mushrooms, some acorns and a couple of pine cones.  We were on the trail for 2 hours so that was a little long with the young ones but we all had a good time.  There are 3 trails so we will have to go back and hike the other 2 trails soon.



By the time we got home we were all tired so we left our bag of "treasures" until later.  After supper, we had fun making leaf rubbings and even used a rainbow stamp pad to do a few leaf stamps.  I don't care how old I am, I love making leaf rubbings.  (maybe more than the kids)

The main point of this challenge is to use your words to describe what you heard, saw and felt.  This was pretty difficult for the kids so I think it was a good challenge because it gets them thinking.  The next time we go out I think they will be more observant.  Here are their responses:

Jenna (5)
One word to describe something you heard.  water
Two words for something you saw.  brown mushroom (with a white stem)..yeah I know more than 2 words
Three words for something you felt.  soft, fuzzy leaf

Emma (7)
One word to describe something you heard. crinkling (leaves)
Two words for something you saw. wobbly bridge
Three words for something you felt. soft, bumpy mushroom

Ryan (10)
One word to describe something you heard. cricket
Two words for something you saw. animal den
Three words for something you felt. smooth stick (he couldn't come up with 3 words)

As always, I took pictures:

starting out on the trail...my nephew came along too

Emma wanted me to take this picture to show how tall the fern was.

Can you find Connor?

This was so cool....sprouting acorns

princess pine (we took some time to learn a little about spore cones)

Ellie wanted me to take her picture with this leaf.

the boys throwing rocks in the river

Favorite picture of the day.

waiting for everyone to catch up

I came up on Jenna kneeling over these tiny flowers she found.

everything is going to seed

Ellie and Connor walking the end of the hike hand in hand.

Emma

Emma was so happy about these giant leaves.

lots of leaves

about a foot long!

you can see we found quite a variety

Emma making a leaf rubbing

Outdoor Hour-Challenge #1

Today we completed the Outdoor Hour Challenge #1-Getting Started from the Handbook of Nature Study blog.  Over the past several days I read pages 1-8 of the Handbook of Nature Study.  It has been raining for the last several days so today was the first chance we had to get back outside.

I didn't have any agenda but to just go out and see what we could find.  Emma (7) and Jenna (5) came with me today.  We recently went looking for mushrooms and so now the girls have an eye for that and kept pointing out lots of mushrooms on our walk (many that I just passed right over.)  I took a few pictures of mushrooms that we hadn't seen before and some that they liked.  Emma also picked up quite a few leaves and filled my pockets with giant acorns.

When we came inside, Emma laid out all of her treasures (except for the oak gall because I thought it probably had bugs in it.) Then we looked at the acorn section on the Handbook of Nature Study.  After that we looked up a few websites on Oak Tree identification.  We think that the oak trees we have are Scarlet Oak. I cannot find my Tree field guide (and it's driving me crazy!!) so we relied on the internet.

I am really coming to love our little nature study walks.

acorns

I thought this leaf was pretty

This was a neat mushroom.  It didn't seem to have any gills.  It was very spongy.

another mushroom we hadn't seen before

bright yellow

There is a tall mushroom between the girls...we took it to show
how big it is but somehow you can't tell!

mushroom growing in a dead tree on the ground

mushrooms on a different tree on the ground

Emma notices tree roots.  She pointed out this Elm tree growing
over a rock. It's pretty cool.

Near the end of our walk we found this cool purple mushroom.

Time for a swing.

a gall

Emma with her "goodies"

Nature Study- Mushrooms

(**This is an edited post. It was originally Autumn Treasures part 3 but I wanted to make it mainly about the mushroom study so I renamed it and moved the pictures to Autumn Treasures part 2 and I'm adding more of our mushroom study here.)

Emma in front of our Maple tree.
You can see the leaves are starting to change. 

Emma and I went out alone today on a mushroom hunt in the woods.  I have been reading the Handbook of Nature Study blog. I've had the Handbook of Nature Study for many years but unfortunately it has mostly spent its entire life on the shelf. I hope to remedy that! Anyway, I knew we had a lot of mushrooms in the woods from previous nature walks so we went out and looked at all the different ones we could find, took pictures then later went back and collected a few samples to try to make spore prints.    (This is the original mushroom post that inspired me.)

mushrooms growing in our front yard

more mushrooms in the front yard

a frog (it's on the tire)