Outdoor Hour Challenge

Autumn Series #1 - Cattails

We looked at a few pictures online, and I shared some things from the Handbook of Nature Study before heading to a nearby park. I know I was surprised the cattail is found in the "Wild Flowers" section of the handbook. I'd never thought of it as a wild flower.

"(Cattails) are very flexible, and therefore yield to the wind rather than defy it. (HNS p.501)" We found this to be true with the heavy winds blowing around here today!

The last time we visited this park (~18 months ago) there was a pond with cattails growing on the edges, but today the pond is gone, the land is marshy, and the cattails have taken over the area.

Sword fighting cattail-style

Can you spot their little golden heads? I can because I know where they were when I took the picture!

No adventure with little kids would be complete without a stop at the playground.

Austin & Nyah decided to use Barb's notebook page, and I did mine in my nature journal.

Austin-

Nyah-

Kelsey-

A Scene with Clouds

I am having my kids participate in Sketch Tuesday from the Harmony Fine Arts blog this year. Here are Austin & Nyah's pictures from this past week:

Nyah's

The beach has been in a lot of pictures this week.

She called this one New York City. I guess it could be Central Park. I like the squirrel climbing down the tree. It reminds me of a crazy squirrel that was showing off for Amelia and I at a park in South Carolina.

Austin's

The beach

Here is a close up of his crab - the arrows are for things that are falling on the crab- waves, rain, and a coconut.
This is the rain forest

Adding to our Vacation

We recently returned from a family vacation to the Oceanside, California area. About a month ago, in anticipation of this vacation, the kids and I started learning about beach and ocean life.

The first book we started to read was Pagoo by Holling C. Holling. We tried this book a couple years ago and the kids weren't interested, but this time around they kept begging for me to read more, and even now that we are home they still want to finish the book.

We also checked a number of books from our library by searching under subjects like "tide pools" or "marine animals." A couple favorites were A Harbor Seal Pup Grows Up and Hermit Crabs and other Shallow-water Life, but there were lots of wonderful books to choose from.

We also found another great book at the Handbook of Nature Study blog in the post called "Creating Anticipation in Nature Study." The book is called One Small Square: Seashore by Donald M. Silver. This book has beautiful illustrations and wonderful information, and my kids have enjoyed comparing the shells we brought home with the shell illustrations on page 36.

We also watched a couple documentaries about the ocean. Coral Reef Adventures, which is an IMAX move, and The Blue Planet: Seasonal Seas (episode 5) and Coral Seas (episode 6).

And of course we couldn't miss my toddler's favorite: Finding Nemo, which in addition to the movie also has a couple special features showing real footage of ocean dwelling creatures.

Charlotte Mason said, "They must be let alone, left to themselves a great deal, to take in what they can of the beauty of earth and heavens (Home Education, pg. 44)" At times it was hard for me to follow this advice, especially when they would rather ride the waves at the beach instead of closely examining the kelp or seashells (not hard to imagine, is it?). But for the most part I was able to stop myself from saying "come look at this," "remember reading about this," and "did you notice." And then later I would over hear them talking to each other about the kelp or what kind of shells they found.
The part of our vacation that warmed my heart the most was when we went to the Birch Aquarium in San Diego. They spent longer periods of time lingering over tanks with ocean life that they were familiar with- watching the jellyfish swim up and down in a tank, trying to see the octopus' mouth, talking about the ocean camouflage exhibits without needing to read the informational signs, and even talking about Bruce from Finding Nemo while watching the feeding of the sharks.

As we walked through the tank exhibits we ended up behind a tour bus group, and I kept trying to pass the group so we could go faster, until I realized my kids were intentionally lingering to listen to guide and then looking closely at the tank to find what he was speaking about. At the tide pools the kids were delighted to able to touch the live animals- large smiles when touching the starfish and sea slugs, and the quick looks of worry that crossed their faces when asked if they wanted to touch an anemone or sea urchin until they were assured their skin was too tough to be hurt.

We would have had a wonderful trip without learning anything beforehand, but our little bit of knowledge greatly enhanced our overall experiences. and as Charlotte Mason says " . . . there is no sort of knowledge to be got in these early years so valuable to children as that which they get for themselves of the world they live in. Let them once get touch with Nature, and a habit is formed which will be a source of delight through life."

School Updates

Glance over to the sidebar and you can see we are starting some new studies in our school.

For poetry we are reading William Blake.

We didn't keep up our Artist Study through the summer, so we will continue studying Claude Monet's works, starting with Red Boats, Argenteuil.

Our new Composer Study will be Ludwig van Beethoven.

I also thought it would be fun to include some quotes from each person.

Have a great day!!

Pumpkins

Outdoor Nature Challenge- Crop Plants: Pumpkins

We are a few challenges behind because of our vacation, but it worked out for this challenge. Before our vacation there wasn't a pumpkin for sale anywhere and now, a couple weeks later, the store's are full of them. Also, I selected the wrong picture size when uploading so I hope you can see them okay.

We planted pumpkins a few months ago, but this little seedling is our best result, which was accidentally plucked from the ground when we were trying to pick a leaf.

Our pumpkin

My kids love these little pumpkins and the gourds. They are a great price at the local stores right now so I let the kids pick some. I especially like the Tiger Stripe pumpkin (white with orange stripes).

Working on our journals

We carved the large pumkin, but will keep the smaller ones with the gourds for our fall decorations. We also read the pumpkin poem from Barb's post and looked at the pictures of the pumpkin's life cycle as well.

Nyah's journal

Austin's journal

One decided to tape a seed on the page, so they both started taping all kinds of things in. I'm not sure how the pumpkin slime from the inside will turn out, but if it starts to smell too bad I just might have to do a little editing.

In the Garden

I expected to come home from my trips and find a dying garden, but to my surprise everything looked like it was doing well (except the containers on my back porch which are all yellow and crispy).

More of my sunflowers are finally blooming!!! Though I am horribly disappointed that NONE of my mammoth sunflowers even sprouted, much less bloom.

Autumn Beauty

Red Sun
Strawberry Blonde

Another Strawberry Blonde

My ONLY Fuzzy Face to bloom.

And I also have some surprise Wild Sunflowers blooming in my garden as well.

I also have lots that are done blooming and showing their seeds, like this Lemon Queen. I plan on harvesting seeds from all the varieties for next year's sunflower garden.

My garden companion and tomato eater (between the two of us none have made it to the kitchen yet!) digging in the sand box- with a spoon which can only have found its way outside while I was in South Carolina and Kurt was in charge- I found several throughout the yard.

Also, much to our surprise, a couple of strawberry seeds we left hanging in the window long after I thought they would turn to mush finally sprouted!!

Its good to be back in the garden, but the weeds definitely are attempting a hostile takeover of the yard. Work for Saturday I guess.

Strawberries!

Outdoor Hour Challenge: Crop Plants #5 Strawberries

I decided to do our nature study early this week so we could use our strawberries before they were all gone! To introduce what we would be learning about I had them guess what kinds of seeds we would be growing in the window this week. They both guessed "Strawberries" right away. It was challenging to scrape off the tiny strawberry seeds and get them in the bag without losing them, but we all agree it will be interesting to see what happens. I'll include our results in next week's challenge.

We did the activities suggested by Barb at the Handbook of Nature Study because we don't have any strawberry plants to examine. Austin and Nyah had a great time cutting, examining, and, of course, gobbling them up.

Nyah included other fruits in her journal page.

Austin drew the strawberry plant with his strawberry.

One of my goals for our new school year is for ME to participate in our studies more. Too often I am trying to keep my toddlers out of the way while the older two are working (i.e. stop them from scribbling all over big bro. and sis. pictures). Today I let the toddlers go while we worked at the kitchen counter and it went okay. Having my one year old bring me my husband's deodorant, lid off and smeared all over her hands, was surprising, but only caused a small interruption. Here is my journal page.

I also included the poem My Strawberry by Helen Hunt Jackson in my journal.

In other Nature Study news:
Nyah still heads our neighborhood Praying Mantis Club, though an attack this morning by one of these little green guys has caused her to declare she is done catching them. We'll see if that lasts.
My tomato-eater closely follows me around the garden hoping I will let her pick tomatoes, and of course I do when they are ripe. And the happy faces of sunflowers are appearing everywhere! These are wild ones which are growing everywhere they can- empty lots, fields, cracks in the sidewalks, and along the streets.
We like to grow different varieties of sunflowers. Our "Autumn Beauty" are starting to bloom.
And so are the "Lemon Queen" for the Great Sunflower Project

Hopefully we will have several more varieties blooming soon!