Cardinals & Nature Walk

Outdoor Hour Challenge Birds #1- Part B - Part A here

The Northern Cardinal- We studied the Cardinal in the same way as we studied the Robin in part A. Here is the Cardinal page from AllAboutBirds- I arranged the pictures on the computer monitor, read from Handbook of Nature Study and the Burgess Bird Book, and had the kids color the Cornell coloring page and then narrate to me what they learned. According to the range map at AllAboutBirds the Cardinal isn't in our area (northern Utah), which is too bad.

While on our walk today I spotted a Quail dashing across a field, and we also saw some Black-billed Magpie's, which gives us some local birds to learn more about this week.

Nyah's-

Austin's-

We took advantage of a sunny afternoon today to do some Spring 2009 Observations. The older two did their seasonal weather notebook page from Handbook of Nature Study. Before we left we read through the Hearts and Trees spring nature walk notebook page. This helped the kids have an idea of what to look for while we were on our walk. Then we all bundled up for a walk, and as the younger two are showing in the picture below, we really bundled up. Don't let the sunshine fool you, it was snowing this morning, and very windy while we were out.

One of the first signs of spring the kids found was this Forsythia bush. It was such a beautiful, welcome sight! They also noticed that the crabapple trees are getting ready to bloom. The ones we have in our area are white blossoms (I personally think the blossoms stink really bad).

Our next find was this purple Hyacinth that is starting to peak out of the ground.

The kids were very excited about these daffodils because they thought they are like the ones we bought at the store last week, but I think the ones we planted will have orange cups and white petals. This is the flower we are going to learn about for our next weeks Wednesday Flower Study.

We couldn't decide if these are blossoms or leaves, but we loved the color!! Buds on a willow tree
We finally found some really green bushes!! Yeah Spring!!

And what walk would be complete without a stop at the neighborhood park? Even if we are only there long enough for everyone to declare they are freezing and want to go home.

Painting like Jackson Pollock

My kids have been begging to paint like Jackson Pollock for weeks, so yesterday I finally pulled all the stuff out and let them go to town. Overall I was surprised at how tame they kept it. I thought they would want kitchen utensils, paint everywhere, all in imitation of Jackson Pollock, who we have watched painting at youtube, but they kept things really simple. I guess that means we'll be painting more in the near future.

Getting started-

Olivia too! This is her first time painting.

Hard at work-
Proud Artists-

Nyah's-

Austin's-

Wednesday Flower Study

I am excited about this new study from Handbook of Nature Study! Barb is wonderful to share her talents and knowledge with everyone- THANK YOU!!

We decided to get started with our flower studies, even though we have had snow that last few days. My daughter, Nyah, 6, said to me, "No more snow! It's not Christmas anymore." Because our yard isn't landscaped in any way we are going to start with flowers I plan on planting, and we'll add wildflowers and weed flowers as we find and identify them. We had a couple weeks of nice spring weather before the snow came again, and during that time I went flower crazy at the store- buying tulips, daffodils, and other bulbs/corms. I LOVE SPRING!!

Because we are having someone do the heavy work (moving dirt, rocks, lay sod, etc.) on our yard this is the only corner I can start planting stuff now. It will be a few weeks before I can start tackling the rest of the yard. I can't wait for the snow to melt so we can get our hands dirty!!

Although we have had snow, the first day it melted by afternoon, and even though it was chilly outside, I decided to plant some pots I have, and this is what I devised to keep the baby out of the cold. She was a little upset the dog could jump over and escape like the rest of us, but at least she didn't turn purple from cold.

Our work area on the deck- trying to find all our gardening stuff was a bit of a challenge as most of it was still in boxes in the garage from moving 6 months ago.

When Jolie started to fuss and get upset about being left out a garden tool cheered her up, and distracted her for a time.

After we finished planting we took a walk around the yard. I was looking for evidence of spring, and hoping for some weed flowers for us to learn about next, but no luck. We did find several of the plant below growing. I have always called it lamb's ears, but when I googled it the pictures don't match- so what is it? I love the soft, velvety leaves. Other than these, and dandelion greens, there isn't much growing in our yard. I want to study dandelions when they are blooming, so we'll continue to learn about garden flowers until we find something else.

Here are our Tulips yesterday: We decided to learn about the Tulip this week. We read information from the Handbook of Nature Study, and then we looked at pictures online. So beautiful!! We also used the close up pictures of the inside of tulips to identify the different parts. And I set one as my computer background to give us a little spring until we have some flowers of our own growing. I gave the kids a coloring page of tulips and they picked the color of tulips they want to add to our yard, prompting more flower madness at the store. This is a dangerous time of year to walk through a garden center.

Outdoor Hour Challenge Birds #1

Outdoor Hour Challenge Birds #1

House Finch & Robin

We studied the House Finch a couple weeks ago as part of the Winter Wednesday challenges, so we just did a quick review of this bird. Here is my post about it.

Today we learned about the Robin. I had pre-read The Handbook of Nature Study pages about the Robin (pg. 57-62) and highlighted those things that I wanted to share with my kids. At our lesson time I used the pictures at Cornell's AllAboutBirds Robin page to help illustrate what we were reading about. I clicked on all the pictures and arranged them so they were bigger and all visible at the same time. We were able to see how the male and female are different, how the juvenile is different from the adult, how the nest and eggs look, as I read this information aloud, which really helped my kids (age 7 & 6) understand what I was reading.

The kids also greatly enjoyed listening, and singing along with, the Robin's bird calls. We listened to all those listed by Barb at the Handbook of Nature Study blog (Thank you Barb for all your hard work!!). Here are the links: Robin Calls #1- Learn Bird Songs, #2- All About Birds, #3- What Bird.

Then I read from The Burgess Bird Book about Welcome Robin (pg.21-26), my kids found Jennie Wren's criticism of Welcome Robins dirty nest funny, and they liked learning about how Robin's can hear worms!! If you don't have the Burgess Bird book you can find the text online at The Baldwin Project (with illustrations) and an audio recording at Librivox.

The kids used the Cornell coloring pages. Nyah started one , but soon stopped and said she didn't mean to color a male Robin, and could I please print another page for her so she could color a female Robin.

Nyah's first one- Male

Nyah's second one- FemaleAustin's- Male

After they finished coloring the pictures and instead of answering the questions on the page, I had them tell me what they remembered about Robins, and I wrote it below their pictures. One thing they were excited to discover from flipping through their geography state coloring books is that the Robin is the state bird for Connecticut, New York, & Wisconsin.

A picture from a recent visit to the Hutchings Museum. Austin wondered why there were 5 eggs in this display when a Robin usually lays 4 at a time. we haven't seen any Robins around here yet, and with it snowing today it may be a while before they decide to visit our city.

Gothic by Jackson Pollock

When I put up a new painting of the artist we are studying, the kids and I like to discuss it during lunch. The kids are sitting at the counter and face the fridge where the painting is hanging, but they jump up every minute or so to run over and point something out. With the Jackson Pollock paintings our discussion is very much like cloud gazing- the kids tell me what they can "see" in the painting.

From today's painting:

Austin- baseball, birds, turkeys, 3 eyeballs, tree, and windows.

Nyah- different shapes, colors, & sizes, eyes, fish, fish eyes, worm with eyeballs, peacock feathers.

Olivia- (who asked me to lift her up so she could point) eye and ball.

Outdoor Hour Challenge #51: Wolf, Fox, & Dog

Outdoor Hour Challenge #51: Wolf, Fox, & Dog

Because we were struck with a nasty round of sickness, we only completed part of our challenge. We read about dogs and foxes, but didn't get to the wolves. When I looked at the pbs page for pbs wolf video I was interested in the lesson links to the side bar, especially sections of "Who's Afraid of the Big bad Wolf", like the different types of communication, so I will hopefully work that into our lessons soon.

Lucky us, we have a very willing volunteer to help us with this nature challenge. The greatest challenge was trying to get our dachschund, Dade, to sit still for a photo, because as soon as he realizes he's the center of attention he dashes up close, wagging his tail, sticking his nose in the camera lens, and trying to lick everything at once. Our discussion got pretty funny when we were talking about dogs-- What do they eat? Dog food, stuffed animals, plastic, toilet paper, and so on. What do dogs like to do? lay in the sun, sneak into the bathroom for toilet paper, lick the baby's face and hands, and so on.

Some of the fun things we learned about foxes are that foxes like to eat fruit, and that a black fox is not a different type of fox, but just a red fox with a different coat.

Nyah's journal picture of a red fox and black fox.

Austin's fox hunting rabbit.

When Mom is Sick . . .

Wait-- I thought moms don't get to be sick? Don't all moms wish this was true!! Well, the truth in my case is that I have been sick, sicker than I've been in a long time, and its miserable. Kurt has been sick too, and my baby girls, who are always happy, have been sick and miserable too. We had about four days where it was every man for himself-- Kurt or I managed to crawl out of bed to change diapers or put meals together for whoever could eat, but our kids' best friend during this time was the TV, sad but true.

So by Monday I started feeling better, and thought we'd get going on some of our school, but another horrible thing happened-- I lost my voice. All of our school lessons, in some way or another, involve me reading out loud, and Monday morning after reading just one thing I couldn't even make a sound for most of the day.

So our school work has been limited to those things I don't have to read or even say much to do. Because Jolie is still pretty miserable we wait until she takes her morning nap and Olivia either hangs out with us or watches a PBS show. We've stuck with the 3 R's - reading, writing, and arithmetic.

The kids practice their handwriting by writing over words that I've written out using a highlighter. I alternate with a poem from the poet we are reading (Christine Rossetti right now) and scriptures (verses from Luke 2 right now). I also leave space for the kids to illustrate the poem/scripture if they want to.

Because we were in the middle of a math unit when illness struck we haven't had to do any new concepts and so its easy to have them do one of their workbooks pages each day with little help from me. Usually when they master a concept we move on to the next, skipping any workbook pages I feel like we can, but for this unit we are going to get them all done.

Having Austin read out loud is an easy way for me to not have to read. I let him pick the book- sometimes he picks one as long as Frog and Toad Together by Arnold Lobel, and other times (like today) he picks a baby board book with one or two words per page "Grumpy frumpy, Happy snappy" and so on. Whatever he picks, the girls crowd around to listen.

While Nyah can read and sound out words etc., she is far from being confident about reading and usually panics when asked to read. Which is how she reacts to most things "I can't do it!!" even when she's known "D-A-D" is Dad for so long!! So we are doing lots of review. A favorite resource is http://www.starfall.com/ This morning as she "played" everyone wanted to watch, as seen in the picture at top, and I didn't have to say a thing.

We are also listening to a lot of things these days. A new favorite soundtrack is "The Ark" from the off-broadway musical by Michael McLean and Keving Kelly, as well as our old favorites of Phantom, Les Mis, and Joseph's Technicolor Coat. And I've been utilizing the Librivox website for books and other things. We are still listening to Howard Pyle's Robin Hood, they have some poems from our poet, and yesterday I found short bio's of some of the historical figures we are studying for the middle ages (search: Famous Men of the Middle Ages) which I'll review before we use for school, but it was a great find.

We have been doing our nature study by watching PBS nature shows, and Planet Earth, and our bird feeder, and now that Austin and Nyah are much better they are spending lots of time in the great outdoors!! It seems spring arrived while I was hiding in my bedroom.

Well, Jolie is wailing, um, calling for me so I better report for duty!