Spring Series #6 - Apple Trees

Outdoor Hour Challenges - Spring Series #6 - Apple Trees

We have been dealing with a medical situation concerning our 3 year old, O, which you can read about on our family blog if you are intererested. Unfortunately, this means the end of our school year was interrupted - I've spent 2 or 3 days a week at the hospital and the days at home I've been trying to catch up on home-stuff. But because it is Spring there are lots of wonderful things happening all around us, and now that it looks like we will have a break between appointments we are catching up with the Spring Series challenges.

With this Apple Tree challenge we did a condensed version - we found some apple trees at a home improvement store :). Even though I had read through the Handbook of Nature Study Apple Tree section, with my kids I stuck to the suggested observations in the challenge post and had them do a picture for their nature journals.

Some of the exciting things that have been happening in our own neighborhood:

The black-chinned hummingbirds have returned. We could hear them flying around for a few days before we took the hint and put up our feeder. We have seen several males competing for the feeder and chasing each other away. If we are sitting on the deck and holding very still, they will come drink from the feeder.
On our neighbor's deck we have an American Robin couple who look to be starting a family. They built their nest on an outdoor speaker. We were all worried about how stable this location would be, but it has weathered several windy storms this week and even a snow storm this morning. It was exciting for my kids to watch as the nest was being built and then to stay on the look out for the eggs. We haven't seen the eggs - I don't think we are close enough. However, we have spotted the male and female changing places as they take turns sitting on the nest..
We spotted this bird of prey and were amazed to identify it as a Turkey Vulture. We have seen it on several different days - soaring above us on the look out for a tasty meal.

Spring Series #5 - Cattails

Outdoor Hour Challenge - Spring Series #5 - Cattails

Autumn Cattail Study

Winter Cattail Study

We headed to the park where we have observed cattails. A couple years ago this was more pond and lots less cattails, but the water level has dropped and is now covered with cattails.
We were a little disappointed not to find any new growth . . .
Until we found this little guy. We were very careful not to damage it as it was the only new one we could find.

We pulled up an old one to examine - leaves seem to be growing opposite, but it was hard to tell.

The roots

The head

We were delighted to observe and listen to a number of red-winged blackbirds. Their calls were very beautiful and different sounding from the other birds we usually listen to. This is the best picture I came home with - they didn't think posing for my camera was very important.

Of course the kids had lots of fun playing too!

Spring Series - #4 Dandelions

Outdoor Nature Hour - Spring Series - #4 Dandelions

We have snow (!!!) today so we weren't able to get outside, but I sent the older kids outside to bring some dandelions inside. Fortunately, the kids have eagerly been picking and playing with these smiling flowers the last couple weeks so we have some great pictures to share.
Because it is cold the dandelions were mostly closed when they were brought inside.
But they opened up after spending some time indoors.
We also found some giant dandelion leaves in a neighbor's yard (as I type our neighbors are having TruGreen treat their yard so I guess its farewell to the dandelions). This makes me sad - after seeing these fun pictures at Chocolate on my Cranium I wanted to make dandelion chains with my kids. We'll have to check some nearby parks!
Who can resist blowing a dandelion's seeds?
A large bouquet the girls picked for their dad


Journal pages:

A's

Mine

N's

One day we found this "super" dandelion with an enormous stem and head. Very impressive.

J loves to carry a dandelion in her hand as she plays - too cute!

We also studied dandelions as part of last years Wednesday Flower Study - its always fun to look back at past journal pages.

Spring Series #3 - Spring Bird Study

Outdoor Hour Challenge - Spring Series - #3 Spring Bird Study

For this Bird Study Challenge we didn't do anything special or extra - mostly just continued to notice and listen to birds when we have the opportunity.

We have spent a lot of time lately talking about and listening to birds. My little girls are starting to point them out and get excited to see them. We have been visiting local ponds and a farm where we can see ducks, geese, turkeys, and chickens.

But the bird songs my kids are most familiar with are the ones we hear in our own neighborhood. We sit on the back porch early in the morning to listen to house finches, european starlings, and mourning doves. My kids always stop and put a hand to their ears when they hear the calls of Canada geese, black-billed magpies, or California gulls.

Yesterday we were lucky tohave a Great Horned Owl nest with the mother and 2 babies pointed out to us at some local gardens we were visiting. It has reminded us to go looking for the Great Horned Owls we were able to watch and study last year.

This is a new bird for us and we are working on identifying it:

We have frequently seen it at Thanksgiving Point's Farm Country. When we were there yesterday we noticed a tree with multiple nests in it and we could hear lots of loudly chirping babies waiting for their dinner. The moms and dads were busy coming and going, but we managed to get this quick picture. WhatBird doesn't seem to be working this morning so we'll have to wait for another time. Any ideas?

UPDATE: For some reason I'm not able to view my pictures as larger images - sometimes this happens, but I don't know why. Sorry :(

Shadow Stick

Today we were able to do the shadow stick experiment we read about during our Spring Series Challenge - #2 Spring Weather.

Here is our shadow stick when we first set it up this morning. We cut down a dowel and poked it through a piece of cardboard. A little later we had to place flower pots at each corner to keep it from being blown away.

Starting at 9:00am we marked where the shadow of the dowel ended every 30 minutes until 3:00pm this afternoon.

My kids enjoyed hearing the timer go off and racing to the back porch so they could help mark the shadow. There were also times in between when I could hear A & N discussing how much the shadow had moved since the last time we marked it. I can tell they really enjoyed doing this experiment, and will look forward to doing it again in June, September and December.

Artist Study - Finishing up Picasso

Its time to move on to a new artist - Vincent Van Gogh coming up! - but first we needed to finish Pablo Picasso. I let the kids pick one of the pictures we have studied over the last couple months and then had them do a reproduction of it. While we spend some time learning about the artist's life, the point of our Artist Study is to be able to recognize the artist's work. So this is like our final exam for Pablo Picasso. A's - Still Life with Bulls Head, 1958
N's - Child Playing with a Toy Truck , 1953
See how focused and peaceful O is coloring beside A & N? Such a deceptive sight.

Here she is after I was pulled away to answer a phone call (Hello Amelia!) - marker all over her face and arms, eating the cinnamon & sugar for toast. She probably had some butter too. Thankfully J was napping or I shudder to think what would have happened.

P.S. My sweet N is a major perfectionist and shed multitudes of tears over things in her picture she thinks are wrong. She didn't want me taking pictures or sharing them, so if you have a moment, please leave a kind word for her and A - thank you!

Foreign Country - India

A couple weeks ago we pulled out our map and I let A (He & N take turns) pick our next foreign country to learn about - INDIA! I was expecting this pick because India has been featured in the last couple books we have been listening to (A Little Princess & Jungle Books I & II).

I thought I would share some of what we have been doing and will be doing to learn more about India.

I start by looking at the country on our world map - there are always important places and cities to learn about listed on the country. We look these up at Wikipedia or in our book, Atlas of the World. Here is our list for India - its pretty short right now, but we will be adding to it as we learn more about India:

New Delhi - capital

Delhi

Bangalore

Calcutta
Himalayas

Western/Eastern Ghats
Great Indian Desert
Deccan Plateau
Ganges River

I make a notebook page with a world map, continent map, and country map on it. The kids color India on the world & continent maps. We use the country map to map out the cities & places as we learn about them.

Next stop, library website & home library - these can be fables or a book that features something special about the country, or non-fiction books or a cookbook. As we are reading I make note of vocabulary, animals, activities the characters do, etc. that we will discuss in more detail.

The Story of Little Babaji - pancakes with lots of ghi (butter), character names were changed from author's original names to more Indian names (Black Sambo to Little Babaji), Tigers in India

When Agnes Caws - ornithologist, Himalayas, Pink-headed duck (doesn't that duck just sound fascinating? I want to see one!)

Once a Mouse - hermit, peacocked, fable, Tigers in India

Sailing Home - cargo, China Sea, Indian Ocean

As I mentioned we have also been reading about India in The Jungle Books, and we also have a book of fables from Asia that had a story in it from India - "The Son of the Ogress."

I also make up a notebook page for the story books. The kids can write about the stories or draw a picture from each of the stories. Here is N's:

I also recently picked up a fabulous cookbook at Costco - Around the World in 450 Recipes. It has an entire section of recipes from India. I'll look through it and see which ones I might possibly convince my kids to taste, and which ones won't be too much of a challenge to make, and which ones I can find all the necessary ingredients for, and hopefully there will be 2 or 3 we can try. Also in our home library, we have Wee Sing Around the World CD & book. There are a couple songs from India, and it looks like we will even spend some time memorizing on of them.

Next stop, Netflix & home movie library -

India: Kingdom of the Tiger
Disney's Jungle Book
Chuck Jones Collection - includes Rikki Tikki Tavi, Mowgli's Brothers, & The White Seal and has some stories not by Rudyard Kipling (Cricket in Times Square)
Bride & Prejudice - Don't laugh!! We just happen to have this movie (obsessive Jane Austen fan that I am), and I plan on showing the kids some of the dancing scenes.
Two Brothers - I think this is actually about Tigers in China, but it is a favorite movie here and any talk about Tigers means we need to watch this movie again.

I wasn't planning on doing more movies, but I was a little disappointed with India: The Kingdom of the Tiger. It focused more on the conservation movement to protect the Tigers, which is informational and an excellent movement, but didn't really give the depth of information about Tigers that I was hoping for, and I'm not sure man-eating Tigers is the direction I wanted their Tiger-education to go in. So its back to Netflix to look around.

Now that we have our resources listed, we will spend some time each week discussing the important cities & places, adding them to our individual maps, as well as finding more stories about India and perhaps watching some more movies.