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.