We had a glorious weekend. It actually hit 45 today! While we enjoyed being outside for a few hours… we took some time to catch up on our Nature Studies.
Here is our entry for squirrels. This is a mammal we are able to observe daily at our feeders. We read about squirrels a couple weeks ago in the Handbook of Nature study as well as the fun book Nuts to You! We also enjoyed the You Tube videos Barb posted. After teaching the kids what to look for… searching for squirrel nests in the bare trees has become a fun game in the car. They are so easy to spot this time of year.
This weekend we were finally able to get some photos to share. Here are some squirrely photos…
Here are some photos of squirrel nests…
And here is Fairy Girl’s journal entry (that is my messy handwriting that she dictated)…
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I don’t think any Groundhog in his right mind would be poking his head out around here yet. There must be at least 15 inches of snow on the ground… probably more. (I’m guessing Phil sees his shadow next week.)
The above photo was taken in late September. We had a groundhog who loved foraging in our compost pile. He made a daily appearance for a couple weeks before settling in for the winter. We loved watching him from the window but he was very skittish and took off the minute we tried to get a closer peek.
Today we watched the You-Tube videos Barb had posted on Handbook of Nature Study, colored one of the Groundhog coloring pages she also had listed and then read our Rookie Read-About Holidays: Groundhog’s Day book. The kids really liked the video with the wrestling Marmots… of course my TaeKwonDo kiddos argued that they were sparing not wrestling.
The last few days were a bit warmer and the rain we had last night melted all our snow. So today we were able to get out and look for some flowerless plants for this week’s Nature Study, BUT the temp dropped considerably today and the wind chill was pretty painful. We only lasted about 10 minutes. Fortunately we were able to find several examples to observe right in our yard. What was really amazing is the bright green moss we found on one rock… hard to believe that yesterday it was buried in snow.
Join in the Outdoor Hour Challenge #42.
Well our backyard is buried in snow atm, but the kids were fascinated with all the mushrooms popping up this past fall so we got lots of pictures and observations in then. Today we watched the video Barb posted, looked at all our photos from the fall and then the kids colored a mushroom page. Here are some mushrooms from our area. I found that mushrooms are hard to ID especially since I won’t let the kids touch them.
Some sort of Puffball Mushroom.
Another form of Puffball Mushroom.
I believe a Shaggy Mane Mushroom.
No idea on these little guys.
Join in the Outdoor Hour Challenge #41.
Well, not specifically knowing of any Elms, Chestnut or Hickory trees in our neighborhood… and the fact that there are NO leaves left on any trees to aid in any identification, we ended up doing something a little different for this week’s Nature Study.
Amazing the difference a week has made. Our last study we were outside in just long sleeves, enjoying the sunshine. We have now had snow and the winter gray is settling in.
My mom serendipitously bought a large bag of mixed nuts and a coconut for the kids to try this week. I thought that this might make a good tie in… since at least a couple of the trees in question drop nuts. After dinner, we gathered around Gammy’s kitchen table to complete our study.
We had Walnuts, Pecans, Brazil Nuts, Almonds, Hazelnuts and Coconuts. The kids enjoyed playing with the nuts and trying to get them open. Bug actually managed a few. Once we had several open we made up a chart to record our taste test… using a thumbs up or thumbs down reaction.
Pecans and Almonds were by far the favorite with the Coconut Milk being the least favorite (insert EWW here 😉 ). BTW Walnuts and Almonds were accidentally recorded in the wrong columns… ooops on my part.
Oh what a glorious day for a nature study. I don’t imagine we will have very many more like it this season… not with snow starting to show up in the forecasts.
We have a huge Blue Spruce in our front yard. The kids love this tree. We are constantly having to remove the lower branches so it doesn’t take over the driveway which means there is this awesome hideaway under the tree. They like to build Fairy houses under there… which is how the first half of our nature study was spent.
Once a proper Fairy House was under way 😉 we did spend some time examining the tree in more detail. We talked about the difference between deciduous trees and conifers. We talked about what helps protect the needles from the winter and scraped the waxy coating off the outside of some of the needles. We talked about ways the tree protects itself when damaged and closely examined the areas where branches had been removed. We collected pine cones and compared them to the Scotch Pine Cones we collected several weeks ago.
Then we sat to draw in our journals. Fairy traced the outline of a pine cone, Bug created an elaborate fantasy scene with a Spruce tree in the middle, Pixie and I drew lots of “needles” together. Then we took advantaged of the long shadows (even close to midday) and traced the needle shadows in our books. This was yet another fun way to create a ‘leaf’ image. I see potential to play with the shadows even more over the next few weeks (or at least few days before the weather turns).
