What did you do for Nature Study today?

[rachelpants]

I'm trying to wrap my head around nature study...LOL Help me see what it looks like at your house :001_smile:  I bought my 7 year old and 4 year old little notebooks and I keep staring at them wondering what to do next. Thanks!

[Mavy]

We found a Garden Spider by our porch. The boys drew a picture of it in their nature journals. I looked them up in the Handbook of Nature Study and read them some facts I thought would interest them. Then after they finished drawing I scribed for them anything they wanted to write down. Some weeks I tell them what they will observe(example- last week I told them to choose a tree to observe for the year) and some weeks they choose what interests them. They both were excited about the spider(being typical 7 and 5 year old boys).

[TKDmom]

I've found these posts to be helpful as I stumble towards doing nature study in our home:

http://simplycharlottemason.com/2013/09/03/take-time/

http://www.charlottemasonhelp.com/2009/07/nature-study.html

 

ETA: My kids don't always enjoy drawing what they see, and one downright hates it, so nature study at our house tends to be a discussion of what we see in nature, while I point out things they might have missed, and they compare it to other plants or animals they know. For instance, we have chickens, and every time my kids see a bird, they start noticing the similarities between that bird and our chickens. It's always surprising to us how much birds have in common with each other in their anatomy and habits.

[BatmansWife]

To answer your question...nothing. 

 

But I do have Nature Connection and a nature log book that we're going to use this year.  I might consider Discovering Nature next year. 

[Susie in MS]

Today? Nothing. In fact the last few weeks has been nothing. The mosquitoes are so terribly bad right now when we do go outside we go as fast as possible. No standing water, and I keep emptying the bird bath. Maybe we aught to research mosquitoes!

[bakpak]

Hmmm, we talk about nature a lot, and spiders have been a preferred topic recently. So, yesterday we did some art projects making spiders (with 8 eyes & legs, head & abdomen). I also drew some dots on paper so my DD4 could connect and make a spider web. We spend lots of time observing nature, but my DD isn't super keen on drawing.

[Ameena]

We watched a Mr. & Mrs. Cardinal perched on the edge of a tote about 4ft from our back door. My daughter correctly identified that it was a cardinal bird song we were hearing while eating breakfast, and went to look out the back sliding glass door when we saw them. We do a lot of bird observation - we have tons of cardinals, pigeons, and a few crows & blue birds in our back yard. We do a lot of bug observation too - whenever I catch a bug in the house {I normally trap them under a clear glass with cardboard}, dd comes running to look and we observe for a few seconds before letting it go outside.

 

We don't do notebooks at all, but often dd will draw a picture on her own later on.

[sagira]

We are starting Nature Study tomorrow. You can either correlate with the curriculum, or just go out and observe, finding interesting wildlife and/or natural phenomena.

 

For the first example, if you're studying mammals, you would pay attention to any mammals in your area, scat, burrowing holes, evidence of mammal activity. Sketch what you see. Write down name, date, weather. Back at home, read more about the particular animals in your area and their habits. Mostly it is about obervation and recording what you observe.

[Arcadia]

Yesterday a bird that looks like a Blue Jay ate up the sprouted seeds my younger planted in our patio garden.  He was very annoyed.

We tend to do nature studies impromptu.  My kids just love observing, taking photos and finding out what plants or animals are.  They have binoculars and share a low end digital microscope.

[KrissiK]

Uhhhhh, my kids found a dead lizard outside and chopped him up with a BBQ implement. Then I went outside and yelled at them. I'm not sure if that counts.

 

I'm sorry. This has been my day. My real answer is.... We don't do nature studies. We tried once. We live by a river (it's not a nice river, the banks are steep and very overgrown) and we walked down there one time and tried to study nature, but there were no animals to be found, except for red ants. I guess they were all asleep. There was a lot of garbage and it was hot and dusty and we all got pokies in our socks. We haven't done a nature walk again.

[queenie]

We went on a nature walk because the weather was so nice out today and I just let the girls take the lead. We checked out a dead snake, dead praying mantis and picked up different rocks and leaves that the I will probably find in the dryer next time I do laundry:) We always take our notebooks, a little hand held microscope and a few nature guides with us but I let them decide what to use when. I might make a suggestion but they usually have their own ideas:)  We also stopped by our nature center today because we have a pass and we were procrastinating doing our reg. school work. Nobody was there so one of the workers got out some animals for us to pet. He got out a rabbit, skunk, snake and hissing cockroach. Pretty fun nature day but not a typical one!

[rachelpants]

Loving the replies!!! Thank you!!

[KarenNC]

My daughter had a writing spider try to climb down her bra while she was mowing the yard.....does that count? She correctly identified it. :001_smile:

 

[marylandhsmom]

We used the outdoor challenge hour and colored in the aster, goldenrod and chrysanthemum clip art and cut and paste them into her nature journal page. On our walk to the library, we saw a purple aster, so I had DD now 6, write "Today I saw a purple aster." And added it next to her clip art on the nature journal.

[bumblesmama]

We have been watching these two marbled orb weaver spiders the last two days, managing their webs.  A female built one just outside our back door and a male built one near our driveway.  We watched her build her entire web last night.  It was really cool.  Fall is here, so we will be doing a lot of leaf and seasonal changing things.

[Sherry in OH]

We went for a walk on the bike path.  We looked at wildflowers growing along the section of path that cuts through a wooded area.  My children assigned a Chima tribe to each color/variety of flower.  We heard a crow.  Ds2 said that Andeg was talking (the crow in the Birchbark House).  Mosquitoes were active so we didn’t linger.  We saw a few frogs in the pond but no turtles or herons today.  The arrival of the landscaping crew with their noisy mowers and blowers signaled the time to return home.

[Joyful_Journey]

I bought each of my kids their own copies of Nature Connection and we began the Sept.chapter today.  I NEVER get around to nature studies, but I may actually accomplish it this year with the help of this book.  It gave us just enough structure so we had a plan when starting our walk, but enough flexibility to make it easy and non-stressful!

 

[pushplaylearning]

We have been doing kind of a nature study lately with a focus on plants. This is what we did last week. We have been talking about plant parts and different kinds of seeds. I even learned something new. We learned about angiosperms and gymnosperms from theses free study jam videos online and we went on a walk to find them. I made some ebooks for us to read to go with our botany study. We don't really draw at this time out in nature. They get frustrated by it. Although they like doing drawing videos YouTube.

[daffodil]

Yesterday my girls found a caterpillar in the backyard. We looked it up online and identified it as a milkweed tussock moth caterpillar. We read about it, observed it for a little while, drew pictures, and let it go. Later they brought in a grasshopper and watched the Order Orthoptera video by the Bug Chicks.

 

Our nature study right now is random and informal. I did buy the Nature Connection book, but we haven't started yet.

[Rosie_0801]

We've been listening to the frogs over the past week or so and will be going to look for spawn and will do a journal page about it on Monday. :)

[helena]

We pressed black Sweet Potato Vine leaves, to put in our herbariums. 

We've been working on the herbarium books since last year, they're a lot of fun to keep.

 

[SilverMoon]

Today? I flipped through our copy of The Bumper Book of Nature, marveled at the fun activities we could do.... err, we could do when we go camping up in the pines. Then I wished for a copy made just for Sonoran desert dwellers. :001_tt2:

 

My younger ones also learned more about valley fever, aka why they can't go outside during a dust storm.

 

Slightly more seriously, we get most of our nature study in by me expressing my curiosity outloud. There's some fascinating nature here. Rather than designing studies I ask the kids questions. Why is the palo verde's bark green? How come birds and bobcats can sit on saguaros without appearing hurt? They dig for information in the guides we have and teach me about it. Win-win. :001_smile:

[Chelli]

We pressed black Sweet Potato Vine leaves, to put in our herbariums.

We've been working on the herbarium books since last year, they're a lot of fun to keep.

Can you tell me more about your herbarium books? We are studying botany next year and I'd love to do something like this with dd.

[helena]

Can you tell me more about your herbarium books? We are studying botany next year and I'd love to do something like this with dd.

Sure!

 

We used this press: http://www.hometrainingtools.com/plant-press-9-x-12/p/BE-PRE0912/

These paper and onion skin journals: http://www.achildsdream.com/main-lesson-or-journal-book-small/

and a bunch of clips from Youtube like this: ACK!! MY husband is calling me to watch a movie! I'll be back. :)

[helena]

Okay, here's a sample of the type of YouTube clips:

 

We also watch a lot of videos on pressing flowers, which is important because there's a correct and incorrect way to do it. 

 

We label each pressed plant with common name, Latin name, time, location, and date when it's put into the book. We found it helpful to write the date and place on scotch tape stuck on the press. We also wrote info on scratch paper with each pressed plant. There's just no way you can remember everything because the process takes time, and it's important to record proper info (good habit to start right away.)

 

I started with plants in our yard, then plants from the neighborhood, then plants from nature areas like trails and bird sanctuary, then last plants chosen from the florist. It took a year to finish. Oh, we also did herbs from the yard at the very end. 

 

The book still has tons of room left. This year we're doing monthly seasonal floral designs (the kids are) as part of their Home Ec. (I guess you could call it), and we'll be pressing tid bits from that. So that's this years plan...

 

Ah! I had the girls write all the info on nice sticker labels. There's a lot of mistakes and it's easier to toss the sticker than try to cover up a misspelling. 

 

We really love these things, they're very simple but beautiful, especially with that onion paper in the journal. A nice thing about this project is that you don't have to rush to get those flowers out, we did it all to fit our schedule with no pressure. 

 

hth

[Chelli]

Sure!

 

We used this press: http://www.hometrainingtools.com/plant-press-9-x-12/p/BE-PRE0912/

These paper and onion skin journals: http://www.achildsdream.com/main-lesson-or-journal-book-small/

and a bunch of clips from Youtube like this: ACK!! MY husband is calling me to watch a movie! I'll be back. :)

 

Thanks for your posts!

 

I'm definitely going to do this. We already have a press, but we've not used it because I'm not sure how to press flowers/plants. Do you have a good resource for learning how to do it?

 

Also we live in Texas so we might need to make a trip to the BRIT Herbarium this year.

[helena]

Thanks for your posts!

 

I'm definitely going to do this. We already have a press, but we've not used it because I'm not sure how to press flowers/plants. Do you have a good resource for learning how to do it?

 

Also we live in Texas so we might need to make a trip to the BRIT Herbarium this year.

We watched a bunch of videos to learn how to press. A lot of instructions we found used books or iron, things like that to press them. It might be fun to press the same type of flower using different methods and then compare them. Really it's all about the press though. 

 

We eventually found some videos that walked us through pressing plants from different angles (in order to study the plants different parts), how to cut the plants and reassemble them into your herbarium, stuff like that. I also bought some cute little envelopes to glue onto the book, you can keep loose pieces in there. 

 

You're so lucky to be able to visit the BRIT Herbarium! Please come back and update if you go!!

[LivingHope]

We found a katydid and...our house was struck by lightning this week. So we have been reading about lightning.

[rachelpants]

We found a katydid and...our house was struck by lightning this week. So we have been reading about lightning.

:ohmy:

[leeannpal]

We took a walk along the local bike path near where we live. There is a nice place to stop and swing along the path, and we watched squirrels gathering for the winter, observed a new wild flower we weren't familiar with, and noticed how everything looks different just after it has rained. We just moved to Florida 6 weeks ago, so a lot of the plants are new to us although the little animals are pretty much the same. We haven't done a nature journal yet, but I would like to add that in. I love our nature walks!

 

[freeindeed]

I have some nature study things in my current blog post: http://freeindeed-redkitchen.blogspot.com/2013/09/homeschooling-and-life-weeks-of-aug-26.html

We usually take nature walks or just hang out in our front or back yard. We use ideas from http://handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com/ and this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Nature-Connection-Workbook-Classrooms/dp/1603425314

[threedogfarm]

My dc do a lot of their nature journal as part of their independent work daily (they do independent work for an hour b/c I slot that time to work with the other child).  I started the year out doing the Nature Connection worksheets that I tweaked and I have those in a folder.  I thought I would use these exclusively through the year but I found that my kids were finding this a bit monotonous so I decided to tweak that plan and add in other things.  I put a task or plan for each day of the week in their independent work journal.  Today my daughter drew a bird that nested in trees (blue jay) and a bird that nested in shrub (hummingbird).  Yesterday she had read about these birds in the book In Yards and Gardens by Margaret Buck Waring (beautiful drawings, very accessible reading with lots of great info--these are old books from the 50's, 60's, 70's).  My son is reading from an ancient book called A History of Geology and he drew a cross section of a volcano today.  Last week my daughter was sent out to find three different kinds of edible weeds (all found in my garden beds of course) and three different leaves from trees.  All of these were easily identifiable from the Waring book (if you live in the Northeast I would definitely recommend these books).  We pressed them and tomorrow during project time she'll make a poster.  I'm not too concerned about how we're pressing things but we do have a press which did a fabulous job. I know that that drawing a volcano cross section isn't really "nature journaling" but I'm using the study of geology as a way to figure out how to study rocks with my son (which is a huge interest of his).

 

My suggestion is to just start.  I used the Nature Connection book to start and then followed my children's interest.  I was surprised at the things that that interested them and that they wanted to do different things (which I shouldn't have been surprised about at all).  My dc didn't say, "I would prefer to do this. . ." but instead listened to what they were excited about and followed that. . .

 

Naturally Curious is a wonderful book and is essentially a highly edited, beautifully put together nature journal for the north east for twelve months.  If it's applicable to your area, read it and see what you think.  What's so wonderful about this book is that the author didn't follow one particular animal/plant for twelve months but instead focused on what might be interesting to see that month.  It was very freeing and satisfying to see that kind of approach in print.  

 

Just remember, the pages won't necessarily look pretty to start BUT when taken as a whole, the journals look gorgeous.   I thumbed through my daughter's today and I can't believe how much she produced in just six weeks.