OHC Autumn Series #1: Nature Journal

The new school year is underway, and it's time to start up our Outdoor Hour Challenges again! We spent plenty of time doing informal nature study over the summer, but I'm ready for some structure again.

An exciting development at Blue House Academy is the addition of what my kids call "Friday School." My friend, Casey, and her two children, Cameron and Avery, will be meeting with us for a mini co-op. Our mornings will include art, math or other games, and nature study. We are all looking forward to the fellowship and I'm looking forward to the accountability. It is so easy to put off those subjects, so hopefully this will help me be more consistent with our nature study this year.

The kids enjoyed decorating cardboard boxes in the style of Piet Mondrian and Frank Stella. Thanks, Casey, for a great lesson and activity!

Next was a short math game, and then nature study. This week's Outdoor Hour Challenge topic was the nature journal. Anna Botford Comstock says in her Handbook of Nature Study, "[The field notebook] is a friendly gate which admits the teacher to a knowledge of what the child sees and cares for." It is not to be corrected like a grammar or spelling assignment, nor is it to be forced upon the child. So we began our nature time by just talking about how it might be fun to keep a record of our adventures. I showed them a few pages from Keeping a Nature Journal, explaining that even adults can keep nature journals -- so it's not just a "school thing." I think for the purposes of our little group we'll stick with notebooking pages that they will keep in a folder, but both of my kids have little spiral notebooks that we also use for nature study. I also won this neat nature journal from my friend Dawn's blog and am eager to start using it. Finally, we'll also be using Beginning Birdwatcher's Book with 48 Stickers to go along with Apologia's Zoology I. There are so many neat materials these days to help us journal!

Then we headed outside to the front yard. There was no particular plan other than to just to look around and see what looked interesting.

There was some debate on the differences between mushroom and toadstools. I told the kids I would do some research on the topic and report back. I thought this explanation from the Australian website FungiBank was helpful.

The terms ‘mushroom’ and ‘toadstool’ are subjective rather than strictly scientific, and therefore are open to a range of loose interpretations. In general, fungi with fruit bodies that have a cap more or less centrally placed on top of a stem are referred to as ‘mushrooms’, or as ‘mushrooms and toadstools’. Some people broadly consider that all fungi with a cap and stem are ‘mushrooms’, while others consider only edible fungi as ‘mushrooms’. In the strictest sense, the word ‘mushroom’ refers only to members of the genus Agaricus, e.g. the cultivated white button mushroom. ‘Toadstool’ is typically applied to any fungus with a cap and stem that appears different from Agaricus, regardless of its edibility, or more usually if it is suspected or known to be poisonous. In a broader sense, ‘toadstools’ also includes other non-mushroom forms of fungi such as puffballs, earthstars, and coral fungi.

I'm not going to be nitpicky about what word they use, but it was a good opportunity to expand on something that interested them. We'll discuss it more next week.

While they were debating mushrooms and toadstools, I almost walked into this lovely web. This time of year it's more surprising that I didn't walk into a web on our nature outing!

Grace enjoyed showing everyone the pears that don't really look like pears.

Lovely...

Ummm... not so lovely. The girls were crying for us to save the butterfly (it was frantically flapping around while the spider did its work), while the boys just said, "COOL!!!!"

We found an empty bird nest in a tree surrounded by some sort of wild grapes. I clipped an article a couple of years ago that gave the name of these grapes, but now I can't find it. Apparently a local chef uses them in his upscale restaurant. I've googled, but cannot figure out what they are.

After our outdoor time we went inside, carrying handfuls of flowers, pears, grapes, moss, and whatever else we found. The kids all completed a notebook page, although the girls seemed much more interested than the boys. I would love some ideas for getting boys more interested in journaling! I followed Comstock's directions and did not correct backward b's or other mistakes.

Our nature study is off to a great start, and we've decided it definitely is more fun with friends!

Christmas Collage

We finished off our day yesterday with a Christmas art project that turned out really cute. The project, originally from Artsonia, is described on a blog I just discovered yesterday, Kids Artists. This blog has some beautiful projects, targeted to 3rd - 5th graders. I loved the colors and patterns in the sample Christmas Tree Collages, but I especially liked the idea of putting music paper in the background.

Our kids are each playing a piano piece in our church's Christmas program this coming Sunday, so I thought it would be fun for them each to use their own music for their collage. I just made copies straight from their piano books, so you can even see handwritten notes, reminding the kids to count correctly at certain measures. I love little personal touches like that! In fact, I like the idea so much that next year I'd like to come up with a similar project. How fun it would be to have a cute collection of all the Christmas songs they learn over the years!

Ryne will be playing Angels We Have Heard on High.

Grace will be playing (and singing) O Come, Little Children.

Anna was at school when we made these, but she plans to make one next week. She will be playing O Holy Night.

Just a couple notes about the project:

The blogger behind Kids Artists is Dutch, so she refers to A4 size paper, which is about the same as 8.5" x 11". That was my education for the day -- I had no idea about the international paper standard that is used everywhere but the United States and Canada. : )

Also, Grace was able to manage the project nicely even though it is targeted toward older children. She had a harder time not making her drawing too detailed and needed some help cutting out the trees, but it did not take away from her enjoyment.

Happy Homeschooling!

Week 17 in Review

What a week! We got a lot done, but it was very different than our normal routine. Individual subjects were held at a minimum and we spent a good portion of the week snuggled on the bed reading. We had some Christmas joy infused into our school week in everything from a nativity themed word search to decorating our classroom, such as our little tree to the left and lots of snowflakes hanging from the ceiling (below).

Even better, we made time for a Christmas art project. Googling "Nativity art project" led me to That Artist Woman's blog and this lovely project:

We also studied George Frederick Handel and his magnificent Messiah. Here are some great resources we used:

Both Hallelujah Handel's are essentially the same story, so you could just use the book for pictures while you listen to the CD. We chose to read the book by itself after listening to the CD. We also listened to selections from Messiah. I also found through the library a CD with Medieval Christmas songs that I of course forgot to play when we were doing our art project. We'll try to find some time this weekend to listen to it.

Grace's ballet school had their annual open house, so we had fun watching how much she has learned since last year.

I hope you all have a blessed Christmas and I wish you Happy Homeschooling in 2009!

Origami

Although we've completed 5 weeks of the new school year, we have not had a full 5-day week yet, so art has been put on the back burner (along with a couple of other things). In history this week we studied China, Japan and Korea in the Middle Ages, so we did some origami. My sister gave us a cute kit that has pre-printed papers and instructions (but apparently is no longer made because I cannot find a link to the product), and it worked out pretty well. Some of the directions were a little confusing, but we had fun and everything turned out cute. We didn't have time to try the traditional crane, but we do want to try that with some other origami paper I have. You have to watch the video on this website of someone making a miniature crane! Here is how everything turned out:

The girls made ladybugs and butterflies, while Ryne made a ladybug and a frog. I mounted everything on some scrapbook paper I've had forever (I'm about a decade behind in my scrapbooking). They are hanging on a large bulletin board Marc made for us several years ago. Right now it looks very bare since this is our first project of the year, but perhaps in the future I'll show a picture of the full board. Ryne has a thing for red-eyed tree frogs, so he added some red eyes to his frog.

We are off to Denver this afternoon, but when we get back I'm doing a RDI blog-a-thon!