Winter Nature Study

It seems to me that there are many nature lovers who choose to hibernate through the winter. While it is great to watch the birds at your feeders through the living room window, I want to encourage you to get outside, into the cold and snow. There is so much to discover.

Yesterday, I awoke with anticipation of the great time we were going to have on our hike. I wanted the kids to have a good, filling breakfast before we went, so I made a big pot of oatmeal. Then, all my plans began to unravel.

I usually put chocolate chips in the oatmeal to make it more appealing. We ran out. So I used maple syrup, which did not seem to appease my children. I spent the next half an hour force feeding them all that nutritional goodness.

That done, it was time to dress up. It was a chilly -13 Celcius (9 F), so we needed all our layers. That involved finding the long underwear that had strayed to the four corners of our house. After another 1/2 hour wrestling uncooperative children into many layers of clothing we were ready to go. Until they all announced they had to go pee. I was exhausted and we hadn't left the house yet.

We finally arrived at our favorite nature destination. We return to the same place, again and again, week after week. As we pulled in the long drive I heard one of them exclaim "It looks so different!"

It took the boys roughly 3 seconds to discover all the crunchy ice in the shallow ditch. They quickly set to work smashing as much as they could. Soon a large stick was found to help with the job of ice smashing.

We set off for the shore of the small lake. There were hundreds of Canada geese, some in the open water, and many were sitting on the frozen ice. Every now and then they would all start honking and a group would take off. We watched as they gradually formed themselves into a V shape and set off. Their wings whirred as they flew overhead.

Chickadee wanted out of her stroller. She looked rather comical with the oversized outfit I had put together to keep her warm. I recently ordered her new mittens (look at those fabulous gauntlets!). I bought them a little large so she would get more than one season out of them. I think she'll be wearing them for awhile, they probably come up to her shoulders!

We started our hike. Along the way we found that familiar summer and fall plants had changed.

Queen Anne's Lace

Goldenrod

Milkweed

Another favorite thing to do in the winter is to look for animal signs. There wasn't any snow that day, but the geese had left their footprints in the sand on the beach.

Goose track

Shrub gnawed by beaver (light wood is a fresh cut, grey wood an old cut)

Another highlight of our walks is the tea or hot chocolate I bring in a thermos.

It does take effort to get out in the winter, I won't kid you on that. By the time I have everyone dressed I am ready to give up and stay home. However, once we get outside I always find that it was all worth it.

Gearing up for Winter Nature Study

The weather has turned a bit chilly around here. This week has been cold enough that I have needed to get out all of our winter outerwear in order for us to enjoy being outside. I wrote about this topic at the end of February last year, this seems a more appropriate time.

We had a wonderful hike today. It snowed this week and there was about 5 cm still on the ground. We went to our favorite conservation area. I showed the boys some deer tracks I found and they spent the rest of the morning following the deer footprints all over the place. It was quite lovely. We were out for almost an hour in the brisk minus sixteen Celcius weather (3 degrees Farenheit).

Here's a little fashion show from the Bluejay, showing how we keep warm:

For his first layer he has on long underwear. They are made out of some sort of polyester, and they wick away moisture from his skin if he starts to sweat after making 27 snow angels in a row. My long underwear (photo not shown) is made out of silk. It is extremely light and warm, but too expensive for growing children.

Next layer is his regular clothes and a scarf. Soon he will also be wearing a wool sweater that I need to finish.

There's lots to talk about in the final layer. He has ordinary winter boots right now, he will inherit his older brother's (nice ones from Land's end) as soon as I buy the Nuthatch a new pair. He has on rain pants as a windproof / waterproof layer. I still need to sort out which snowpants fit which kid. He has an ordinary winter coat. His mittens are fabulous. They are waterproof and have a gauntlet that comes right up the sleeves of his coat. Snow does not get into his mittens and up his sleeves. Lastly he has a brightly coloured hat, which makes it easy to keep an eye on him!

Last year it took me approximately half an hour to suit everyone up to go outside. This year I'm hoping it will take a little less time because they are a little older and can get ready a bit more by themselves.

It is a bit of an investment in time and money to gear your kids up to be able to spend extended time outside in the winter, but it is so worth it. Make sure your kids stay dry with waterproof mitts and snowpants. Keep them warm with wool sweaters and long underwear. Then go outside and enjoy!

November flowers

It seems that nature is not quite ready to close up shop for the winter. We went for a lovely walk today at our local botanical garden. It was a balmy 20C, one last warm week before the chill sets in. The changing of seasons always makes me a little shutter happy.

Snow and hail

Our school lessons have been interrupted by the weather quite a bit lately. First there was hail. They put dishtowels on their heads and ran outside.

Then a few days later we woke up to a blanket of snow. They grabbed their shovels and cleared the snow off the back deck in no time flat.

We love winter weather!

Last moments of fall

The winds are blowing tonight, punctuated with intermittent downpours. There will only be a few straggly leaves left clinging to the branches in the morning. I captured a few more photos of fall before it enters the long phase of bare trees reaching towards a bleak sky.

A Fall Ramble

This is the day that the Lord has made,
Let us rejoice and be glad in it!

Psalm 118:24

Structure of roots

This week we took another look at our tree seedling to examine its roots. For their nature notebook I had them draw the roots. We talked about the main tap root, the side roots and when we looked very carefully we could see the light fuzz of the root hairs.

I took out our magnifying glass to try and see the root hairs better but for some reason they were easier to see in the vase. Perhaps when I transferred them from the water in the vase (where they have been sitting for about a week) the root hairs might have flattened against the root.

I would have liked to talk more about the function of roots, but we were rushed and it didn't happen today.

A few weeks ago I pointed out a very large willow tree on one of our walks and gave each child a long branch to play with. They enjoyed the flexibility of the branch, using it as a fishing pole, and pretending it was a very long piece of hair on their heads. Since then they have been pointing out willow trees to me as we drive around town.

That evening I read about the willows in my copy of 'The Handbook of Nature Study', and I was intrigued by this part:

Although the seed of the willow is produced in abundance, it is hardly needed for preserving the species. Twigs which we place in water to develop flowers will also put forth roots; even if the twigs are placed in water wrong side up, rootlets will form. A twig lying flat on moist soil will push out rootlets along its entire length as though it were a root; and shoots will grow from the buds on its upper side. This habit of the willows and the fact that the roots are long, strong, and fibrous, make these trees of great use as soil binders. There are few things better than a thick hedge of willows to hold streams to their proper channels during floods; the roots reach out in all directions, interlacing themselves in great masses, and thus hold the soil of the banks in place. The twigs of several of the species, notably the crack and sand-bar willows, are broken off easily by the wind and carried off down stream, and where they lodge, they take root; thus, many streams are bordered by self -planted willow hedges.

So, we took a piece of our willow branch and placed it in a vase to see if it would grow roots. The children gave up hope rather quickly of its ability to grow roots, but I just left it on the table to see what it would do. I thought it might not grow roots since it was so late in the season, perhaps the tree somehow knew that October was not a good time to try to grow a baby plant.

Just yesterday I took another look and there was the beginning of a new root! There was also a leaf budding out as well.

It would be neat to see the root hairs under a microscope. Do you have a microscope at home? What age were your kids when you got it?

Parts of a tree

For this week's nature notebook we labelled the parts of a tree. I thought this would be a fairly routine exercise, but there always seem to be surprises along the way when we study nature.

Here is the Nuthatch's drawing of a tree (I wrote the words for him).

I asked him to draw either a deciduous or a coniferous tree. He chose to draw an evergreen, and added a Christmas star at the top. He decided to draw spots all over the tree to represent the needles. He was trying to use the word 'stump' for 'trunk', so we had a little discussion about the difference between those two words. On the trunk he drew a magnifying glass and then drew the rings inside, something I had not been thinking about.

He still hadn't drawn the roots of the tree, so I asked him the simple question: "So, what is keeping the tree from falling over?" He looked at me blankly, and then said that the trunk was what held the tree up. I held a pencil up vertically on the table to represent the tree trunk and we watched it fall over together. It was not the trunk holding up the tree. I didn't want to just give him the answer, so I told him to go into the backyard and look at some of our trees. He came back and told me the branches were holding the tree up, because they were leaning on the tree next to it. (Hello? What is this kid thinking?)

Finally, I dug up a tree seedling growing in our yard (it was a weed, it was going to get pulled at some point anyway) and the lightbulb finally went on (finally!). He rushed in and finished his drawing. I've left the tree seedling on our kitchen table in some water so we can look at the structure of the roots in a different lesson.

Apple Cross-section

Our first foray into studying trees was to look at an apple. The Handbook of Nature Study had some interesting observations. I read through the section on my own (pages 667 to 670) one evening, and then when it was time to work on our nature notebook I was ready.

The thing that I like the most about the Handbook of Nature Study is that it has interesting tidbits of information that are things that I have just never thought of before. In the case of the apple, it mentions that "The carpels, or seed cells, are five in number, and when the fruit is cut across through the center these carpels show as a pretty, five-pointed star; in them the seeds lie, all pointing toward the stem." (pg. 668). I always cut my apples in the other direction, and thus have never noticed that the seeds in the apple are always in a five pointed star. Intrigued, I sliced open an apple and lo and behold, there it was!

We made a lot of interesting observations during this activity. We learned that the bottom of the apple is where the blossom used to be and is called the basin. The kids noticed that the seeds were brown on the outside but white on the inside. They discovered that each seed cell contained two seeds. They drew several diagrams of the apple and labeled the different parts.

We examined only one type of apple, but it would be interesting to extend this activity by comparing different varieties of apples. There is more in the Handbook of Nature Study about apple varities, picking and storing apples, and the structure of the apple.

Update:

The following week we tried the same activity with some pears we had in the fridge. The pear we cut open also had five carpels, although two of them had not been successfully pollinated. It was very similar in structure to the apple. The Nuthatch noticed all the tiny spots in the skin of the pear.

Dealing directly with books

We've just finished our first term of year one of our curriculum, Ambleside Online. We school year round, and when the Nuthatch turned 6 in June I decided to start grade one with him instead of waiting until September.

It has been a fascinating term. The biggest adjustment to our learning has been the addition of narration to our schedule. Narration is where a student listens to a passage and then tells back what they heard. For example, if you've just read the first part of Little Red Riding Hood to your child, they might narrate by saying: "Little Red Riding Hood was on her way to her Grandma's when she met a wolf".

Narration is a difficult skill to learn. I've tried it myself with the classics I have been reading, and it is not easy. At the beginning of our 12 week term, I would read a passage and ask the Nuthatch to tell me what he remembered. More often than not, the answer would be 'Umm...nothing...'

So, I started reading smaller sections at a time. We spent a few weeks where I would have him narrate a sentence at a time. Narration takes a long time when you do this. Then the Nuthatch went through a phase where he would repeat back to me, verbatim, the last sentence I read. It was frustrating.

Part of the problem was that the reading selections had many new concepts and vocabulary words for him. To help with this, I would select five words from the passage that I was fairly certain he did not know, and we would talk about them. He wanted to draw pictures for the words, which I thought was a great idea, but soon this vocabulary lesson with the picture drawing was taking longer and longer!

Through all of this I held on to the fact that he would eventually develop the skill to narrate. I did not worry too much about all the content that he was missing when the reading selections went over his head and he could not remember anything. In Charlotte Mason's sixth volume, A Philosophy of Education, she says:

It does not matter much whether he understands this word or that, but that it matters a great deal that he should learn to deal directly with books. page 172

We have had a few bright moments this term. After about 8 weeks of working on narration he said to me, out of the blue: "Hey Mom, when I narrate something we've read, I remember it forever!" And a week or two later he said: "When you're reading to me, I see pictures in my head, and then I can tell you about them" (we were reading out of the Blue Fairy Book at the time). That is all the encouragement I need to keep going.

This week I have given him exams (I can post the exam questions if anyone is interested). They are not the sort of test that is graded, rather I wanted to see if he was remembering anything from what we have been reading. While there is lots of room for improvement, he has made such great progress with the skill of narration that I am quite pleased.

I used our camera to take videos of his answers to the exam questions. I think it will be very enjoyable to come back at the end of the year, or in a few years and watch these.

The video is particularly hilarious because it is so typical of what homeschooling with little ones is like. It is shaky at the beginning because the Bluejay is literally climbing on my head. In the background you can hear the Chickadee squawking "I can't see! I can't see!" as she tries to watch the video from the back of the camera. When he answers the question he is referring to a story that we read one time, two weeks earlier, The Frogs Who Wished For A King, from Aesop's Fables.

This second video is for all of you that have wiggly boys. We had read the story of the Rhino from Kipling's 'Just So Stories' over six weeks ago. I was pleased that he had remembered the general outline of the story. Our narration selections are only read once, so he has not heard this story again since late July.

I am eagerly looking forward to term 2. I can't wait to see how his skill of narration develops as he learns to deal directly with books.

Fall focus on trees

After some deliberation I have decided to focus our nature study on trees for the fall. I was torn between focusing on something in particular, or just continuing to explore whatever interested us at the moment.

I have been hesistant to specialize in one area. I have enjoyed looking at anything and everything with the kids for the last 6 months. I wanted to develop their observation skills and their enthusiasm for nature and provide them with a general knowledge base to start building on. At this point though, I think it would be helpful to us all if we delved a little deeper into one subject, and developed a greater understanding of one aspect of the natural world we are exploring.

I thought trees would be a good initial focus area for a number of reasons. They are large and easy to find. They don't move when you're looking at them. The kids won't need any special skills like being able to use binoculars. The leaves will be changing colours soon. They are relatively easy to identify (unlike our brief foray into lichens). We have learned the names of a few trees already, so we're not starting something from scratch.

So, what will this look like? This doesn't mean that we will look at nothing but trees on our nature hikes. I will probably try to point out some aspect of trees on each hike, but then we'll continue on our merry way of exploring and examining whatever crosses our path.

I will ask that the Nuthatch's weekly nature notebook entries have something to do with trees. I'll still follow his lead to some extent, but I would like to start looking at deciduous trees while they still have leaves. We can always look at the conifers in the winter. We also have some firewood in the garage that we can take out to look at the structure of the rings and the bark. And it is apple picking season, that will be a great place to start as well.

The Bluejay on our apple picking trip last year. He even ate the apple cores!

I have put the Handbook of Nature Study next to my bed for a bit of evening reading. I read a section and then try to casually point out some things to the kids as we are hiking. They usually come up with their own things they are interested in. The Handbook has a large section on apple trees and a part about how to do leaf prints.

We were camping this past weekend and I informed the Nuthatch that we were going to study trees. He found some sap oozing out of a tree and we talked about how it is like the blood of a tree, and it comes out of the tree where the bark has been injured. Here is his photo of the sap:

That's our plan for this term's nature study. I'll continue to post on trees as we progress through the term. The Bluejay seems to think that 'Lichen tree' is a type of tree, so perhaps we'll try to clear that up first.

Update:

I've discovered that the Handbook of Nature Study blog is also looking at trees this fall. Here's the link for the first Outdoor Hour Challenge about trees. This is a great source of information if you are looking for ideas for studying trees.

Here are my posts of the tree activities we have done so far:

Apple Cross-section

Parts of a Tree

Structure of Roots

The habit of habits

In the first place, she herself acquires the habit of training her children in a given habit, so that by-and-by it becomes, not only no trouble, but a pleasure to her.

Charlotte Mason, vol 1 pg 136

I have gotten in the habit of thinking about our habits. When I first attempted to start 'habit training' my kids I chose a concrete habit to work on. I forget quite what it was, it might have been the habit of hanging up your coat when you come in the door. It was simple and straightforward, or so I thought.

My first attempts were unsuccessful. Unfortunately, I did not have the key habit in place first, obedience. If my children were not going to do what I asked of them, no other habits would be formed.

I have come to view most of our daily lives through a filter of habit. When the kids are fighting I make mental notes to work on the habit of listening to each other, or the habit of sharing. I celebrate the habits they have worked hard to master. If our day is going smoothly, I know it is because of an underlying structure of habit. If our day is rocky, there is work to be done.

Choosing the most effective habit to attack first is often difficult when there seem to be so many that would help. Red flags jump up everywhere, demanding my attention. Untangling the nest of bad habits is not easy.

Our current habit is to 'treat others the way you would like to be treated'. They immediately translated this statement into 'treat others the way they are treating you'. We still have a ways to go on this concept. I am eagerly anticipating developing the habit of 'not complaining' next.

Our habit of getting outside in nature.

We haven't been habit training for very long, but I see the rewards already. I know that we are on the right path, one habit at a time.

A new approach to the zoo

Sometimes I run across the idea that 'nature' is found in conservation areas, parks and wildlife refuges. I prefer to think of nature as being everywhere, and encompassing almost everything that is not concrete, steel, or plastic. And if you happen to be a weed growing in a crack in the concrete, you count as nature too. So a visit to the zoo certainly counts as a nature walk in my book.

We are fortunate to live fairly close to a world class zoo. We have had a zoo family membership every since Nuthatch was 6 months old. At first, of course, it was just somewhere that I could go for a nice walk and get out of the house for a little while. He seemed to appreciate the large aquariums and the fresh air, but that was about it.

Now that the children are a little older I have been thinking of ways to enhance our zoo experience. I have tried to get them to choose one animal on each visit, watch it for a little while, and then tell me about what they saw. They did slow down to observe the animals for a little bit, but I still felt that there was something more we could be doing.

A friend of mine pointed out to me that the zoo has information for school groups that can be downloaded for free. The information turned out to be very good, and gave me some fresh ideas for things we could do at the zoo.

So, on our last visit to the zoo, instead of choosing one animal to look at, I asked the kids to choose a body part. They picked 'eyes'. As we went around the zoo, we looked at each animal's eyes. Did their eyes face forward, or were they on the side of the animal's head? Were they large or small? Was there anything special about the animal's eyes?

We noticed that animals that were mainly predators had eyes that faced forwards, where animals that were prey tended to have eyes facing to the side. The camels had long eyelashes and hair around their eyes, probably to protect them from sand and sun. The flying squirrel had large eyes because it is nocturnal. And the jellyfish had no eyes at all!

It gave a new dimension to our visit. We started looking at why the animals had specific adaptations that helped them to live in their particular environment. On our next visit we can choose a different body part, or we could continue looking at eyes but walk through a different section of the zoo. We could also choose a habitat type, and search for animals that live in the desert, or in water, or in the forest and look for similarities and differences in those animals.

If you have a zoo nearby, and you would like a little inspiration for your next visit, check out the following links to some of the education departments from a few zoos around the world. I'm not a fan of fill in the blank worksheets, but these sites might give you some ideas of concepts to explore with your kids.

Toronto Zoo

Smithsonian National Zoological Park

Melbourne Zoo

Singapore Zoo (go to the section titled 'Programmes for All Ages' and then 'Activity Sheets for Visitors'. There is some interesting activities on elephants and white tigers)

Links to other zoos around the world