Challenge #2 Using your words

This is our response to The Outdoor Challenge #2 at: http://handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com/2008/02/green-hour-2-using-your-words.html

Our house borders on a vineyard, so we loosened the nuts on the fence post and squeezed our way through, stepping out of suburbia and onto a winefarm!

The vines are growing prolifically and are amazingly green even now in the hot, dry summer without irrigation, compared to my garden which is so water intensive. Makes one think...

As my major in Horticultural Science was about fruit trees, I immediately showed the kids the heavy grape clusters which will be harvested in the next weeks. Although there is no reference in Handbook of Nature Study to grapevines, I used the questions relating to other types of vines as a guide in pointing out that the grapevine can't hold itself up, and how it uses tendrils. We found one branch that had leaves very different in shape to all the others (I wonder if this is perhaps an offshoot of the rootstock...)

The challenge for today was about using words as a way to focus all of our senses on our Nature experience.

• One word about what we hear
• Two words about what we see
• Three words about what we feel

Besides the vines, there were some prickly weeds which were perfect for describing 'feel. (If anyone finds a good resource to help us identify weeds in our area, please let me know).

We picked a few leaves to carry back through our hole in the fence and spent time doing leaf rubbings, which was their good idea.

This is Daniela's Nature Journal page:

and Matthias':

This was our second challenge and the second week that we squashed in Nature Study in a busy week. If it wasn't for this challenge, we definitely wouldn't have got to it, and yet I'm so glad we did! I do want to go on more exciting nature walks, yet I love the idea of finding nature right where we live. To think that we've lived in this house for 18 months and its the first time we've squeezed through the fence to explore (it does feel a bit like breaking and entering!).

Let's get started - Challenge #1

Challenge #1:

Read http://handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com/2008/02/green-hour-challenge-1-lets-get-started.html

The main point is just to go and take a walk with your kids - anywhere - in the garden, in the park, at the beach... then come back and spend some time chatting.

Decide on 2 things that they saw that are worth following up on.

What we did:
We took our clipboards and wandered to an empty field in our road which seems very boring - it only has a bunch of Blue Gum trees with a bit of brown grass.

But it turned out to be pretty interesting after all! The trees are in flower - in various stages from blossom, full bloom, to seedpods. It's not often that you get to see all flowering stages of a plant at the same time, so this was great.

Daniela noticed a tree stump and tried to count the rings to tell the age. It wasn't clear enough for that, but in the process Matthias noticed some dried dead millipedes which interested him.

Our journal page (which we printed from the blog listed above) asked "What are some sounds you hear?". At first the kids heard nothing but street and building noises, and it took quite some prompting for Daniela to hear the birds - however, no matter how hard he listened, Matthias just never heard them. In looking for the birds, though, we found a beautiful nest dangling high in the trees.

Matthias, stick on hand (boys just have to have a stick in their hand if they possibly can, don't they!) started prodding the tree trunks and noticed how easily the bark strips of Gum trees, so we chatted about the bark of different types of trees.

Daniela's Journal:

 

Our 2 things to follow up on are:

1. Read up about Blue Gum (Eucalyptus) trees
2. Find out what kind of bird could have built that nest (the hanging type you typically see next to water)
   

Outdoor Hour Challenge

11 Jan 2010 - INTRODUCTION

Nature Study is important to me. When I reflect on my best memories and my most satisfying moments in each phase of my life, I was recently surprised to discover that they all involved the great outdoors. Maybe that's why I decided to study Horticultural Science as my career. (I have a BSc in Agriculture)

Anyway, its one of my values to pass this on to my children, and I love the Charlotte Mason approach of encouraging gentle, delight-directed learning based on a child's curiosity and discovery. This is very enticingly described by Karen Andreola in "Charlotte Mason Companion". This was also where I was introduced to Anna Botsford Comstock's "Handbook of Nature Study". So when I found the Outdoor Hour Challenge (http://handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com/2008/02/green-hour-challenge-1-lets-get-started.html), I was hooked!

Let me warn you: Handbook of Nature Study is a real whopper - over 850 pages and no colour! Written in 1911! It's a tome, a doorstopper...I would never have given it another look if it wasn't for these referrals. But it's value is in the way it is written. Try this about the housefly: " The housefly is one of the most cosmopolitan members of the animal kingdom. It flourishes in every land, plumping itself down in front of us at table, whether we be eating rice in Hong Kong, dhura in Egypt, macaroni in Italy, pie in America, or tamales in Mexico. There it sits, impertinent and imperturbable, taking its toll, letting down its long elephant-trunk tongue, rasping and sucking up such of our meal as fits its needs". Or about the Pansy: "Some people are pansy-faced and some pansies are human-faced, and for some occult reason this puts people and pansies on a distinctly chummy basis."

This is not a heavy subject, even though the book seems pretty intense. The author just has a way of bringing out what is important and highlighting ways to help children to discover nature. Nature Study itself, though, is not meant to take more than 15 - 30 minutes. Although the book its quite pricey (I found mine on Kalahari), it is available free online (see the link in the blog above). I am going to be challenging myself weekly, and I encourage others to join in. I plan to follow the initial challenges to get started, then after about 5 weeks spend some time on challenges focussed on summer flowers, then move on to Autumn.

CHALLENGE FOR THIS WEEK:

• Read the first part of the blog at http://handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com/2008/02/green-hour-challenge-1-lets-get-started.html).
  
• If you have "Charlotte Mason Companion" read the chapters on Nature Study again
• Decide on a format for your Nature Journals (I am just going to use lined or blank papers as appropriate which can be punched and filed - my kids hate not being able to remove a page that they are not happy with. Each child has their own clipboard which they know is especially for Nature Study. Oh, and just for fun I got them each a R10 magnifying glass at Crazy Store).
• Discuss the plan with the family and share your excitement.
• Start your own blog like this and tell us how you're doing.