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!).