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)