A Little Fun With Our Feathered Friends

I am still learning about how to NOT control nature study -- the teacher in me thinks up lesson plans, and then I feel like I've "failed" as a homeschool mom if the lessons don't go as planned. It is only after letting a little time pass, and going back to look over my son's work, that I begin to realize the full reach of nature study, when you learn to just let go...

I am an outdoorsy person. Even when I'm inside, I'm thinking about the outside. I used to ponder the happenings at the opening of an anthill for hours as a child, and my husband teases me that I know the names of every weed and tree and slimy critter. Probably so. I dragged my two oldest sons through every thicket, and we looked under every rock in every creek. They were not always willing. And my third is not always as enthusiastic as I am, either. My consolation (and it's a big one) is that Reluctant Son #1 graduated with a double major in Natural Resources and Business, serves on his town's Parks & Recreation Commission, as well as the Inland Wetlands Commission, and is a Production Manager for one of the largest nurseries in our state. Reluctant Son #2 is a reptile enthusiast, "dad" to geckos, boas, an anole or two (I think...), as well as a cat, and works as a clerk at a local pet shop. Both of them have wall to wall aquaria in their apartments. So all my nature study DID fall on fertile ground, after all!

So I persevere with Reluctant Son #3, who sometimes appears disinterested, but then produces the gems that I'm including here today. Maybe not what the logical sequential teacher in me was expecting, but insightful and delightful, nevertheless!

Our Catbird Companion

We have a few feathery residents who are as interested in my gardening as I am. The robins and our catbird family follow around as I weed and till, searching the freshly turned soil for tasty grubs and worms. My eldest says that you can train a catbird to eat out of your hand -- we'll try that this summer.

The Grosbeak Surprise

You might recall the story about the two birdwatchers (me and Malik) having a thorny seat in the roses when we startled a Rose-breasted Grosbeak at the feeder. Well, we DID end up studying that species for a bit afterward, as part of our June Outdoor Hour Challenge -- we hear them singing every day, and Malik did a nice job capturing their coloring in his nature study notebook. (I love this paragraph -- it is so cute the way it looks like he said the male has "white underpants" -- guess we'll be working on penmanship this summer, so people won't think the bird wears "tighty whities!").

[NOTE: We used Rose-breasted Grosbeak notebooking pages from  The Notebooking Treasury to capture our learning for this Challenge and all of our bird studies.]

We discovered that our bird bath has sprung a leak over the winter, so it will be re-purposed as a table feeder for cardinals and doves. In the meantime, Malik had some other ideas for creating a bird-attracting station. He even had a list of "to-do's" which included a shopping list for Lowe's, as well as step by step directions for constructing the bird station.

Like I said, the teacher might have one idea of the outcomes of an activity, while the student often has quite a different idea! I wonder how long it will take us to put the whole thing together?

SUNY at Stony Brook has a website with bird songs and calls of common New York State birds. You can hear the Rose-breasted Grosbeak there. Also check out the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology (we called it the "O Lab" when I was there) for grosbeak songs, calls, maps and field identification tips (useful for the immatures and females, which resemble some other finches).
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Are you looking for some summer activities to do this month? Did you have a hard time fitting in "specials" this year? CurrClick is hosting free membership in its Language and Culture Club, an online class where students learn new vocabulary from several world languages, as well as cultures of people around the world who speak each language. If you like the summer course, there are full online webinars available for your child (and you!).

For some music work, check out CurrClick's free banjo unit, which teaches the history of the instrument, the basic structure and how to play it. Units for drums, guitar and piano are also available, for a small fee.

If you're like me, you're reflecting on the school year past and trying to get a jump on planning for next year (or beginning it, already!).  See my article, Literacy 101: Language Arts Instruction, K-3 -- newly revised and revamped to include more book lists and ideas for teaching children from kindergarten through 3rd grade.

I'm trying to organize all my web articles in one convenient location. If you're a follower of my posts on other sites, too, you might be interested in my latest article, "These Are a Few of My Favorite Things," which is a master index of all my work (to date), including RSS feeds for all my blogs. It should update automatically, so bookmark it and check frequently.

Have a peaceful, safe Independence Day! And remember, we live in the Land of the Free, because of the brave -- thank a soldier (and that soldier's parents) today.

Nature Study: Bats (Much to the Dismay of My Husband)

We didn't plan on studying bats. At least not on that particular day. However, how timely was it that Barb just published "May Nature Study: Bats, Revisited" on The Handbook of Nature Study, just days before.

We had spent the day cleaning and doing inside stuff (which is an issue fellow gardeners can probably relate to, when gardening beautifies the outside of your home, but keeps you from getting the inside of your home up to speed). My husband and youngest son had long since retired, and I was trying to get some end-of-the-day paperwork done before going to bed (but my eyelids kept getting in the way). At about 10:00, I gave in, and went to bed.

At about 10:30, our 7-year-old flew into our room, yelling "There's a bat in my room! It was just hanging on my light, and now it's flying around!" And, indeed, it was. But when you live in a house that was built in 1896, you expect it to have cracks and critters, on occasion.

Meanwhile, the dog was trying to nip the poor fellow ("fell-ette?") out of the air as it swooped by. Here's how Malik told the story, in his nature study notebook:

The bat I saw was big. I was terrified of it. My mom said it only ate mosquitoes, but I didn't believe her, when I found out about vampire bats. Vampire bats are small, blood-thirsty, glow-in-the-dark-eyed devils. But this was a brown bat, not a vampire bat. The bat eventually flew out the back door. My mom turned on all the lights and that drove it crazy. Do not read this if you're under 5 years old.


We followed up by following some of the links from Barb's May newsletter (above), by some notebooking and research (using pages from the Outdoor Hour Challenge Blog), and by making a flip book of the anatomy of a bat, from Enchanted Learning, which has lots of bat activities and notebook supplements. We need to return to the May newsletter, because there was so much to do, that we ran out of time!

For more information on the mosquitoes that the bats love to snack on, check out The Notebooking Fairy (click on the icon on the sidebar for freebies).

As luck would have it, while we were working on bats, we went on our weekly trip to the public library, which has been tempting me weekly with a summer book sale. I picked up a beautiful book, Wild Science (Victoria Miles), which had a 4-part chapter on bats:

• I. "From the Field: Bat-tized" (about how researchers study the habits of bats using mist nets, radio transmitters and reflective wing tags) [see video]

• II. "The Scientist: Janet Tyburec" (about a field biologist working on a National Geographic study on bat nurseries and how we can protect them) [An article on the major groups of bats, featuring Janet Tyburec; a great kid vid on the secret life of bats, from National Geographic for Kids]

• III. "The Science: Echolocation: Seeing in the Dark" (the manner in which microbats find their food) [How Stuff Works has a great article on echolocation: "How Bats Work"]

• IV. "The Animal Notes: Silver-haired Bat" (a close-up look at one of the more than 1,000 bat species in existence today) [Defenders of Wildlife has an article showing the distribution of bats world-wide, and much, much more]

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For more animal fun, take my animal tracks quiz ("Follow Those Tracks! Take an Animal Tracks Quiz") and see the new animal updates on How to Teach Everything Through Nature: Connecticut's Beardsley Zoo ("Follow Those Tracks!").

Follow our family's outdoor adventures in our family journal, "The Urban Farmer" -- our most recent entry is on the Third Thursday Street Festival in Willimantic, Connecticut.
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Looking for resources to use for summer learning, homeschool or summer school classes? Check out CurrClick for free and low-cost materials on all kinds of topics. Subscribe for free weekly updates, links to online clubs, and much, much more!

Sample "freebie" - Project-based Marine Biology (live class recording)
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Happy Father's Day to All Our Dads!