Squirrel and Bird Nest Study

Bare trees reveal squirrel nests. (c) Kim M. Bennett, 2012.

Last month, we spent a lot of time exploring the world of fall, seeing treasures revealed when the leaves fall off the trees. One unexpected sighting was a massive squirrels' nest, in a red oak near our driveway.

Our discovery led my youngest son to request that we re-read The Burgess Animal Book for Children (BABC), from the beginning. If you are following along in BABC, this study would accompany the section on squirrels (the third "study" in the book).

Read along for a nature study on squirrels nests, which includes many ideas we've used over the years.

Read-Alouds:

Our favorite animal study read-aloud!

Sometimes our natures studies happen by accident (such as our discovery of this squirrel's nest). Other times, a read-aloud piques our interest. Our favorite nature study read-aloud is The Burgess Animal Book for Children. And it fits perfectly as a read-aloud if you are using the Exploring Creation through Zoology series, which focus on animal classification, as the BABC chapters are laid out to introduce children to animals as they are related to one another. And who doesn't like Peter Rabbit?

If you want to fill a book basket with books to go along with this study, here are some of our family favorites:

• The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, by Beatrix Potter (my youngest brother was a big Beatrix Potter fan)
• Miss Suzy, by Miriam Young (my own childhood favorite) 
• Rakkety Tam (Redwall Series #17), by Brian Jacques (a favorite of my eldest son)
• Nuts to You!, by Lois Ehlert (all my kids loved Lois Ehlert's collage illustrations - a great thing to try for your creative arts connections, if you use the "Five in a Row" approach to homeschooling)

For our squirrel nest study, we just enjoyed Chapters 4-8 of  The Burgess Animal Book for Children. Again!






My little guy grew up surrounded by technology, and enjoys reading books on our NOOK Color. The e-Books compatible with the NOOK are available at Barnes & Noble. We noticed that there are several free ones with great photos of squirrels:

• The Squirrels of Summer, by Robert Mason
• Everybody Loves Squirrels, by Richard Gerard
• Gunshin Date, the Samurai Squirrel, Max M. Power

If you don't have an e-Reader, you will love the NOOK products. (My youngest son uses it to listen to Pandora, watch videos, read books and do research). There are many apps available for our favorite online resources (Pinterest, Dictionary.com, Ancestry.com, etc), so it functions as a nice little mobile device when we don't want to carry the laptop.

Lesson Ideas:

Gray squirrel nest (c) Kim M. Bennett 2012

We discovered the squirrel nest as one nest among three we found the same week: the other two were an oriole nest and an unidentified warbler nest. So it made sense to compare the three nests as part of our study.

We studied the two bird nests on the front porch (the squirrel nest, of course, was WAY up in a tree), discussing their similarities and differences, but you could also use a double bubble map (see "Comparing Nests: The 'Same and Different' Center" for examples of how to use a double bubble map with individual students or groups of students, or in a classroom).

We love the Exploring Creation series, and are using Land Animals of the Sixth Day this year. Pages 113-118 cover "Mouse-Like Rodents," including the squirrels. The material is very much like that of the BABC.

Nest of the Northern Oriole (c) Kim M. Bennett 2012

Our other "go-to" resource, the Handbook of Nature Study, discusses the nesting habits of red squirrels on p. 235. We have mostly gray squirrels in our area. Red squirrels like forests with more evergreen trees -- our forests are mostly oaks and maples.

Click image for more info.

When we first started homeschooling several years ago, I read that many homeschoolers used this book as part of their homeschool nature study work. I borrowed it from the local library, but soon decided that it was well worth the approximately $25 it costs to buy a used copy on the Internet. Buy it!

Other Resources:

My son and I created a set of notebooking pages to use in conjunction with our squirrel study. Since he was already working on another writing project, we mostly used the organizing tools (have I told you before that my son is NOT an avid notebooking enthusiast? He would rather fill notebooks full of action stories, so I choose my battles carefully...)

Nests, Nests, Nests!, a 25-page resource. $1.95

"Nests, Nests, Nests!" reviews the e-Book that we created to go along with this study. This set includes both primary and regular-ruled science journaling pages focusing on animal nests, as well as a variety of framed pages for thematic writing, note-taking or nature study. Organizers for studying and comparing nests of different animal orders, coloring and copywork pages, and game cards for sorting and classification tasks make this set versatile, perfect for direct instruction or independent learning tasks. You may also download a free sample of some of the pages.

The resources also include copywork, which you can see to the right. We chose scripture from Genesis, as that we are using Genesis through Deuteronomy and Ancient Egypt, from Simply Charlotte Mason, for our Bible Study curriculum, and are currently reading Genesis. We are used to using scriptures for copywork, since that is what is used with the Exploring Creation texts.

Discussion Ideas:

Here are some of the discussion questions we used when studying about nests (I've marked each one to show what science discipline it relates to -- physical sciences, life sciences, earth and space sciences, or engineering, technology and the application of science):

1. What types of materials do different types of animals use in their nests? (L)
2. How do these materials differ from one another? How are they the same? (P)
3. What makes these materials useful for nest-building? (E)
4. What different ways do animals build their nests? (L)
5. How are different kinds of animals adapted to obtain protection where they live? (L)
6. How might natural phenomena (such as winter storms) and human activities (such as tree cutting and clearing for building) cause changes in animal nesting behaviors? (E)

For those of you with children at multiple ages in your home, these questions follow a general progression from K to grade 4, as you move down the list. But don't get stuck on that -- my son (a fourth grader) was fascinated with seeing (up close) the actual materials used for each nest, and for different parts of the nest (for example, the warbler nest was a very tight cup of birch bark, leaf pieces and grape vine bark, but it was lined so neatly with tightly packed pine needles -- fascinating. Learning is what you make of it.

Unidentified warbler nest from M's collection. (c) Kim M. Bennett 2012

Inside lined with tightly packed white pine needles. (c) Kim M. Bennett 2012

Outside was formed with bits of bark from paper birch. (c) Kim M. Bennett, 2012

We Love to Share...

This post and our ideas was shared on the Outdoor Hour Challenge and Simple Science Strategies Blog Carnivals.

The "One Small Square" Strategy: Mushrooms and Other "Fun Guys"

Mushrooms love the woodchips in my flower bed.

[Edited and re-blogged from "A Child's Garden," September 2011]

We originally completed this study last fall, but are re-posting this for the September Simple Science Strategies newsletter, because it made good use of the "One Small Square" Strategy, the focus strategy for Week 3 of the September Newsletter, and focused on mushrooms, the topic for Week 2!


We sure have had some wild weather here in New England at the end of the Summer of 2011. We have had so much rain that the crop of mushrooms sprouting up everywhere has been very interesting and incredible.

Fall, especially the Back to School time, is always a prime time to go mushroom exploring, with the warm days, cool nights and more frequent rain.  Also be on the look-out for mushroom cousins, the slime molds and actinomycetes, that you probably mistake for their more well-known family members. Here is a mushroom study that you can do for September.

Before You Go Outside:

Tiny shelf fungi on a dead tree, Fenton-Ruby Park and Preserve.




• Read up on mushrooms. The Handbook of Nature Study has a very thorough discussion of many of the types of fungi that you might see on an expedition, on pages 714-727. If you read a little further, you can learn about their indoor cousins, the bread molds (pp. 727-728).
• The Handbook of Nature Study website has an Autumn Outdoor Hour Challenge on Mushrooms that has excellent links to videos, notebooking pages and other resources.
• Gather materials you might need for a mushroom study: clipboards and pencils, hand lenses, a long plant tag or flag to mark your mushroom spot, plastic food service gloves.
• Read Outdoor Hour Challenge #9: One Small Square for a description of how to carry out the observation activity. 
• Prepare observation sheets for each child. 
• Review routines: "How to Work With a Partner."
• Teach safety rules about potentially poisonous plants.

Honey mushrooms in a shady flower bed.

Observing Mushrooms and Their Cousins:

A mushroom study lends itself well to a multiple-day observation, since the fruiting body of most fungi only remains for a few days, and changes considerably with time and the weather.

Step 1: Note the location of some fungi on a nature walk.

Some places to look include wood chipped areas of a school flower garden or playground, rotting logs, tree stumps, and places where a tree once stood. At this time of year, a whole crop can pop up literally overnight, so don't be discouraged if you don't see any on a particular day.

Be on the lookout for the little "buttons" of some mushrooms that look like tan bumps before they sprout up the next day.

Step 2: Use the One Small Square technique to sketch what you observe.


Step 3: Mark the location with a stick or "flag" so you can find it the next day.

Step 4: Return to sketch changes for the next few days, until the mushroom collapses.

Mushrooms change very quickly from day to day, which is exciting for kids. Note the weather each time you observe (that day's as well as the weather from previous days). These observation forms have a place to record the weather.

Each day you observe, ask the students some questions:

• How did your mushroom change? Why do you think this happened?
• What was the weather like the day before? How might that have affected the mushroom?
• What type of weather do mushrooms prefer? If you don't know, how can you find out?
• Where are the mushrooms growing? What is the ground like there? Are there any trees around? 
• Do you see any insects around the mushroom? What are they doing?
• Does your mushroom have a smell? (Make sure that children don't handle the mushrooms without wearing gloves, because some poisonous mushrooms resemble harmless ones.)

Classroom Follow-up: 

Study the Anatomy of a Mushroom --

• Enchanted Learning has a diagram of a gilled mushroom that students can label, to learn the anatomy of one type of mushroom.
• The Mushroom Lady has a pile of activities that will get your kids really studying mushrooms in-depth.

 Learn About Mushroom Relatives --

• Here is a handy sheet of terms that you might want to study, so that you correctly distinguish between fungi, actinomycetes, slime molds and other fungus-like organisms.

Study Edible Mushrooms (and Eat Them!) --

• Create a mushroom study station with stereoscopes and various edible mushrooms from your grocer's produce department: shiitake, oyster, portabella, white button, straw, crimini...

Fairy Rings, Faerie Houses and Other Literacy Connections --

• Study the folklore surrounding fairy rings and faerie houses.
• Build a faerie house (or two or 10...) along your school nature trail or in your backyard garden.

Faeries and other woodland creatures -- literacy connection!

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Beaches, Beaches, Everywhere!

The Handbook of Nature Study's Outdoor Hour Challenge was beach-themed for the month of June. Here in New England, the water is a little chilly early in June, so we have waited (until now) to entertain plunging in (despite our incredibly hot air temperatures).

Big Clyde says, "Life's a beach..."

As we are planning for our first beach trip next week, we have been going over the things we have been studying in our other homeschool studies, and realized that beaches were in all of them!

• The Swiss Family Robinson, our summer read-aloud, is taking us into exploration of life on a tropical island. I've been looking for my Hawaii photos to help us out... We are creating a theme basket which includes books on the plant and animal life on a tropical beach.
• An independent project on WWII has brought us to Hawaii (yet again!), for a study of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941...
• Learning about the geography of Japan has been teaching us about islands as a land form, and beaches as part of the geology cycle.

In preparation for writing about our findings, I have begun assembling a Pinterest board with all kinds of links to nature studies and notebooking resources for beach work. Did you know that, if you Google "beaches notebooking," you get over 21,500 image hits? I am having great fun checking out what other beach lovers have shared. Given the number of projects we have underway that are connected to beaches, I'm sure that we will be visiting this board, and adding to it, quite often!


Here is a nature study from last summer based on a beach trip to Ocean Beach, New London, Connecticut, and a jarful of shark's teeth mailed to us from Grandma in Florida: Beachcombing, Part I: Shark Teeth. Stay tuned for Beachcombing, Part II after our beach visit next week! (We'll be sure to take our beach pages from the OHC with us...).


Other things on our list of homeschool activities for the week (and links we're using):

Friday: Watermelon Sorbet - we're in the middle of this one right now, as a garden/nature study connection to summer, beaches, tropical weather and all things June...
Saturday: Tie-dying - we bought a kit at Wal-Mart, and I'm gathering white t-shirts today for a weekend of colorful fun
Sunday: Continued work on our Child Training Bible
Monday: Pearl Harbor videos - for our history study of Japan and WWII
Tuesday: A trip to the library for books about Japan, WWII and Hawaii
Wednesday: Cherry blossom art - this is so cool (I'll buy frames and paints this weekend). I'm not sure how we'll exhibit the art, but here are ideas: Rainbow Family Room and Jewel Tones in the Living Room
Thursday: Not sure yet, but I'll look over my Making Math Meaningful board for ideas...


One of those days (or maybe two!) will definitely be a beach day, so we'll look over Life's a Beach for ideas after the trip, and save whatever we don't do for another day.


Don't you just love summer homeschool?

----------------------------------------------------


[This blog post is featured on the June 2012 Edition of the Outdoor Hour Challenge. Come check out other posts on bees, beaches, and other summer topics -- great ideas for summer nature study and homeschool work!]

Waikiki Beach, from www.aloha.com

You, Too, Can Teach Literacy!

Two brothers and a game of Chinese checkers.

I was talking to a good friend the other day. She has a delightful little daughter, who is a kindergartner. The little girl, like my youngest son, was probably what Mary Sheedy Kurchinka had in mind when she wrote her book, Raising Your Spirited Child. The two of us were chatting about how school was going, and I said that (after a brief few months back in public school) my son was looking forward to homeschooling again in the fall.

My friend thought for a moment, then said, "Well, if I were smarter, I'd probably homeschool my daughter." I felt sad. We are all smart enough to teach our own children!

Lots of parents who are considering homeschool (and even teachers who teach in public schools!) ask me how we do it -- how do we decide what to teach, how do we make sure that we "cover" everything, etc., etc. I don't have answers to all of those questions, but I can tell you that my son can read and spell everything, knows stuff in science that most adults don't know, and just loves the story of Richard the Fearless of Normandy. I think he's an ok kind of kid!

But I know that it was helpful to me (and still is!) to hear other homeschoolers talk about homeschool. So I thought about the first thing that most parents think of when thinking about homeschool curriculum:  teaching literacy.


Literacy includes many different parts: reading and writing, spelling, vocabulary, listening and speaking, grammar and language. Teachers use state standards to teach all of these parts. But, in homeschool, this can seem overwhelming -- so there is an easy way to make sure that we cover all these things, and we can do it in a way that, well, seems like home.

The Daily Five is a skinny little, wonderful book written by teachers with school teachers in mind, but they describe literacy in a very parent and child-friendly way. In their book, the authors, Gail Boushey and Joan Moser (lovingly referred to as "the Two Sisters") break literacy up into five different activities:

• Reading to Self
• Reading to Someone
• Listening to Reading
• Working with Words
• Working on Writing

Doesn't this all sound like what you do in homeschool, already? I thought so...


Here I'll address each one, and give you ideas for how you can make sure you are providing a rich experience for your child at home, without turning your home into school, or spending a lot of money.

Reading to Self

Research shows that the more kids read, the better they read. And, the more they read, the more words they know. And the more words they know, the smarter they become. So reading is a good thing!


When I was a classroom teacher, parents would ask me what they should get for their kids to read. I said, "Anything they want to read!" There is merit in anything: encyclopedias, wordless picture books, the back of the cereal box, the telephone book, the same dog-eared copy of Captain Underpants that you've read 72 times already... Whatever your child wants to read is a good read.

I "require" 30 minutes of reading as independent work, each day, but that is rarely a problem. I also have "bribed" my kids (all of them) into going to bed on time by allowing them to stay up a half-hour past their bedtime if they are in their beds reading (this has worked in our home for 24 years, and most of my students' parents report it to be a success, too!).


The simplest way to keep track of your child's independent reading is through a reading log. There are so many forms of this. DonnaYoung.org has a number of homeschool book lists that you can print out and keep in your plan book, or you can create your own and print it out. Teach your little one how to write the title and author, and how many pages/minutes he read. Sometimes I would add something else to the log, depending on what we were working on: genre, a simple rating scale, who would enjoy this book (audience), etc. [We also keep an inexpensive spiral notebook as a response journal, where I would write questions (mostly "think about" kind of questions, like, "Why do you think Opal's dad doesn't want to talk about her mom? What are your clues?"). I made sure that I wrote back. More on this in the "Work on Writing" section.]. Use Scholastic's "Book Wizard" to find great books.

My kids could spend the whole day in the library. Nowadays, there are so many activities in the local library: computers, story hours, visiting speakers, arts and crafts times, and reading contests. Many libraries in the city (like where we live) serve lunch during the week in the summer, and snacks after school. If you don't have air conditioning, it's not a bad place to hang out on a hot day. If you tell your librarian you homeschool, she will often be on the lookout for books that you want to use in your studies, too.


Now that my son is older, some of his assignments have independent reading parts. When kids are very little, they might just "look at" books, but this is reading, too. The idea is for them to independently engage in reading things they like to read, to develop of love of reading. If you want to check the reading level of the books your child is choosing to read on his own, check out Scholastic's Book Wizard tool, which is easy to use (see the "Teaching Tip," above, and the screen shot image, for an example of what you get from the tool).

Reading to Someone

Reading to someone helps children develop oral reading fluency. What this means is that they read smoothly, at a natural pace, with proper expression, and that they read accurately. Children that can read fluently out loud tend to be the children that also understand what they are reading, better.

When children struggle over words, they read texts too slowly to connect the words together, which is what makes meaning. This also tells us that they are having such a difficult time identifying words that they are missing what the story is all about. On the other hand, kids who read too fast also miss the story line.

There are lots of easy ways to make time for your child to read out loud.

• Switch roles. I read to you, or you read to me (take turns - give the child a choice).
• "Read to Me" Fridays. Let the child choose the book she wants to read.
• Read plays together. Take roles and read the play like a "Reader's Theater."
• Share the dialog. Let one person be the narrator, and the other read the dialog, in novels.

My kids used to love the Magic Schoolbus books, and they would never let me skip all the little speech and thought bubbles on each page. Not easy to read! But how much easier (and more fun it became) when we would each choose a character, and turn the book into a Reader's Theater, each reading that character's thoughts and dialog.

I don't use a reading curriculum. I listen to my son read, and keep track of what his errors are, then find lessons online to address those specific things (see "Teaching Tip #2").  For example, if I search online for lessons on pausing at periods, I find many ideas for helping students to pay attention to punctuation, from color-coding different types of punctuation, to practicing reading sight-word phrases instead of individual words, to reading fun books like Eats, Shoots and Leaves: Why, Commas DO Make a Difference!

Listening to Reading

This is probably the biggest advantages that homeschoolers have over public schoolers when it comes to reading instruction: the fact that so much of our "instruction" during the day is read-aloud. Children learn how to be fluent, problem-solving, understanding readers when a fluent, problem-solving, understanding reader models for them! (Pssst.... that's YOU!).

The purpose of listening to reading is to learn what good readers sound like, what they do when they read, and how they think. Read-aloud is the best way for you to do this with your children. You don't have to even be a stellar reader to be a great reading teacher. I have a teacher-friend who excels at reading instruction, because she, herself, was a struggling reader until about grade 4. She knows where children get stuck, because she did, herself.


To choose great read-alouds, check out the Bookfinder at Simply Charlotte Mason, where you can search by grade-level, curriculum year or topic.


Here are other easy ways that you can vary this part of literacy:

1. Books on tape/CD. One of my children wore out his audiotape of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom as he read along. Nothing like Ray Charles teaching you how to read!
2. Story time at the library. Many public libraries have story hour during the week, for preschoolers. Your younger elementary homeschooler might enjoy these opportunities. Often, towns will bring in guest readers or visiting authors to read, or even perform with puppets or drama -- a nice change-up from reading at home.
3. Stories on TV. There is a place for the judicious use of "screen time" in homeschool. My eldest used to enjoy Reading Rainbow, which boasted an assortment of guest celebrity readers, as well as book reviews by other kids. You can find free episodes to watch online, too (see the link, for one site).
4. Whisper Phones. Some of my teacher friends have been using these tubular contraptions, and one even had her husband make them out of PVC pipe and elbows. I am including a photo of a first grade student using one (click on the link to go to the teacher's website), and a link to plans for making your own, in case you'd like to try that idea out. The idea behind it is that the student who is working on reading more fluently hears himself reading in a whisper, and pays attention to his own reading better than by reading aloud. Kids love them, and they do seem to work.



Working with Words

We love word play in our house. My husband can switch syllables and starting letters around in words so quickly that sometimes we have to pause and figure out what he just said. Jokes abound, and we try to outdo one another with what we call "refrigerator words" -- the kind that you write down on a paper and hang on the refrigerator to remember later.

Working with words in homeschool is easy as can be. Here are some ideas that are fun for families, and reinforce how words work and are put together:

• Word games. Our family favorites include Scrabble, Boggle, and Upwords.
• Crossword Puzzles. Our science workbook (Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day) includes a crossword puzze as a review of each lesson.
• Books about working with words. Some ideas: Frindle, The Word Eater, Donavan's Word Jar.
• Books that also have fun with words. Anything by Dr. Seuss, Alice in Wonderland, and Shel Silverstein poems.

My sister-in-law taught my nieces how to read at a very young (pre-K) age, by labeling objects around the house. Everywhere the girls went, the objects were labeled: "table", "refrigerator", "chair", "stove"... If you are wanting to work on sight words, this is a more natural way to teach them than sheer memorization. Sight-word bingo is another fun way to learn sight words. You can find many sites for printing out bingo boards.

If you want to work on particular phonics lessons, make them game-like. Write the chunk you are studying ("pl-" for example) on an index card, then use Scrabble tiles to build the rest of the word. Sort the words you make into sense and nonsense words.

When my eldest was a toddler, I used one of those photo albums with the clingy pages, and labeled each page with a letter of the alphabet, upper- and lowercase. We would cut out pictures from magazines of things that started with that letter, and add them to the album. We would start each day by reviewing our album, then add a few more things. He loved this alphabet book for years. You could make different pages for older students.

Working on Writing


We have all but eliminated any difficulties regarding writing for homeschool, through two means: notebooking and a free-writing journal.


We use notebooking extensively in social studies and science. Our notebooks are full of maps, diagrams. poems, penmanship practice, word lists, questions and answers, stories, and graphic organizers. But mostly they are full of writing, of all kinds!


My youngest son is a very smart boy. In public school, children are pushed to begin to write at an early age. I don't mean the "conveying my thoughts and feelings through words and pictures" kind of writing, but the "sit down and write a story" kind of writing. I can tell you, as a homeschool mom and a public school teacher, my very bright boy did not like to do written work through second grade and most of third. Now, every now and then he would write something that would blow our minds -- he's a very talented writer, and likes to write, but not when he is ASKED to do it.


With notebooking, I print out several notebooking pages that fit a lesson, some with space for a big picture, some with several smaller pictures and lines, some with maps, some with timelines, etc. I let him choose which he wants to use that day. He knows that 1) there will be the expectation of excellent work no matter which he chooses and 2) eventually he will end up using the other notebooking pages. His notebooks have grown in quality, because he has been allowed choices of how to respond.


The other writing work he does is in his "free writing" notebook. Currently, he has three or four notebooks full of drawings of superheroes he has invented, complete with their bios and specs. His drawings are detailed and labeled, and his bios are excellent summaries. He will spend days adding to his notebooks. I can pretty much teach anything I want to teach in writing, using one of his notebooks.


The point is this: writing is more than stories and reports. It is lists, and directions, and calendar entries, and text messages. It is a silly poem or a note to a friend. Make yourself feel better by writing down everything you write during the course of a day. Here's my list for today:

1. This blog
2. The check for my bills
3. My "to-do" list
4. Two text messages to my elder two sons
5. A Mother's Day greeting to my mom, sister and sister-in-law on Facebook
6. A business email to a client

I didn't write a story or a report. And the only piece I did any editing and revising with was this blog. I definitely used my research skills for the blog and the business email. And I used technology for all but the bill paying. I'm not saying to never do a report or write stories -- most kids love to do these. It's just that we shouldn't worry about how many stories our little ones have written, since there are so many other reasons for writing that will just come up during the course of a normal day.



To find lots of notebooking pages for my homeschool needs, I have a subscription to The Notebooking Treasury. You can find notebooking pages for just about any topic you want to study. Join the Notebooking Pages Treasury now during their NotebookingPages.com 6th Birthday Sale-a-Bration Event and receive an extended membership, chance to win some great prizes, & access to their new notebooking web-app for creating, customizing, & completing your own notebooking pages (coming in June 2012)!  The perks are nice. Another trick I learned was to Google "notebooking," then switch the view to "Images." You'll see all kinds of notebooks created by homeschoolers, and their blogs usually tell you about other sources of notebooking pages. We homeschoolers love to share!

My homeschool friend, Barbara, blogs about nature study, art and many other topics at The Handbook of Nature Study. Read her article about notebooking with teenagers here.

I hope you have been encouraged in your homeschool efforts, and have found a literacy activity that is a just-right activity for you and your child.

Have a marvelous spring!