Saturday, September 10, 2011

God Bless America...


We will never forget...
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Flying Creatures, Lesson 2: What Makes a Bird a Bird?

Lesson 2: What Makes a Bird a Bird?
How we implemented "Exploring Creation through Zoology 1: Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day, Lesson 1
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Links will be updated as we add new blogs and web pages. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but an List of the activities, projects and resources that we actually used to complete the lesson (like a window into our science class!).

Please check back for web pages on key concepts, strategies and skills as I write them.
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Key Concepts: field identification, anatomy, field marks, behavior, communication, experiment, variable, measurement, scientific and common names

Key Strategies: using field marks, keeping a journal, making an organized list, mapping

Key Skills: identifying birds, using a field guide, following a procedure, measuring
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Subtopics
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(includes links to correspond web pages and blog entries, as we complete each and post about it)

  • Bird Watching (pp. 22-23)
  • Benefits of Birds (pp. 23-24)
  • Identifying Birds (p. 24)
  • Field Guides (p. 25)
  • Do You Reside Here? (pp. 25-26)
  • Field Marks (pp. 26-27)
  • Wings (p. 28)
  • Crests (p. 29)
  • What's in a Name? (p. 29)
  • Passerines (pp. 29-30)
  • From Large to Small (p. 30)
  • Bird Behavior (pp. 30-31)
  • Habitats (p. 31)
  • Bird Banter (pp. 31-32)
  • Songs & Calls (pp. 32-33)
  • Claims to Territory (p. 33)
  • The Purpose of Calls (p. 34)
  • Other Communications (p. 34)
  • Bird Banding (pp. 34-36)
  • Nature Points (p. 36)
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Additional Readings
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Sparrows Nature Study:
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Activities, Experiments and Projects

 Showing and Telling --
  • Daily oral narration
  • "Fascinating Facts About Birds" notetaking activity
  • Written narration: "What Do You Remember?"
  • Scripture copywork
  • Vocabulary crossword
  • Notebook activity: "Map a Bird"
  • Notebooking pages --  house sparrow, song sparrow, white-throat sparrow, white-crowned sparrow
Strategies to Learn --
  • Try This! - (Using field markings to identify)
  • Try This! - (Using field markings to describe)
  • Try This! - (Using bird songs, calls and sounds to identify)
  • Mapping field markings
Experiments to Conduct --
Things to Create --
Other Things to Do --
  • Nature Points: Birds in My Yard (life list) [NOTE: We created ours online, using Birdstack]
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Other Links and Internet Resources
Handbook of Nature Study (Harmony Arts)
WhatBird -- the Ultimate Field Guide
Birdstack



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Friday, September 9, 2011

September Study 3: Ants,Termites and Ant Lions


Originally published 2011. Edited and republished for the Simple Science Strategies Blog Carnival, September 2012.

 

Fall is a time when lots of creatures begin to make preparations for the winter, while the weather is still warm and food is abundant. It's a good time to observe insects, especially social insects, like ants and bees, who get busy in the fall preparing their colonies for colder weather.

Every fall and spring, there is a line of black ants that passes through our kitchen, from some distinct point outside, to some distinct point somewhere on the other side of the house. They annoy us for a couple of days, then they disappear as quickly as they arrived. Similarly, about this time of year, we witness a parade of citronella ants moving from point A to point B in the yard, leaving their tell-tale orange-y odor behind them


Ants are an easy creature to study using the One Small Square strategy for observation.


Before You Go Outside

  • Read up on ants in the Handbook of Nature Study (pp. 369-378).
  • Gather materials you might need for your outdoor studies: hand lenses, string or something else to mark your square, clipboards, a few crackers (one per pair of students), the observation sheet of your choice (see below).
  • Read One Small Square: Practice Looking Closely at the World and Outdoor Hour Challenge #9: One Small Square for a description of how to carry out the observation activity. 
  • Prepare observation sheets for each student.
  • Teach students how to work with a partner.
  • Review the five senses.
  • Find a place that is out of the way where you can set up your observation area. I used to use the sandy area at the edge of the blacktop on the playground as my ant observation area. The area should be large enough to accommodate enough "squares" for all the pairs of students in your class. If it makes it easier for the custodians, mark out the area with stakes and "flags" so it doesn't get disturbed.

The One Small Square Strategy
  • Pair up your students. Think about roles -- do you want all students to sketch and record, or do you want one student to take the job as recorder?
  • Take the students outside and let them choose a "square" as their study area. (If it makes it easier, pre-mark the squares). Guide students to select an area where there are signs of ant activity. 
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Five-day study:


Day 1:

  1. Use a journal page with a large space for illustration. Draw the ant hill in your square. 
  2. Where are the ants? Which direction are they heading? Watch what they do when they meet one another. Do they appear to interact with one another? How? What are the ants doing as they move about?
  3. How many ants do you think live in the ant hill?
  4. What do you think their home looks like below ground?
  5. Write some observations in your nature journal.
Day 2:
  1. Use a lined journal page with a small space for illustration today. Find one ant. Draw it in the small square. 
  2. Watch what your ant does. Try to make a note every minute or two minutes (you'll have to practice writing notes, not full sentences). 
  3. During this time, your partner should watch a different ant, recording what that ant does.
  4. Do the ants appear to have jobs? Do all the ants do the same activities? Compare your observations to your partner's. Did your ants do the same things?
 Day 3:
  1. Use a journal page with a half-page for illustration, and half-page with lines. Take a cracker with you when you observe your ant hill.
  2. Place some cracker crumbs where the ants are active, but a few inches away from the entrance to the ant hill.
  3. How long does it take for the ants to find the cracker crumbs? What does the first ant do? What happens next? Do other ants come? How do they know to go there? Where do they take the cracker crumbs?
  4. What do you think they use the cracker crumbs for? Why do you think this?
 Day 4:
  1. Use a journal page with space for two illustrations. Label one "before" and one "after."
  2. Draw your ant hill as it looks today. Make sure to note where ants are located, also.
  3. Now, carefully cover the entrance to the hole in the ant hill, by brushing the sand into the hole.
  4. Watch how the ants respond to this. What do they do? Do they become more active? Do they run away? Do they unblock the hole? Talk to your partner about what you see.
  5. About 5 minutes before your observation is finished, draw the way the ant hill looks. Did the ants unblock the entrance? Did they create a new one? Did they work together? How did they cooperate? Why do you think ants behave this way?
Day 5:
  1. Use a journal page like the one you used the first day. Go outside to observe your ant hill when the weather is very different from the first day (for example, after a rainstorm, or on a cold day, or a very hot day).
  2. Draw what you see. Does the ant hill look different? Why or why not? Are the ants doing the same things as the other days? If they aren't, why not?
  3. Can you make an inference about the relationship between activities of ants and weather? 
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Follow-up Activities in the Classroom:

Termites
Learn More About Social Insects
  • Use the library and the Internet to learn more about social insects, such as honeybees, ants and termites.
  • Global Newt has online games that teach about social insects, using a termite mound, bee hive and ant hill as the settings for the game.
  • Record your research on this research worksheet

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Ant lion pit
Look for Ant Lions
Ant lion (doodlebug). (c) Scott Robinson, 2005 via Creative Commons.



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Identify Your Ants


Citronella ants smell like citronella candles when disturbed. (c) A Child's Garden, 2010.


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 Literacy and Math Connections



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Wednesday, September 7, 2011

The Nightshade Family (and a Little Surprise)

We had begun this plant family study when Barbara introduced the September Challenge on Weeds, Seeds and Other Delights. What timing!

We are having such a successful time studying birds family by family, that we decided to do the same with plants. And we have so many "cousins" in this family, right in our vegetable garden: tomato, potato, pepper, eggplant, the rogue tomatillo from years gone by. Also our little petunia basket.

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The Nightshade family (Solanaceae)

Our garden has quite a few members of the nightshade family. It is a nice family to study for nature study, as it originated here in the Western Hemisphere (although its ancestors didn't resemble most of our common garden varieties now).

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Read-Alouds:
 
I have this thing about books about gardening. I usually go through periods of bringing home armloads from the library, followed by more restrained times where I bring home some chapter books. All through the summer, we read a great number of books about vegetable and flower gardening. Here are some favorites (from this summer and previous years):

In Enzo's Splendid Garden, by Patricia Polacco (anything by Patricia Polacco is terrific)
The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett (good connection to history)
Miss Rumphius, by Barbara Cooney (so many Maine connections for us)
The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein (this book always made my boys cry...)

There are so many... You can get so much mileage out of the ones above, because the characters are so delightful. Lots of life lessons.

We also took the time this summer to study Genesis 1 and 2, to learn about the Garden of Eden, when we began our series of read-alouds about gardens.

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Notebooking:

We started our notebooking with a colored sketch of our common nightshade, which tumbles along our back fence behind the wildflower garden. We had fun sketching together. I found that my son did a nicer job with his detail when I sketched along with him. And I enjoyed myself too -- how often do we stop to spend that time with one another, just BEING?
 We noticed as we sketched that we had a hitchhiker, who we will talk about later...

We found a diagram of a potato plant  that we studied and colored. We wanted one that was more like a diagram, and not cartoony.


We used a number of blank notebooking pages from the Notebooking Treasury, because we did a lot of sketching of the nightshade plants and other "cousins".


Here are some other places for notebooking pages on these plants:


The Outdoor Hour Challenge Crop Plant Challenges Notebook Pages include pages for a number of common vegetable garden plants, including tomato. Here is a link to a sample.


Homeschool Notebooking has free pages for download, on many topics.


Enchanted Learning has so many pages, diagrams, mini-books and activities, that you are bound to find something to include in your notebook. My little guy doesn't always like to sketch, but he enjoys diagrams, so this is a good place to go for things to add to your drawings.

 

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Background Information:

The Handbook of Nature Study has several pages (pp. 582-584) about the petunia, the flowery cousin to the common nightshade and its vegetable friends. Petunias are nice to use to study the flower structure of the nightshade family, as the flower parts are big.

Here is a case where there isn't a lot that can substitute for just going out and working in the garden. Even in the years when the garden doesn't do well, we always learn something new and get a refreshed spirit from working with seeds and soil.

If you didn't have a vegetable garden this year, think of putting even a container garden in next year.
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Lesson Ideas and Links:

1. Grow a Vegetable Garden


We spent a lot of time gardening while we studied this plant family. We learned about how common nightshade is poisonous, while the other cousins in our garden are not. As we gardened, we compared the flowers, and talked about how botanists use the flowers to identify a plant.

We have about a zillion cherry tomatoes, and they are so much better than the store ones! Two of our four kids don't like tomatoes, but the other two love them. We also have plum tomatoes, some big, meaty, pink-fleshed ones, and, of course, Brandywines. We picked a bunch before Hurricane Irene, just in case, but the plants did well, even thought the heirlooms have climbed far out of their cages. 
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We had started digging potatoes just before the hurricane, and I'm sure that we have a ton of them -- if it can just stop raining! Our soil was already quite wet before Irene, and I think we've only had 2 or 3 days without rain since she passed through our way. I just walked the dog, and the ground sounds like a sponge. At any rate, the first potatoes were delicious for breakfast,  so we're looking forward to the rest.


Malik planted some potatoes in his little garden, too. He found digging potatoes to be fun but tiring.
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I planted the cutest little eggplants this year. I am the only one who likes eggplant in the house, but I think the flowers are beautiful. Don't you? Like our nightshade flowers, on vitamins.

The ones I planted have little fruit (about 3" long), which are purple and white striped. We had to fight the squirrels for the fruit this year. Last year, they would wait until the fruit were just beginning to look like eggplants, then they would strip the branches off! GRRRR!

This year, they started, but our cats spent their first summer outside since they were born, and I think that discouraged the squirrels enough to let the eggplants have a fighting chance. I think we are doing well!

I am amazed at how resilient eggplants are. We have had one of the wackiest summers that I can remember -- about two weeks of near 100 degree, humid weather, followed by a cold spell, followed by tropical, followed by hurricane... And they keep coming!

We have not seen any potato beetles on any of our nightshade family plants this year. Last year there were a few on the eggplants, but I picked them off by hand once, and that did the trick. A few holes on the potatoes, but that's it.

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Our hot peppers were not nearly as resilient as the eggplants, potatoes and tomatoes. It's always tricky, timing the planting. Peppers don't like being cold. And it seems like they never really recover from being set out when the soil is too cold. My plants are small. The peppers are tasty, but there could be more of them. Next year, we'll wait, then we'll plant more.

If you want a great hot pepper for your garden, grow Hot Lemon Peppers. They are pretty, bright lemon yellow, and produce a ton of peppers that are about 3 inches long. I'm not sure why, but no vendors had them available this year. It must have been a bad seed year last year. At any rate, if you are seed catalog shopping this winter, and see them for sale, buy them (we usually buy plants). You'll be pleased.

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If you want to do a nice botany study, the nightshade family makes a nice choice, since there are so many members that you can find at your local garden center. Plus, you get to eat the results of your study!  In these two photos, you can see how the shape of the potato leaves is very similar to the shape of the common nightshade leaves, below. But the habit of the nightshade (almost vine-like) is more like the old-fashioned tomatoes that we have in the garden.

For older children, slicing the fruits lengthwise (stem end to flower end) and sketching the arrangement of the seeds would be a very beneficial botanical study. You will need a hand lens to compare the fruit of the common nightshade. Did you know that all the fruits are berries?



I wanted to find the strange nightshade weed cousin, Jimson-weed, to add to our studies, but have not found any in the vacant lots on our walks. I will have to check by the railroad tracks. When I've found Jimson-weed before, it was in a grassy, overgrown second growth meadow.  The fruits of Jimson-weed are prickly. Jimson-weed, like nightshade, is poisonous.









When I was a little girl, we called the bright red fruits of nightshade "poison berries." I read in one source that 200 of these would be enough to kill a grown man.
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2. Make a Plant Press

Before the hurricane, we built a simple plant press, following the directions in Barbara McCoy's blog post, "How to Make a Plant Press."  We will continue with our plant press project after things dry out a little bit!

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3. Learn Some Scientific Names

My son enjoys the scientific names for the plants and animals we study. For more information on Latin binomials and binomial nomenclature, see my article, "Animal, Vegetable or Mineral? Scientific Names and the Natural World."

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4. Practice Penmanship

When we first started homeschooling last fall, we struggled with our little guy's handwriting. He had learned so many bad handwriting habits, and it took a lot of practice (and holding the bar high) to get things back in shape. Charlotte Mason would say of copywork and penmanship, "Accept only excellence."

We use our vocabulary sometimes as a source for copywork. This is what we did with our nightshade family plant names.

Because Malik is in third grade, we practice manuscript several times a week, but we also work on cursive.

As a teacher, I always introduced the letters in the order of ease of creating them: the "loop" letters first -- e, l; then the closed loop letters -- i, t, u, w (a little trickier).  We only write words that we have studied the letters of, or we practice joinings, only.  The photo below shows some cursive practice of joinings.

Periodically, I have my son "grade" himself on slant, size and shape of his letters. We also put a smiley or star next to our favorite word or joining on the page.

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5. Bug Study

We discovered an interesting, as yet unidentified, insect who hitched a ride on the nightshade we sketched. Malik named him, "Buggy." It looks like a shield bug, but it eats holes in the leaves, and most true bugs are sap drinkers.

Buggy is very happy in a plastic container with a fresh supply of nightshade leaves regularly provided.  We will keep trying to identify him (unless one of you can!). It doesn't seem to like the other nightshade family plants nearly as much as he likes common nightshade.

Fall is a great time to do a bug study. Friday, we will be posting about the incredible crop of anthills that have sprung up in our driveway this summer.



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For classroom teachers looking for integrated studies centering on nature study, download my September newsletter, "The Little Green Corner," posted today.




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New Monthly Newsletter: "The Little Green Corner"

I first started this blog, A Child's Garden, to chronicle the nature study activities of my family as we ventured into the new arena of homeschooling about two years ago.  It has been a fun activity for us, to consider what parts of our little day might be fun for others to see, to converse with our youngest son about what parts of his day he found most interesting, and to decide, as a group, what makes learning the most fun.

One thing that I have discovered, in these past couple of years, is that not only homeschoolers, but classroom teachers, as well, have been following this blog, looking for ways to get more nature study and science integrated into their already-packed, high-stakes day.

For this reason, I have decided to create "The Little Green Corner," a newsletter companion to this blog, which will be available the first of each month, via this blog, and my business blog, "Tip of the Month" 
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Here is a little background history of where I got the name for the newsletter:

I began my teaching career in Columbus, Ohio, 30 years ago, teaching three distinct groups of students:

  • I taught at the university level, instructing students at the Ohio State University in basic plant science classes (plant identification, plant propagation, basic botany). Many of my students in these classes were country kids, who took days off from class to plant soybeans.
  • I also taught classes at a regional vocational agriculture program. Some kids there were from the city, some were from the country. Many had families who owned farms, nurseries or garden centers, and were familiar with country living.
  • I had the opportunity to be a visiting teacher in a number of schools right in the city. All of the students in these schools were from urban areas. Their schools were in the heart of Columbus, and were surrounded by blacktop. My kids in these schools, when reading a story set at the seaside, imagined the water park at King's Island, because it was the closest they had ever been to the ocean.

Fast forward about 20 years, to Connecticut, where my teaching career took me full circle. Once, again, I had three groups of students, much like I had 20 years before, in Ohio:

  • I taught  at the university level, instructing 2-year vocational agriculture classes at The University of Connecticut. Most of my students already worked in the agriculture industry, and were attending classes to pass their state certification exams, get a raise or promotion at work, or to start their own business.
  • My second group of students was a preschool class in the country. The town was situated in a rural area, and we were surrounded by ponds, woods and meadows for the students to explore daily.
  • I had the pleasure of teaching third grade for seven years in one of Connecticut's urban districts. Our school was in the country, but my students were from the city. Here, I first began intentionally planning for nature walks, outdoor observations and inside nature opportunities, to build my kids' background knowledge in science and the natural world, and engage them in inquiry about the world around them. As part of this effort, I created a nature table in my classroom, which became an on-going learning center -- my "little green corner" of the classroom. It was always full of interesting rock collections, bug cages, magnifying glasses and other fun things.
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What I've learned from all these experiences is that there is something about the out-of-doors that we can take for granted  when we live in the country or suburbs. I can remember the wonder in my students' eyes when the first snowflakes began to fall -- many of them came from lands where they only had seen snow on television, and didn't have wide-open spaces to sled in, where they lived. As you can imagine, spelling and fractions were put to one side, so we could go outside and make snowmen and melt snowflakes on our tongues. What part of the lessons do you think engaged the students the most?

I have worked with teachers from all settings, rural, suburban and urban, in recent years, and have heard the challenges they have in fitting science instruction into a day full of reading, writing and math. The pressures of high-stakes testing have pushed science (and social studies, for that matter) to the edges of the day, or, in many cases, right out of the schedule, entirely. Yet teachers know that these are the very topics which get kids of all ages (and their teachers!) excited about school.

Why wouldn't the 15-minute nature studies advocated by Anna Botsford Comstock in Handbook of Nature Study work for the classroom, too? Can't classroom teachers use the same principles to engage students, incorporate rich content and teach deep thinking processes in children?
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A Child's Garden presents...


The Little Green Corner

 
In the premier issue of The Little Green Corner (Sept 2011), you will find the following features:


  • Strategy of the Month: Using Your Senses
  • September Nature Study Ideas: Ants, Mushrooms, Moonwatching and Migration
  • September Specials and Links
  • For Your Library: The One Small Square Series, by Donald Silver
  • Skill of the Month: Observation
  • Organizer of the Month: The Bubble Map
  • Thematic Learning Centers Ideas

Each newsletter edition, which will be published on this blog on the first of each month, will contain these features, links to downloadable resources, and links to online resources for lesson planning.  These newsletters will be followed up by individual posts on the nature study ideas, for those who would like more details on how to study that topic and connect it to other content areas.

The newsletter can be downloaded and printed, or viewed online (when viewed online, you will be able to follow the many hyperlinks to other documents, web activities and printables).


Please let me know how you used the nature study ideas in your homeschool or classroom. Use the ideas in the newsletter and blog, or find your own topics. Then make sure that you share the link to your blog or website in Mr. Linky on my blog page, as well as The Little Green Corner Blog Carnival, so others can see.

Coming on September 9, 2011: The Ants Go Marching...


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Thursday, September 1, 2011

Flying Creatures, Lesson 1: What is Zoology?

Lesson 1: What is Zoology?

How We Implemented "Exploring Creation With Zoology 1: Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day," Lesson 1


Links will be updated as we add new blogs and web pages. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but an List of the activities, projects and resources that we actually used to complete the lesson (like a window into our science class!).

Please check back for web pages on key concepts, strategies and skills as I write them.

Key Concepts: binomial nomenclature, flight, habitats, instinct, extinction, variables, experiments
Key Strategies: using mnemonic devices, keeping a notebook
Key Skills: observation, forming and testing a hypothesis, collecting data, narration, notetaking, comparing and contrasting



Subtopics 


(Includes links to corresponding blog posts and web pages, as we complete each part and blog on it)
 
$7.95 at Barnes & Noble




Additional Readings



$14.94 at Barnes & Noble






Activities, Experiments, & Projects


Experiments in Flight: Lift, Thrust & Drag


Showing and Telling:

  • "Fascinating Facts About Zoology" notetaking activity 
  • Oral narration and notebooking (daily)
  • Written Narration: "What Do You Remember?"
  • Notebook Activity: Habitats, Instinct, Extinction
  • Scripture copywork (manuscript and cursive)
  • Vocabulary Crossword

Strategies to Learn:


 Experiments to Conduct:

 Things to Research:

Things to Create:

Other Things to Do:



Other Links and Internet Resources



$27.95 at Barnes & Noble




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Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Feeding Our Hungry Bird Friends after Hurricane Irene

What a wild week it's been here on the East Coast!

We should have known we were in for something big when we got up on Saturday morning. My eldest son, Evan (who notices these things, and who gets up early like his mother) called me very early on Saturday and said, "Go outside, quickly, and look to the East."  The sky was absolutely breath-taking (this photo doesn't even approach what we saw).  What's that old chestnut?

Red at night -- traveler's delight;
Red in the morning -- travelers, take warning.

We spent much of Saturday securing anything that my husband hadn't secured during the week, filling buckets of water, and scouring the Eastern Seaboard for D batteries (some of you can probably relate). Among the items that we put away were all of our bird feeders.

The birds, who sensed the weather was turning, came in droves to the space where the feeders used to be, and scoured the ground for scattered seeds, even into the beginning of the day on Sunday. I felt bad for them. When the weather started getting really wild, they found places to hide from the wind and rain.

We were extremely fortunate in our city, where we did not lose power (about 500,000 CT residents did, and about 400,000 still are awaiting power in their homes). We have debris to clean up, but did not sustain the damage that many folks along the coast, and even in neighboring towns, and even other parts of our city, did. 
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We are studying Exploring Creation Through Zoology I: Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day for part of our science curriculum this year. Part of Lesson 2 ("What Makes a Bird a Bird?") involves making a number of feeders for birds.  After we refilled and replaced our bird feeders (to the delight of our birdy friends), we enjoyed a cooking project yesterday, making our own "smart suet."

Smart Suet
  • Small zippered plastic storage bags (we used mini loaf pans instead)
  • Mesh bag (an old onion bag works well), or suet basket (we have two of these)
  • Stove
  • Large pot
  • Wooden spoon
  • Freezer
  • 2 c crunchy peanut butter
  • 2 c lard (not vegetable shortening)
  • 4 c rolled oats (the "old-fashioned" or long-cooking kind, not quick oats)
  • 4 c cornmeal
  • 2/3 c sugar
  • 1 c raisins
  • 1 c bird seed or other whole grains

  1. Melt lard and peanut butter in a large pot over low heat.
  2. Stir in oats, cornmeal, sugar, raisins and bird seed.
  3. Scoop mixture into small plastic zipper-type storage bags. Zip closed.
  4. Place bags in freezer until hard (overnight).
  5. When you want to feed the birds, remove suet from one of the bags, and place in mesh bag or suet basket.
 You can vary the recipe by adding different items to the mix. See which birds come to each flavor.
  • Orange-fruit Suet: Omit peanut butter, and double lard. Add dried blueberries (1 c) and 3 tsp orange flavoring or 1/4 c. of shredded, dried orange peel.
  • Very Berry Suet: Omit peanut butter, and double lard. Add 1 - 2 c. dried berries (combination of blueberries, raspberries and cherries) to the raisins in the mixture.
  • Bug Lovers Suet: Make as above, omitting raisins. Add 2 c dried mealworms (available in the bird seed aisle of Lowes or Home Depot) to the mixture. [Mealworms are a big hit with lots of birds, even ones who are normally seed eaters -- a very nutritious, high-fat treat for winter feeding].

One thing to note: if the weather is still very hot where you live, you might wait until fall to start suet feeding, as the mixture will melt if the temperature is very hot all day.

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My friend, Barbara McCoy, gives some great pointers on Making Your Backyard a Wildlife Habitat.  Why not add some nature study and observations to your day? Donna Young has created some beautiful Nature Journal pages to download and place in your binder. See also the incredible assortment of nature study notebooking pages at the Notebooking Treasury:

Not sure where to begin? Begin at the beginning, with Outdoor Hour Challenge #1: Let's Get Started (like we did!).

Let us know how you began using nature study with your children or students. Use Mr. Linky (below) to post the link to your blog entry (not the whole page, but the specific entry) and make sure that you leave a comment, below, too!




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As you go through your day today, please keep all those who have been affected by Hurricane Irene in your thoughts, hearts and prayers. And take time to thank God for the things you have right now. May God bless you richly!


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