pond study

Yesterday we went on a really great field trip with some friends (big thank you to Jennifer for hauling us out there!).

We went out to the Environmental Learning Center in Mokena, IL. The kids had a great time, I think mainly because they left to explore and make discoveries on their own.

Here are the girls bringing up their net....
and checking out what they found...
After they had a nice collection of specimens in their buckets, everyone went to the lab to get a better look at what they had caught....

They had guide books and identification sheets lying around for the kids to use.... but again they left them to make their own discoveries instead of it being an over structured "educational experience". The kids really seemed to delight in figuring it out themselves and then excitedly showing the other kids.

Next was lunch. It's funny.... whenever a group of homeschoolers get together we joke about their lack of social skills since they're not in school (since that seems to be a main concern to random people we all come across). Immediately after eating, the kids (most of whom had never met each other before) came together to play tag... running and laughing around the picnic area. It really is too bad that they don't know how to interact with others :-)

After lunch they went animal tracking through the woods. They were to keep their eyes open for any signs of animals. Once we started to look we saw all kinds of signs... tracks, scat, gnawed off trees, woodpecker holes, etc. We also learned how to identify quite a few native plants along the way (and the kids even sampled a few of the edible ones).

It was a beautiful day to spend outdoors!!

growing back into picture books

I can't tell you how excited I am to be back in the picture book section of the library again! I LOVE the picture book section. I thought we had left it behind... Alex was now into chapter books and Clara had her readers.... our read alouds were chapter books now too.... we had no use for picture books.... or so I thought! Then I started reading more and more about the benefits of using "living books" in homeschooling and things started to change.

A few months back I blogged about how I was compiling a reading list for Clara each week and in those lists were several picture books. Well.... that idea snowballed. Not only did Clara read all of the books but so did Alex. So now I no longer make a reading list for Clara. I pick a topic (based on Story of the World, a science interest, season, holiday, upcoming trips... whatever) and collect a stack of picture books from the library on that particular subject.

The kids LOVE this! The main reason I no longer make a reading list for Clara is that she will select a stack of books from our library basket to read in bed each night completely on her own.... Alex does the same. Alex will still read his chapter books at bedtime, but will have a little picture book "appetizer" before diving into his main course :-)

Here's a partial stack of what we checked out this week...
Given that it's spring now... we have quite a few books on flowers and seeds.

Zinnia's Flower Garden

Looks like your typical picture book, right? Well... take a look inside...
There is all kinds of great information inside this colorful little book from the "kiddie" section! Parts of a flower... life cycle of a butterfly.... stages of germination... types of clouds... and so much more all along with the story of a girl and her garden. And to think I thought I had no use for picture books anymore!

Flip, Float, Fly!: Seeds on the Move

A beautifully illustrated book with simple text about the different methods of seed dispersal...

(please forgive the slightly out of focus photo above)

I thought the illustrations in this book were gorgeous....

A Seed Is Sleepy

It includes lots of great information as well.... my problem with it?

A lot of the text is in cursive...
Which poses a problem.... mainly for Clara.

Our next topic in Story of the World is Ancient India. So I visited the folktale section as well and picked up several retellings of Indian folktales...

Seven Blind Mice

I have no requirements in regards to the picture books. They're free to read them or not read them whenever they want. They don't think of them as "school" at all. I also have to try to not think of them as "school" too much or I tend to get upset when they don't choose to read a certain book (if it's a book I feel strongly about, I will commit to reading it during school time). However, they usually work their way through about 80% of what we bring home. They do oral narrations of most books without knowing it. Usually from me saying "oooh... that looks like a cool book... what's it about?". :-)

Another reason I love the picture book section... it's been a great way to get Clara to read more challenging text without forcing longer chapter books on her. She's ready for harder text... but she's not ready for a longer story that will take her several days to read. These books have more difficult words in them, but also have good picture clues and good definition clues in the text since they're written for a younger audience.

Anyway.... sorry about the long rambling post... I'm just had to share my excitement! :-)

one of my favorite things...

... about starting our nature study for school this year, is that it has become a way of life for us now. It's just something that we automatically do, without even thinking, without even labeling it as "school".

We were in Missouri last week for Thanksgiving and on Thanksgiving Day, the kids and I took a little nature walk around my parents' place.

They found this guy...
... and named him Henry. They're determined to look him up in our field guides to find out what he is.

We saw lots of little red berries to identify...

We took a moment to appreciate just how beautiful plants can be, even if they're not green and blooming...

We gathered a few tiny acorns for Henry's (temporary) home...
And saw a bird's nest that had been hidden in the leaves on our last visit...
Alex also got a very hands-on look at seed dispersal methods after he came out of the woods with his shirt covered with little tiny burrs. :-)

I really want to put together a nature study backpack for us. I meant to use an old backpack of Alex's but he's found a new use for it. It would be really nice to have one stocked and ready to go for our random nature walks. Hmmm.... maybe that will be something that I will work on for Christmas.

continuing our tree study - fall

This afternoon we decided that we needed to do our fall entry for our continuing tree study before all of the leaves were gone!  :-)

So, even thought it was a cold rainy day, we decided to brave the elements and take a walk outside.

Here is a shot of the leaves that are still hanging on...

Alex managed to find another leaf as big as his head...
A pretty tree we passed on our walk...
Alex's favorite leaf...
Clara's favorite...
A shot of some of the leaves on the ground...
They look so sad in the photo above... last week they were still bright and cheery.  Now they've been on the ground a while, they've been trampled on and they're wet... sigh.

Clara inspecting her leaf collection...
One last shot of the tree we're studying for the year....
And then it was back inside to work in our nature journals.  I read aloud from the Handbook of Nature Studywhile they worked on their drawings.  I read the section on pages 620-622 about The Way a Tree Grows.  I love how it compares the leaves to factories, that mental image worked well with my two.  

The autumn leaf which is so beautiful has completed its work.

Here is Alex's entry....
and Clara's...
The labeling was still to be done when I took these, but I loved how hard they worked on capturing the bright colors of the leaves.  However, I noticed that even though we were supposed to be studying "our tree", neither one of them used leaves from "our tree" for their journal entry.  Oh well!  :-)

maple trees

Okay... so we're jumping all around with the Handbook of Nature Study Blog's challenges! Today we started on challenge #34... Maple Trees.

After picking the Norway Maple in front of our house as the subject of our year long tree study, we have noticed different kinds of maples around our neighborhood. This helped us to decide to jump to this challenge next.

We had barely made it out our backdoor before the kids found this...

After consulting the guidebook, we determined that it was a Silver Maple leaf (from three yards over).

We found another maple tree on the corner...
Apparently my daughter is a tree-hugger and I honestly have no clue what Alex is doing.

(sidenote on Clara's hair.... she came upstairs this morning and asked if we had any classes today... I told her no and she said... good, then I don't need to comb my hair.. sigh)

We thought this tree...
... was smiling at us.

Clara was enjoying being outside and took off skipping...
This isn't from a maple tree...
... but we thought we would bring it home (along with a leaf from the tree) to identify.

When we got home the kids got out all of their leaves from our walk and their guidebooks. They worked on identifying them for quite a while and then did their entries in their journals (still need to photograph those).

Besides the benefits I've mentioned before... today I realized that another great benefit of these challenges is that we get outside. I know that sounds simple enough but today, after having a sick day yesterday and no classes to go to, we might have stayed in all day.

Starting our tree study

Today we took on another challenge from the Handbook of Nature Study blog. This one I'm really excited about... it's Challenge #11, the year long tree study. I think it is going to be very cool for us to follow the changes of one tree throughout the seasons.

We picked a tree that we can see from our front windows so we can observe it daily.

Here Clara works on doing a bark rubbing...
Alex and his big giant leaf...
I wish I had photos of us getting this monster off the tree. To give you a bit of a visual, it involved me lifting Alex up multiple times before he caught hold of it and pulled.

We set up camp on our front steps (another bonus of choosing a tree that's close)...
Here is Alex going through the guide book to find our tree...
We're pretty sure it's a Norway Maple. Which makes sense since the guidebook states that it's used as a "street tree" and is tolerant of city pollutants. Although Alex is concerned that this leaf measured larger than it said it should be in the guide book. :-)

It washed out in the photo but here's Clara showing off her leaf rubbing...
And here she is drawing the tree....
Alex traced the leaf and then drew in the veins...
Alex's completed entry...
Clara finishing up her drawing...
We took all of their rubbings and stapled them to their journal entry page from today.

I thought when we took on these nature study challenges that we would just be learning about nature... well... we are... but I am so impressed by how observant the kids have become since we started. They really look at things and study them. They don't do just what they have to do to finish the assignment. We take as long as we want to do the challenges and I let them pick their own special focus too. On this one... Clara drew the tree, taking special care to get the right mix of brown, gray and green in the bark.... Alex drew the leaf, detailing the intricate designs of the veins. I'm really, truly loving our nature study!