I am always thrilled to receive email from families that are currently using the Outdoor Hour Challenge eBook. It is very encouraging to me to have people share how they are using the book and how the challenges have impacted their lives. It is becoming clear to me that nature study, done as a family, not only teaches us about the world around us in our own backyard but it brings our families closer together as we share a wonder and appreciation for all the things discovered.I had one mom email me this week and ask what I suggested families do once they had completed the ten challenges in the Outdoor Hour Challenge eBook. I thought that was a really good question and after writing a response to her personally, I thought I might share some ideas for you all here on the blog.
Start Year-Long Nature Study Projects: These year-long projects are observations and nature study challenges to complete once during each season for a whole year to learn about the changes in seasons in your part of the world.
Seasonal Tree Study: Challenge 11
http://handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com/2008/04/green-hour-challenge-11-year-long-tree.html
Seasonal Weather Study: Challenge 40
http://handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com/2008/11/outdoor-hour-challenge-40-seasonal.html
Pick a Focus from the Outdoor Hour Challenges from the past:
After you have completed the eBook challenges, your family can pick from the focus areas that the OH Challenges have done in the past and work through those if you think you need a little more direction in your nature study. All the past challenges are listed on the Handbook of Nature Study blog on the right sidebar.
Focus areas covered in the past to choose from: Garden Plants, Trees, Mammals, Insects, Non-Flowering Plants, Clouds/Weather, and currently a bird study.
Pick a Focus of Your Own that is of Particular Interest to Your Family:
If you are confident and feel like you want to branch out from the Outdoor Hour Challenges, you might want to choose your own focus area.You could also just take your Outdoor Hour Time and then see what your children are interested in learning more about that you observed during your OH Time. If the topic is not covered in the HNS, maybe you can find a few books or field guides specific to your particular area and have those on hand for reference. Using the techniques in Challenge One, take your OH Time and just enjoy being outdoors. You can ask your children when you are done what they found particularly interesting and use that as a starting spot in picking your focus area. Take a few weeks to explore this area using the Handbook of Nature Study, the internet, your local library, and local field guides.
Pick a Focus and Make it Your Own:
I am aware that many of the Outdoor Hour Challenge families live in a variety of countries and habitats. I have watched these families take the challenges and adapt them to fit their paricular region.
Here is one way to adapt the current challenges to fit your family. I have written the bird challenges in such a way that they can be applied to any bird.
The first bird challenge was just to observe *any* bird in your neighborhood.
The second bird challenge had you looking at beaks.
The third bird challenge has you observing wing and tail shapes.
So all of those challenges, even though they seem to be more about specific birds, can be applied to any bird you have close by.
The birds are being covered by colors so this is another perfect way to adapt the challenges to your local area. The first challenge was red birds, the second was blue birds, and the third is about yellow birds. I am sure if you looked up in your field guide you could find a local bird to fit each challenge and just switch to that bird.
I hope this post gives you some additional ideas for nature study either using the Outdoor Hour Challenges or on your own. I know that the weather is becoming more conducive for outdoor time and if you haven't started the challenges yet, this might be a great time to take the first step.
You can follow my advice from the post Where to Start with the Outdoor Hour Challenges to begin at the beginning using the blog posts. Or you can hop over to Lulu.com and take a look at the eBook format for the first ten Outdoor Hour Challenges. The reviews have been very favorable towards the eBook format because of the ease of use and the convenience of having them all put together with links and additional resources and ideas....and lots of color photos. There are reviews at the bottom of the Lulu.com page that you might like to read. The families that wrote the reviews did a great job of explaining how the book helped them in their nature study.
We are just finishing up a very long week of hiking in our local area. We opted to take a "vacation at home" week and it was wonderfully refreshing and exciting to discover new and interesting places within an hour or so of our front door. I posted about our natural bridge experience earlier in the week and that was just our Monday trip.
I have a huge backlog of photos and stories to share from our trips on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Saturday's trip was to Yosemite to see the spring waterfalls. We calculated our hiking mileage and we hiked between 23 and 25 miles since last Saturday. I also just added up my photos for the week and I took 645 photos in total. I knew I took a lot of photos. :)
Hope you are having a great spring day......or autumn day if you live in the Southern Hemisphere.
Barb-Harmony Art Mom
