I meditated on the plans for the Outdoor Hour Challenge this morning as I trimmed my lavender plants in the front yard. My thoughts were of how far we have come and how many things we have accomplished in little baby steps in the last thirty-seven weeks. I had already decided that this week's challenge will be the last one that focuses on trees until next year. You are always welcome to keep going on your own with trees if you are still enjoying your study but as a group, we will be moving on after challenge thirty-eight to some new topics.
I sat down once inside to map out the next few weeks and then realized that I should maybe look at a little larger scope so we can all be headed in the same direction. After seeing the results so far of the current poll on the Burgess Animal Book, I decided that I will assign a few pages in that book along with the Handbook of Nature Study in our focus of mammals. If you haven't voted in the current poll, please pop over and find it on the right sidebar of my blog. The Burgess Animal Book is written in a narrative style and in a gentle way shares information about different mammals that will appeal to a little bit younger crowd. There just may be some custom notebook pages to go along with these challenges since I know my daughter has been working on making pages to go with the Burgess Animal Book. Pretty cool huh?
I took into account the results of a previous poll and picked several things to learn about in the coming weeks. Quickly I realized that I have enough material to complete challenges up to number fifty-two. That is a whole year of nature study that will be outlined on this blog. Funny thing is that in my mind I had planned on coming up with fifty-two challenges and then stopping but I have not finished covering everything that I want to cover with my boys and so I will keep up the challenges until I run out of material or they graduate from high school, whichever comes first.
Are you interested in the overall plan for the next few focus areas? I reserve the right to change them around a little but this will be the general idea.
Challenge 38: Final tree study-elm, hickory, and chestnut
Challenges 39 and 40: Fall Weather Study-This will include the start of a year long seasonal weather observation study. My daughter's weather lapbook kit would be a perfect fit for this study and at $2.95 it is a very good value.
Challenges 41-43: Flowerless Plants including ferns, mosses, mushrooms and other fungi
Challenges 44-52: Mammals using the Handbook of Nature Study and the Burgess Animal Book for Children
There will also be one challenge for our Winter Tree Study somewhere during the month of January.
I also am planning on taking 11/28/08 and 12/26/08 off so there will be no new challenges those weeks. You can use those weeks for family time or for making up other challenges if you wish. So if all goes according to plan, we will be done with week fifty-two on 2/27/08.
If you are planning on working along with the mammal challenges, you may wish to dust off your copy of the Burgess Animal Book or you can go ahead and purchase it from Amazon.com with your next order. I noticed it is included in their 4-for-3 offer so if you have other books you are purchasing, you could actually work it out so you get it for free.
Edit: Paige wanted you all to know that you can actually read the Burgess Animal Book free online at Project Gutenberg and on Librivox. Thanks Paige for the reminder!
If you have any questions or comments, please leave a comment on the blog or email me privately.
Barb-Harmony Art Mom
