Spring Series Nature Study with Art and Music - Update to Composer

It was brought to my attention that the composer links for Schubert on page 20 of the ebook are no longer working.

Here are the updated links...you can print out this email and put it with your ebook so you will have the updates when you need them:

· Listen to the entire Piano Sonata in B flat Major D. 960 on YouTube.com.

      Movement 1: http://youtu.be/Ok9tofNmqNY

      Movement 2: http://youtu.be/G2AIMQ0-zWY

      Movement 3: http://youtu.be/zD12AOCty0Q

      Movement 4: http://youtu.be/p2YbCgudmc0

Outdoor Hour Challenge-More Nature Study Book 3 Spring 2012

Spring is upon us and now is the time to get outdoors with our families and really observe the wonders of nature all around our neighborhoods. Whether you make this series of challenges a part of your homeschooling week or you are a family who will complete these challenges on the weekends, the simple nature study ideas you find in this ebook will give you the tools to get started. We are going to have fun exploring our neighborhoods for flowering trees, press flowers for our nature journals, learn about a garden critter, and so much more together with this season of nature study.

The sample linked below lists the topics covered in this new series but  don't be discouraged if you look at the list and think you don't have that particular subject close at hand. There are suggested adaptations that will allow any family to complete this series of nature study activities in your own backyard or neighborhood.

The More Nature Study Book #3 challenges were written for families with children of all ages.You can keep it simple and enjoy your outdoor time with your little ones using the basic challenge. If you have older children or find your child is particularly interested in a certain topic, there are ways to increase the depth of each challenge by adding in additional notebook pages or further research using ideas and suggestions in the ebook.

I am really looking forward to getting started on 3/23/12 with the very first challenge from the ebook.  


Outdoor Hour Challenge: 
More Nature Study Ebook #3 Spring 2012
Spring Splendor

• Ten completely new challenges using the Handbook of Nature Study. See a list of topics and a Sample Challenge.
• 13 notebook pages and 11 coloring pages
• 17 additional Upper Level notebook pages for advanced or experienced students
• 10 Charlotte Mason style exam questions
• Complete list of supplies needed (nothing fancy or expensive)
• Detailed instructions for each challenge, including links (including YouTube videos) and printables
• Nature journal suggestions and examples
• All the challenges will coordinate with the March through May Outdoor Hour Challenge Newsletters
• Alternate ideas to adapt the challenges to your local area
• 74 pages
• $8.95 and includes the Spring Art Prints download (extended) until 5/25/12.

•  Please note that I send the ebook personally so it may take up to 24 hours to receive your download link. Download links will be sent to the email address associated with the Paypal account.

Special Bonus Offer!
For the month of March 2012 (extended until 5/25/12), every purchase of my More Nature Study Book #3 Spring Splendor ebook will include a special Spring Art Prints download to use along with your nature study. This download includes nine spring themed art prints to view or print and enjoy with your family. This resource is perfect for Charlotte Mason homeschool families who wish to include picture study that goes along with the nature study topics (instructions included).

You can now purchase the new spring ebook as part of my Spring Bundle of ebooks.
You can read about each individual ebook on my Spring Nature Study tab.

Bundle Includes:

• More Nature Study Book #3 Spring Splendor (new 2012)
• Spring Nature Study with Art and Music Appreciation 2010
• Garden Flowers and Plants Challenges Ebook
• Bonus! Spring Art Prints (described above)
• $28.80 value

Special Bundle Price is $19.95 

This is a huge library of thirty spring themed nature study ideas with fifty notebook pages! Also, there are spring themed art and music appreciation ideas to complement your nature study.  

See the Spring Nature Study tab on my blog for additional specifics for each ebook and a sample.


 

Ants Are Everywhere: Our Last Spring Series Challenge Entry

My wildside is now blooming like crazy.

Better late than never....here is our last Spring Series Challenge for ants. I made this a challenge for my youngest son to go out and quickly find three different spots in our yard where he knew there were ants.

I know that from working around the yard that there are places where we regularly find ants. In fact, last week I was watering our garden and it seems that I disturbed a colony of ants and they were quickly crawling up my legs before I even knew it. Let's just say that I decided the best course of action was to turn the hose on myself and wash them all away. It must have looked rather funny....you can picture me wearing a skirt with ants crawling all over my legs....then me drenched with cold hose water doing a little "ants in my pants" dance.

Here are the three photos that my son took as he completed my mini-challenge for ants.


Ant on the rocks


Ant on the tree


Ants on the sidewalk

I found a few more this morning during my outdoor time.


Ants on the sunflower


Ants on the wall leading up to the hummingbird feeder


I also noticed that on my wildside I now have English plantain blossoming. Can you see the pollen on my fingers from this little flower? It is very pretty up-close and I never even knew we had this in our yard because it usually gets mowed down before it has flowers.


After we did some pruning a few weeks ago, I added the limbs under a bush near our birdfeeder. I am trying to see what kind of animals and birds will be attracted to this sheltered area adjacent to my wildside. So far I have noticed that the little birds will fly into the pile and then pop out to snatch seeds from under the feeder.

Well that wraps up the whole Spring Series of Challenges for our family. We are busy working on the Summer Series as the weather warms up. I look forward to the next few months outdoors with my family. I hope to see your entries on Mr. Linky!

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Earthworms in the Garden: Spring Series Challenge

Our earthworm study was very informal and done as we did our gardening this past weekend. Our garden boxes were tilled in preparation of our seedlings and in the process we uncovered lots of glorious earthworms. What amazing creatures!



I am always worried that we will hurt them if we dig them up but they soon snuggle back down into the soil, more quickly than you think they should.



We did a formal study of earthworms earlier in the year when we studied them in our science dissection unit. Here is a diagram of the innards of an earthworm.



Mr. B also did a very good sketch of an earthworm for his nature journal.



Rest assured that we will be continuing our study of earthworms as we tend our garden this summer.

OHC Spring Series #10: Ants

This is our last challenge in the Spring Series for 2010. What a wonderful season of nature study we have all enjoyed together!

I encourage the participants of the Spring Series to reflect on what their family has accomplished and where their love of the outdoors has grown. Perhaps you have a better appreciation for the nature study subjects right in your own backyard. Here are a few of my reflections on our family's studies this spring:

• We learned three new bird songs and now we are keeping it going informally each time we are aware of a new bird. It has made us hypersensitive to hearing more birds as we go about our daily life.
  
• We have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of the blooms on our tulip tree (our subject of the year-long tree study).
  
• We were armed with some knowledge when we stumbled across a snake on a hike and a snake in the road. It felt good to be able to distinguish the snakes we saw from a dangerous rattlesnake.
  
• Our spring weather has given us lots to keep track of as far as cloud types. The boys now quiz each other as we go about our daily activities.
  
• Dandelions are everywhere.

There will be no new challenge posted next week but I think it will give us all a chance to catch up on our Spring Series Challenges that we have not posted about yet. I know we still have last week's earthworm post to pull together and now this one for ants.

The first of the Summer Nature Study: Using Your Senses Challenges will be posted on June 18th. If you have not had a chance to read about the new ebook or view the samples, here is the link:


I know that there are many summer nature study opportunities stretching out ahead of us all. I look forward to sharing in all your adventures by reading about them on your blogs or in your emails. You all encourage me by sharing your family's experiences and showing me new ways to be a better teacher and guide. Thanks for all your support.


(Photo from 2007 entry on aphids.)

Outdoor Hour Challenge
Spring Series #10 Insect Study-Ants

Inside Preparation Work:
Read pages 294-300 in the Handbook of Nature Study to learn more about insects in general. You might like to introduce your child to the development and structure of insects using the information from the Handbook of Nature Study.

Read pages 369-373 in the Handbook of Nature Study for information about the ant. Make some notes after reading Lesson 91 on the Field Observations of Ants so you will have some ideas for observation when you take your children outdoors. This might be a fun challenge to use a magnifying lens!

*Note if you are using the free download of the HNS, The Ways of the Ant are on page 419 and in the Homeschool Freebie version of the HNS, the ant is in the Insects PDF on page 114.

We have used educational ant farms over the years in our home and they are a fascinating way to study ants up close. I highly suggest this as a family activity. Here is a link to the ant farm we have used in the past: Uncle Milton’s Giant Ant Farm.

Outdoor Hour Time:
For this challenge you can spend some of your outdoor time looking for ants. Ask your children if they have noticed ants in your backyard and have them investigate to find some ants to observe. Look under rocks, logs, along sidewalks, under leaves, on the bark of trees, and on garden plants. Use the suggestions you listed in your inside preparation time to learn some more about your ants.

Some Ideas For a Simple Ant Study

• Quietly observe ants at work. Count how many ants you can see.
• Can you follow the ant’s path? Can you find the ant’s nest?
• Look carefully to see if all the ants are the same size.
• Do you see ants working together to carry something?
• Do you see any aphids with your ants?
• Do you see any ants fighting?
• Do you see any eggs?

Follow Up Time:
Talk about the ants you were able to observe during your outdoor time. As always, allow time for a nature journal entry. If you are keeping a simple nature journal of your own, remember that a journal entry can be as easy as a sketch, label, and a date. You can also use the notebook page from the Spring Series Ebook or a blank nature journal page from the sidebar of my blog.

You may be interested in viewing this YouTube video from PBS and NOVA, Lord of the Ants. It is rather long but you can choose to watch just a portion of it if you want to with your children.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKbj3ZDmvdU&feature=channel

Please make sure to come back and post your link on Mr. Linky after completing this challenge and writing your blog entry. I always love to come by and see what you are up to!

If you would like all the Spring Series Challenges in one place, I have an ebook gathered for you to purchase for your convenience. The ebook also contains art and music appreciation plans for the spring months as well as custom notebooking pages for each of the challenges. Please see this entry for more details:

Spring Nature Study with Art and Music Appreciation

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Another Snake: Kingsnake This Time

(Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Were there always this many snakes and we just never noticed them?







I kid you not....yesterday my son and I were were in the car and one block from our house there was a dead snake in the middle of the road.

At first we thought it was a fake snake because it was so colorful. I actually *turned around* and went back so we could get out and look at it. My son was shocked! He could not believe that I was going to actually go back and look at it up close. Well, I looked at it from the car window while he got out and took a photo of it with my phone. It was not in bad shape so it didn't seem weird to take a photo. I really just wanted to go home and make a positive identification using the photo. I will spare you the photo this time. (Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons) The one we saw was much yellower in color than this one in the photo which made it very conspicuous.

It was a kingsnake. It looked like this one: California Kingsnake. Here is a good article: California Kingsnake.

These are good snakes...they eat rattlesnakes.

Okay, so now in less than a week I have seen two of the common snakes from our list of snakes from our snake study. It makes me wonder whether they were always here before and I did not notice them. I have been left in no doubt this week of the value of nature study and learning about what is right in our own neighborhoods.

It is a good thing we are not studying mountain lions.....

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Today's Teachable Moment: Gopher Snake

So who said they rarely see snakes in the wild? Me? Yikes, I should have know better than that.

Today on our hike I took a little side trail because I could see some delphiniums blooming on the hillside. I was by myself and down about 20 yards from where I left Mr. A and our dog sitting in the shade.

I was busy taking photos when I looked to my left and just a few feet away was this huge snake laying half on the trail and half in the dry grass.


He was so still that I thought maybe he was dead and at first I couldn't see his head. I hollered up to my son not to come down with the dog because there was a really big snake. He wanted to know what kind because immediately we think rattlesnake when we see a big snake.


I checked his tail and didn't see a rattle and then I moved ever so slightly closer to see if I could locate his head. Wow! He was a big snake but I did manage to see the head and it was round and not diamond shaped so I felt fairly comfortable identifying it as something other than a rattler. I am guessing that he was at least 5 feet long. I snapped a few photos so we could take a closer look once we got home and make a positive identification. I didn't get the whole snake in the photo and I did not take a photo of his head since I did not want to get that close to a live snake.

We had done the preparation work (you can read our entry HERE) for all the snakes on our list last week so I thought it was either a kingsnake or a gopher snake. We came home and pulled out the field guide and sure enough....gopher snake or Pituophis melanoleucus. The guide says gopher snakes can be up to 7 feet long. They eat small animals such as gophers, mice, ground squirrels, and small rabbits. They squeeze their prey until movement stops and then it swallows it whole.

I found this graphic online for our future reference:
Know Your Snakes: Differences Between Gopher Snake and Rattlesnake

I knew we wanted to do more snake study but I never dreamed a subject would come our way so quickly.

A Study of Snakes: Armed with New Information

I waited to post my snake entry until the results of the snake poll were in. It was interesting to me to see just how my readers experience snakes. There were 113 people who responded to the poll.

How Often Do You See Snakes?
Frequently 9 votes
A few times a month 17 votes
A few times a year 55 votes
Rarely 24 votes
Never 7 votes

What Kind of Snakes Have You Seen?
Garter 78 votes
Milk 8 votes
Water 37 votes
Rattlesnake 18 votes
Other 64 votes

We are not a big snake family. Although we have had pet iguanas in the past and currently we have fire-bellied toads, snakes have not been a big fascination with my children. Our only on-going contact with snakes has been through our cats when they bring a dead one home and leave it on our doorstep. They are usually the small kind that don't bring much distress when we see them.


I do not take many photos of snakes so I decided to share our fire-bellied toads instead. This is Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley.

Occasionally we will see bigger more scary snakes on our hikes. This spring we have seen two rattlesnakes, one dead and one alive and curled up practically in the middle of the trail. We gave him some distance and left him alone.

We decided to research the garter snake since this is the most common one we see in our backyard or neighborhood. We found more information on this website: Identifying California Garter Snakes. After looking at the ranges and the photos of the garter snakes we potentially could see in our area, we narrowed our garter snakes down to two kinds:

Sierra Garter Snake or the Mountain Garter Snake


We made drawings and journal entries for both these snakes and the next time we come across one, we will be better equipped to identify it.

We also made a list of potential snakes to study in the future:
California Kingsnake
Western Rattlesnake
Gopher snake
California Striped Racer
Western Yellow Bellied Racer
Northern Rubber Boa

My son brought me the current issue of the National Wildlife magazine to show me an article on garter snakes. Lots of interesting bits in the article that helped us understand this snake a little better. (If you click the link above it will take you to an online version of the article, scroll down to the part about garter snakes.)

I encourage all to pick a snake and take a few minutes to learn some facts about it. I find it interesting that the more I know about something, the more I appreciate its beauty. Yes, even snakes.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Cat Study: One of Our Favorite Subjects

These are our cats Cocoa and Espresso who in 2006 came to live with us. Yes, we can tell them apart...you look at their ears and one has white hair inside and the other does not. They also have very different personalities and habits so once you get to know them you really don't even need to look at their ears to identify them.

It seems like we have a never-ending cat study at our house. We have two beautiful Bombay cats (we are sure that they are mixed with something else as well) that love to socialize with us during our homeschooling day. We can't help but to see these gals up close on a regular basis.


We did do a little more research on the Bombay cat breed and we discovered that we have English Bombays and not American Bombays. It was obvious when we took a look at the differences. We know that they are mixed with something else because they have some longer fur and some white hair in a spot on their chest but they are most definitely related to the Bombay breed.


Our cats are remarkable sleepers. They spend most of their days sleeping in various parts of the house. As the photo above shows, they have always been able to find a comfortable place to sleep.


Cocoa loves to sleep on Mr. A's bed curled up in his big fleece gecko.


Here she is sleeping on my bed. I put out a piece of fleece fabric for her to sleep on or else she will curl up on my pillow. She will sleep on her back like this for long periods of time. I think it is very strange.

Espresso is more of a "sleep where it is convenient gal". She sleeps on kitchen chairs, curled up in a box, or laying on the back deck in the sun.


They are both big time hunters and they will watch from the inside of the window as the birds sit in the feeders. Their tails will be swishing, ears alert, eyes wide, making cat sounds as they watch.


They also like to frequent the school table and sit on papers, binders, or textbooks. No matter that we might be actually trying to work...they make themselves at home.

Our lives are full of the entertaining things that cats do and especially since we are home all the time do we enjoy having them around to keep us company and warm. We recently found one hiding in a paper bag and we left the bag out for a few days and it became the favored sleeping spot for both cats.


My husband does not consider himself a cat lover but these two feline girls have captured his heart. They will even jump into his lap for a good scratch under the chin and then they reward him with a lap full of purring, furry, sleeping cat. Cats are smart.

This was a fun challenge and my boys and I decided we could write about our cats every week, telling a new tale of their sweetness.

Instead, next time I will posting about our snake studies.....not quite such a lovable entry.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

OHC Spring Series #9: Earthworms

Outdoor Hour Challenge
Spring Series #9 Invertebrate Study-Earthworms


Inside Preparation Work
Read in the Handbook of Nature Study all about earthworms on pages 422-425 (Lesson 107). This short section is packed with all kinds of interesting facts about earthworms. The lesson on page 424 gives you lots of ways to study the earthworm and I suggest choosing two or three to try during your outdoor time.

Outdoor Hour Time

“Any garden furnishes abundant material for the study of earthworms. They are nocturnal workers and may be observed by lantern or flashlight….For the study of the individual worm and its movements, each pupil should have a worm with some earth upon his desk.”
Handbook of Nature Study, page 424

Take 15 minutes of your outdoor hour time to find a place in your yard to dig for worms. If you have a garden or flower bed, you may be successful in finding earthworms just a few inches down in the soil. Use some of the suggested activities from the lesson in the Handbook of Nature Study to carefully observe your earthworms.

Follow-Up Activity:
Allow time for a nature journal entry. You may wish to include the following things in your entry:

• How does an earthworm crawl? Does it have legs?
• How long is your earthworm?
• Examine the segments of the earthworm and draw them in your nature journal.
• What color is your earthworm?
• Can you find the head and the tail of the earthworm?
• Where did you find your earthworm? Can you find its home?
• Do you know why earthworms are important?

You can use the notebook page provided with Spring Series ebook, a blank nature journal from the sidebar of my blog, or your own blank nature journal to record you observations and sketches. Don’t forget to sketch and label your earthworm.

More Earthworm Links

• Worm World
• My Anatomy-Getting to Know Squirmin’ Herman. This is an excellent source of specific information about the parts of an earthworm.
• Project to try: Quart Jar Worm Farm

Please make sure to come back and post your link on Mr. Linky after completing this challenge and writing your blog entry. I always love to come by and see what you are up to!

If you would like all the Spring Series Challenges in one place, I have an ebook gathered for you to purchase for your convenience. The ebook also contains art and music appreciation plans for the spring months as well as custom notebooking pages for each of the challenges. Please see this entry for more details:

Spring Nature Study with Art and Music Appreciation

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

OHC Spring Series #8: Reptiles-Snakes

Outdoor Hour Challenge
Spring Series #8 Reptile Study-Snakes

“There are abroad in the land many erroneous beliefs concerning snakes. Most people believe that they are all venomous which is far from true. The rattlesnake still holds its own in rocky, mountainous places, and the moccasin haunts the bayous of the southern coast; however, in most localities, snakes are not only harmless but are beneficial to the farmer.”
Handbook of Nature Study, page 193

Inside Preparation Time:
Snakes are a topic that most children are interested in learning more about. Read pages 193-194 in the Handbook of Nature Study. Make sure to highlight perhaps four or five points that you want to relate to your children before you observe a snake. Our local pet shop always has a few snakes available and they are eager to let us take a look and perhaps even hold one or two. Check around and see if you can find a local pet shop or a zoo that has a good reptile display as part of this Outdoor Hour Challenge.

Choose one or two snakes to learn about that you may find in your local area (Lessons 49-51)

• Garter or Garden Snake pages 194-196 (This snake is the most widely distributed snake in North America.)
• Milk Snake or Spotted Adder pages 197-198
• Water Snake pages 198-199
• Various snakes discussed with images pages 200-203

Outdoor Hour Time:
It is rare to observe snakes in the wild. This challenge is more about general knowledge and arming ourselves with some truths about a creature that perhaps we might encounter at some point in our lives.

You have two choices.
1. Take a field trip to a pet shop or zoo to observe a snake in real life. You may also know someone who has a pet snake that would be willing to let you observe their snake. Make sure to complete the inside preparation work before you go so you have some facts about snakes ready to share.
2. Talk about where a snake would live in your local area. You might need to do a little research for your particular state. Spend 15 minutes outdoors playing snake detective carefully looking for signs of snakes. You will be successful even if you just enjoy your backyard and observe anything that your child finds of interest. The most important thing is to get outdoors!

Follow-Up Activity:
Complete a notebook page for any or all of the snakes you researched during your preparation work or you observed up close. You can use the provided notebook page from the Spring Series ebook, a blank nature journal page from the sidebar of my blog, or a blank nature journal. You can look up your snake on the internet and use the image found there to draw your snake for your journal. Make sure to show the colors of your snake as best you can.

Please make sure to come back and post your link on Mr. Linky after completing this challenge and writing your blog entry. I always love to come by and see what you are up to!

If you would like all the Spring Series Challenges in one place, I have an ebook gathered for you to purchase for your convenience. The ebook also contains art and music appreciation plans for the spring months as well as custom notebooking pages for each of the challenges. Please see this entry for more details:

Spring Nature Study with Art and Music Appreciation

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Our Apple Tree Study: Spring Time

Spring Series-Apple Tree Study


Our new apple tree's blossoms. Photo from 4/22/10 taken by my son Mr. A.

Our study took a turn when we had a huge rainstorm and an inch of snow a few days later. Our weather has been very unstable so we had to postpone our plans to observe our own newly planted apple tree and then drive up the road from our house where there are apple orchards by the acre.

We were finally able to do both parts of the study yesterday.


First our tree....this is the first year we are observing this tree. It had blossoms some time ago but now I am assuming these are the baby apples.


The leaves are a nice texture and we found quite a few bugs crawling on the branches. My husband used the garden hose to spray them off and today they were still not back.



This particular tree has had different kinds of apples grafted onto one trunk. Gravenstein, Fuji, Red Delicious, and a Rome.

It will be interesting to watch this tree mature.

Now for our drive to the apple orchard.


The sky was amazing with its white billowy clouds. My boys actually told me to stop and take a photo....as we stopped the car we realized that there was a field of sweet smelling lupine on the other side of the road.


What a delight and a surprise to see this sight right near-by our home.


The orchards are all green and no longer full of blossoms.


It seems as if you could walk down the rows and feel the apples growing on the trees. I love apples.

Typing up this entry and viewing these photos makes me think that spring really is here. I can see it in the photos. Hooray for spring!

Just another note: I have seriously been lacking in my posting on this blog this week because of the time I am devoting to writing the Summer Series of Outdoor Hour Challenges. There is just so much to research and to pull together so we will have a wonderful adventure this summer with the challenges. I am really looking forward to sharing my new ideas with you soon.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom