Nature Study Week 8: Field Trip (Camping at Daisy State Park)

One of my goals for 2017 was to be more intentional about Nature Study for the four youngest children (5,7,9, and 11).  I want to do Nature Study once a week around a specific theme.  I remembered a friend mentioning a resource she bought at the beginning of the school year and after taking a look at it decided this might be what I needed to help make sure I actually get it done.  I bought Exploring Nature With Children , an ebook with 48 nature study ideas, a poem to go along with your theme, the name of a piece of art work to look up, books, and extension activities.  She also lists coordinating pages from Handbook of Nature Study if you have that book and are interested in looking up more information.


Our week 1 study was on the winter sky.

Week 2 was on the moon.

Week 3 was on trees.

Week 4 was a pond study.

Week 5 was on Candlemas and looking for signs of new life.

Week 6 was earthworms.

Week 7 was on evergreen trees.

The week 8 nature study theme was to take a field trip and go to a place you have never been before or a place that you rarely visit.  We were planning a camping trip to Daisy State Park.  We were trying to go last week-end but couldn't (and I was glad because it got cold!), so we put it off until this week-end. I thought we were going to end up postponing again when two children were running fever the day before we were supposed to leave but their fevers broke and they were feeling better (still coughing and sneezing but better.)  Anyway we had some very interesting nature study experiences on our camping trip. 

They had a 3/4 mile nature walk that we walked twice.  We saw some birds on our walk, some crawdad mud huts (I'm sure that's not the proper name for those), leaves, butterflies, and feathers.  We walked this trail twice.

State Parks offer free educational programs (and actually started charging for some of their programs but that's a different story.)  We went to a program called critter crunch where we got to watch them feed their box turtles, Johnny and June, and their speckled king snake Ella.  Snakes and mice are probably my two least favorite things in the world, but I did watch them feed the snake.  They fed her frozen mice from Petco.  I don't think I could've watched them feed live mice.

They had a really interesting evening program.  We went to a campfire that hot chocolate and smores were provided and afterwards was a star gazing program.  I thought we were just going to look at the stars in the sky (it was a really clear night), but they had a brand new star lab.  It was an inflatable round room.  Once we got inside, she told some Native American stories about the stars and the stars were all around us.  She pointed out the stars and constellations we were talking about and then once we got back outside we could find them in the night sky.  It was pretty interesting.

We  went geocaching for the first time.  That was fun!  All of the state parks around here have geocaches but we have never tried it before.  We found one, and looked for another but did not find it. The children can't wait to do that again!

We also did some fishing of course!

And Lily found lots of freshwater clam shells.

Happy Homeschooling!

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Nature Study Week 7: Evergreen Trees

One of my goals for 2017 was to be more intentional about Nature Study for the four youngest children (5,7,9, and 11).  I want to do Nature Study once a week around a specific theme.  I remembered a friend mentioning a resource she bought at the beginning of the school year and after taking a look at it decided this might be what I needed to help make sure I actually get it done.  I bought Exploring Nature With Children , an ebook with 48 nature study ideas, a poem to go along with your theme, the name of a piece of art work to look up, books, and extension activities.  She also lists coordinating pages from Handbook of Nature Study if you have that book and are interested in looking up more information.


Our week 1 study was on the winter sky.

Week 2 was on the moon.

Week 3 was on trees.

Week 4 was a pond study.


Week 5 was on Candlemas and looking for signs of new life.



Week 6 was earthworms.


The week 7 Nature Study topic was evergreen trees.  We actually covered this earlier in the year as part of our studies in Exploring Countries and Cultures, but it never hurts to talk about something more then once :)  We read through the pages in Exploring Nature with Children and read the suggested poem and looked at the artwork.  I had planned on walking the nature trail at the park when we were in town on Tuesday afternoon but it was raining (again!)  Instead, we looked at some of the trees in our own yard on a pretty sunshiny day, and the children did some drawings in their notebooks.

Lily did not get finished before we had to leave the house

Happy Homeschooling!

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Nature Study Week 6: Earthworms

One of my goals for 2017 was to be more intentional about Nature Study for the four youngest children (5,7,9, and 11).  I want to do Nature Study once a week around a specific theme.  I remembered a friend mentioning a resource she bought at the beginning of the school year and after taking a look at it decided this might be what I needed to help make sure I actually get it done.  I bought Exploring Nature With Children , an ebook with 48 nature study ideas, a poem to go along with your theme, the name of a piece of art work to look up, books, and extension activities.  She also lists coordinating pages from Handbook of Nature Study if you have that book and are interested in looking up more information.


Our week 1 study was on the winter sky.

Week 2 was on the moon.

Week 3 was on trees.

Week 4 was a pond study.


Week 5 was on Candlemas and looking for signs of new life.


This week's topic was earthworms.  The ironic thing was that I have had worms in my fridge for weeks left over from the last fishing trip, but they finally died about a week ago.  So to have an earthworm to study, we had to dig.  I was not sure we were going to find any easily and if we didn't I was going to buy some.

It was a beautiful day, over 70 degrees, just a bit windy.

After just a few minutes Christian found this guy.

And then Anthony found a really good size worm.

We read the information about worms in the book and the children sketched the worms in their journal.

We read the poem about worms and then put our worms back where we found them. 

Happy Homeschooling!

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Nature Study Week 5: Candlemas

One of my goals for 2017 was to be more intentional about Nature Study for the four youngest children (5,7,9, and 11).  I want to do Nature Study once a week around a specific theme.  I remembered a friend mentioning a resource she bought at the beginning of the school year and after taking a look at it decided this might be what I needed to help make sure I actually get it done.  I bought Exploring Nature With Children , an ebook with 48 nature study ideas, a poem to go along with your theme, the name of a piece of art work to look up, books, and extension activities.  She also lists coordinating pages from Handbook of Nature Study if you have that book and are interested in looking up more information.


Our week 1 study was on the winter sky.

Week 2 was on the moon.

Week 3 was on trees.

Week 4 was a pond study.

This week's nature study them was Candlemas.  I have to admit I had never heard of this before.  Candlemas is observed on February 2nd (halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox)and is known as "The Feast of the presentation of Christ in the temple."

The nature study was to take a walk and look for signs of new life.  I have to tell you that we had some beautiful days this week, in the 70's.  But I did not look ahead at the weather and February 2nd was cold and cloudy!  Our "walk" was in the yard and very short.  The children looked for anything that suggested spring. 

Christian found some weeds that started growing in the yard and drew those. 

Lily found some leaves on the rosebush. 

Anthony saw a robin at the bird feeder.

Happy Homeschooling!

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Nature Study Week 4: Pond

One of my goals for 2017 was to be more intentional about Nature Study for the four youngest children (5,7,9, and 11).  I want to do Nature Study once a week around a specific theme.  I remembered a friend mentioning a resource she bought at the beginning of the school year and after taking a look at it decided this might be what I needed to help make sure I actually get it done.  I bought Exploring Nature With Children , an ebook with 48 nature study ideas, a poem to go along with your theme, the name of a piece of art work to look up, books, and extension activities.  She also lists coordinating pages from Handbook of Nature Study if you have that book and are interested in looking up more information.



Our week 1 study was on the winter sky.

Week 2 was on the moon.


Week 3 was on trees.

This week's suggested nature study was on a pond.  If you had started using the book in the fall, you were supposed to go back to the same pond you visited then and take note of some of the differences.  We did not start the book until January.  We do not have a pond on our property.  There is one on the edge of our property but it is our neighbor's.  But there is a pond at the park.  We have been going to the park on Tuesday afternoons to kill time between gymnastics and dropping Nick off at youth, so instead of going straight to the play equipment we went to the pond first.

There was not any animals around at all.  We did see a couple of insects in the water but that was it!  The children tried to measure the depth of the water at the edge with a stick.  We could not walk all the way around the pond because there were other people there that were taking photographs of their children and I did not want to intrude..  But we did walk halfway around and back.  We did not remember to bring the sketch books so I took some photographs and they did some drawings the next day.  I wish that we had a microscope so we could take a look at the water on a microscope.  Maybe some day we will add one to our homeschool supplies.

I need to remember to bring my camera when we go places instead of just my phone.  Then the children can take some pictures of their own.

Happy Homeschooling!

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