Another found friend

PUMPKINS!!!!!

 Today we carved pumpkins. It was pretty fun to see them try and not make a mess. Skyler was really into trying to get every single seed to bake. I let them draw their own faces and the boys cut their own while I did Skylers. I think her little guy is adorable! Damian was not happy his mouth came out so big and Fox thought it was all good. For Fox he gets to be outside make a mess and be silly so of course it is all good!We found a sprout inside Damians pumpkin which was pretty cool because I had never seen nothing like that before. Come dark we will stick in the lights and have Jack O Lanterns!!

Our Nature Skeletons

Well here are our skeletons made from stuff in nature!! They had fun I am sure. The idea came from The Nature Detectives which is a really neat site. They really liked these and talked alot about the human body bones and organs while making them.

Skylers skeleton she wanted him to wave. She also wanted him to look just like the picture which you know is so hard to do LOL

Damians skeleton he wanted his to have organs as you see the "heart and lungs"

This is Foxs little kid he called it

Cool Stuff Today!!!

They are almost as big as her. My lil girl found some BIG stuff today

A very pretty flower my son found and gave to me He can be so sweet

I GOT MY NEW BOOK!!!!!!

I am so excited to get this book! I really hope to do the Outdoor Hour Challenges at The Handbook of Nature Blog. I cannot wait to start reading. My son is already looking at all the pictures even though they are black and white he loves them!

Today we hunted for stuff

Using the Halloween nature stuff from Nature Detectives we started on a hunt tonight for body parts! Out of their little project booklets we are going to make a skeleton of the human body. Spooky, fun, educational I LOVE IT!!! My kids love Halloween and nature and the body so it is right on spot for us! Here are a few of our pics of tonight and here is a few more.

This is the Halloween activity booklet. (yes I love these little bags)!

The page with the skeleton project (lot's of cute little projects in here)



Here goes the bug boy not even out the door pickin stuff to use!



All the stuff we gathered. We will hopefully do these tomorrow cause it started to get late and well cranky tired kids are NO FUN!!!

What is nature study?

What is a nature study? Well kinda answers itself but sometiumes I think we as parents over think things. I will give you my point of view then you can go to Charlotte Masons idea. To me-In a time where children are so into video games and computers and (gasp) obesity nature study is a way to get them outside and learn a few things. Seems my children like knowing how the world works and how things fit together and well they like to just have fun. I think nature study should not be forced. You may have an idea but children tend to see things and get distracted but as long as they are learning then it's all good. Start with simple things like going for a walk and point stuff out like webs, bark on trees and the veins in the leaves. Just go play. I love to take pictures of all they see. You can make a journal or just use a plain notebook. Let kids touch, see, smell, create things from nature. Nature teaches us so much but sometimes we get too busy to see that. We worry about getting math and language and geography done all the while cooping the kids up and forgetting that they need to have nature in their lives. To me that is pretty much a nature study. You can add some structure but not too much in my opinion because then it is just work again. So hopefully that answers Lindas question and maybe anyone elses. Just go outside play with your kids and see the world in a new way.

A new found little friend of nature

Another found friend for Fox! He is forever finding little friends in the yard, at walmart, cemetaries, churches etc. You get the idea. This is todays friend I will have many posts like this as I have to take pictures of them all LOL.

Our Nature Activity Today (well almost)

Even the best laid plans will fall apart! (sigh) We made these cute little leaf bags and a leaf idial from Naure Detectives. They were so cute and easy to make after all just print and cut. Simple but adorable. After making these I should have laminated before putting them together they will not hold up long but oh well, live and learn! So the assignment or activity today was basically a Fall Season scavenger hunt with a check off list and collect leafs. Well the children had other plans and I decided to let "nature" take it's course so to speak. We had a great picnic, started off down some trails, they were so cute with their clip boards! I showed them how to use a crayon to make a rubbing and well that is all she wrote. For the next two hours the boys made bark rubbings of every tree they could possibly could get close to. They were having so much fun I just had no heart to say "no we have to collect leaves". Skyler was content picking out trees but didn't want to to the rubbings herself. The boys once again take care of their baby and her wants by making some for her too. It was a great day maybe we will gather leaves another day I am just happy they enjoyed themselves doing something other than a video game and I got to see all the happy "wow mom look at that smiles". If you would like to see more wonderful pictures of our day please go here.  

Nature Walks

 Well we have went on some nature walking in the past week. These are a few of the favorite pics I have taken. I am not sure why the spider pics look like this but me and the kids thought it was really neat how the lighting and all can make things change. Notice this big guy here is missing a leg WOW. I think the detail you see in the web is pretty neat as well. My son decided to tug at one end and sure enough that spider started to crawl towards it. So we saw first hand how they can sense their prey through vibrartion.

We think this is some type of burrow maybe for field mice?? We didn't try and find out cause I was none too keen on a possible snake popping out of that hole so we just left well enough alone on that.

We were trying to find animal tracks (you think it be easy) when Little Woodland Princess here decided she was just tired of walking and needed a rest. They had fun searching for tracks but were a bit disapointed when there was none to be found. But all in all they are all having fun with our new nature studies. We took tons of pictures and if you would like to see the ones that were not my all time favorite click here!

Today's Activity APPLE TASTING

Today we did some apple tasting! The kids adored this. We started with 9 different apples, the kids all picked 2 to compare and contrast and then we made a graph for which apples were liked the best. Jonagold was a favorite among all of them. Fuji and Red Del. came up after that one. We used Washington, Granny Smith, Jonagold, Mcintosh. Empire, Golden Del. Red Del. Fuji and Rome. It was really fun to see the different reactions when they tasted one that was a bit on the tart sour side. My son Damian was not picky he liked them all. I saw this idea on the Handbook of Nature Study blog. She uses the Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Comstock as her guide and she has these Outdoor Hour challenges on her blog. I have yet to research or read this book so I am not yet certain I will be joining in on her Challenges everytime but the apple tasting sounded really fun so I did that one. I really wish we had an apple orchard or something around here but sadly we don't so Walmart had to do! For a few more pictures please go here.

Who says you can't catch a lizard?

 My wonderful bug boy is going to lizards. We were told by quite a few people when we moved here my son would never catch a lizard. Well I am here to tell you he can. Pretty much daily at that he brings me a new lizard. He has had a few that actually will stay in his hand after he lets go as well. Exuse his horribly dirty nails, no he don't eat that way but when he plays all I can say is HE PLAYS! He catches these friends all the time which is a miracle to me as I grew up in FL. and never could I even get close enough to touch one! Leave it to him though "my little bug boy".

Leaf Gall??

My daughter found this outside. My son poked at it forever thinking it was some kind of curled up caterpillar, but when I googled fuzzy thing on leaf I got a leaf gall, whatever that is. I wonder if it is some kind of insect egg sack though. Why in the world would this just grow on a leaf??? Why is it fuzzy? The world may never know I guess. The kids have it on a shelf so they can "watch it".

Todays Activity!!

We took some normal pinecones and let the mess begin LOL.

 We smothered them in peanutbutter. If you do this wear gloves it is MESSY!!!!

Then we covered them in birdseed added strings made of yarn and TA- DA Instant birdfeeders. Even my son who can't stand messy stuff enjoyed this as long as he could use his gloves.

Here is all three feeders hanging on one of our MANY MANY trees!

We also bought a few feeders from Walmart such as this small hummingbird feeder. The bottom is called a seed and suet feeder. You can make this but it ivolves adding some fat from meat or whatever that you cook and I can't stand the smell of left over grease so that was not gonna work for me at all. The bought feeders were not expensive for them and the food I payed like 7-8 dollars and my kids truly are looking forward to birds visiting the yard so hopefully they will. For some extra pics of todays mess go here.

Our Bug Center

My son is a major bug lover so we have a bug center in our entryway. It is complete with the giant punch-out bugs hanging all over the wall above. I also have some insect books off to the side.

 We have alot of play bugs that were bought from Lakeshore Learning forever ago. They are actually really cool each box has a certain type of insect toy and a matching info card. The flash cards came from Targets Dollar section. The bottom shelf houses a Magic School Bus ant hill and rotting log, the bag behind it is full of bugs to use in those play sets.

The little totes house small notebooks, clip boards with plain drawing paper and bug acessories. The bug acessories include small tupperware containers, tweezers, magnifying glasses, the famous bug vaccuum as well as various bug containers picked up from here or there over the years. I have just recently learned how to make insect displays with pins and styrofome as my children love to bring home dead bugs they find in the yard. I am looking forward to this as usually my childrens special findings lay around on the shelf, get knocked off stepped on etc. This is the most used stuff in my school room as they all love it!

Our First Nature Activity

Well, not literally our first, but the first time I am bothering to actually make it an actual nature activity and the first post on my new blog! Today we collected fallen leaves and made crowns. My daughter is The Woodland Princess and my son calls himself The Warrior. My older son passed on this activity. I was informed by my little boy here that warriors do not wear shirts. He will always look for a reason to be partially dressed. All in all it was a great day I would say. I am going to attempt to have an activity as often as we can. Playing in nature sure is better than TV and video games and hopefully they will learn alot along the way. I plan on putting together nature notebooks as well, so hopefully this will be something we all look forward to on a regular basis!!  For a few more pics of this go here.