A Simple "How-to" Guide to Nature Study

{a guest post}

I grew up in the suburbs. My main memories of nature are crows and red-breasted robins. We had cats and a dog. I spent a lot of time indoors watching t.v. I knew things grew out there beyond the sliding glass door but I wasn't terribly interested. Then, in my mid-twenties, I married my Mountain Man and we moved to the island of Corsica, France also known as L'ile de Beaute or Island of Beauty. He loved the outdoors and inevitably, we spent a lot of time there. I began to realize what I had been missing. When we started a family, I knew time spent in nature was going to be a family value. But how exactly? Early on in our homeschool journey, I connected with the values of Charlotte Mason's educational philosophy. I kept coming across the term "nature study" and found it incredibly intimidating. It sounded ideal but I needed some practical application. I find it is more challenging to pass on something you never had yourself. Not impossible just more challenging.

"How-to" Guide to Nature Study

So, I wanted to share a few simple tips to how we do nature study in our home. My hope is the term will transform from feeling intimidating to being feasible and fun for you and your family as it has for us! I find when I participate right alongside my children, pointing out discoveries, wondering about what we've found and even recording them, nature study is a richer experience for all of us. So, don't stand back, jump right on in! Become child-like again! This year, my goals (the keyword here is goals :-)

• Once a week, take a nature walk and bring home some special discoveries.

• Once a month, spend an extra hour recording our experience through words and art.

Step Outside

Half the battle is just getting out the door and into nature. Once you're on a trail, observe. Ask questions (mom too!) Recognize beauty. Marvel at what you find. Need a jump-start? Read how our family turns a nature walk into a nature scavenger hunt to inspire observation and stir curiosity. It's easy!

Bring Home a Specimen

I only use the term specimen because it sounds more officially scientific. What I mean is gather a few samples of what you discover. A wildflower, pine cone, or a bug. Bring them home and display them on your nature shelf. I've cleared the top of a bookcase to showcase our weekly finds.

Use Nature Guides

Gather a collection of guides to use. The guides can assist you in answering some of the questions that came up on your walk. Also use them to identify the specimens you brought home. To compliment your nature walks, try Christian Liberty Nature Readers. They can be read independently around a 3rd grade level or you can read them aloud.

 My small collection of nature guides. Find them at garage sales, online or borrow them from the library.

I store ours within reach in a basket on our art shelf.

Record Your Discovery

This year, I've printed this free nature journal template. It can be folded but I put ours flat in a three-ring binder for use at home. Once or twice a month, we'll fill out the form in detail, recording our observations.

 The cover of Samuel's nature notebook.

Once a month, we draw or paint our specimen using any art materials we choose. There is a space for a drawing on the free nature journal template. However, you may choose to buy a special sketch book to accompany your nature study.

 Jesse's first grade drawing of a gumweed

About AshleyBrendle

Ashley is the proud mama of 6 boys (including 1 set of twins). She and her husband live on a small sustainable farm in Oregon where they love to integrate homeschooling, faith in Jesus, family, and ministry into one big, happy life! She believes God wants mothers to thrive in their homes. She writes at Tips4Mom and shares her journey via podcast at ChristianMommyMinute.  I've enjoyed and been challenged by her thoughtful writing and encourage you to check it out!



Related Posts on Cultivated Lives:
Why Nature Walks
How to Nature Walk
Nature Walk Resources
Nature Walking: Books that Inspire
Seven Ways to Take a Walk
 

Our Daily Dose of Science!

Monsoon season has a way of luring us outdoors...  The smell of the creosote, the dip in temperature and puddles, puddles everywhere!

I think the boys couldn't be more pleased with the 'daily outdoors challenge'.  They know that if I'm feeling iffy on going outside that they can just bring this up and hold me accountable! :)

We had fun walking the neighborhood, inspecting the retention basins which had a couple of feet of water and we collectively mourned the loss of one of our trees out front in the aftermath of recent storms.

Monsoon season is also when some of our desert wildlife that has been safely hiding underground comes out to play.  A fascinating croaking sound met our ears as we embarked to explore our flooded neighborhood.  While building dams with river rock, we discovered these little toads out and about.  I believe they are Colorado River Toads, sometimes also called Sonoran Desert Toads.  But after listening to the call of the American Bullfrog, I'm not sure.  They were quite busy that night and within two days when we were outside again, exploring the water that was left, the boys discovered TADPOLES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh this is one of the beauties of childhood. Memories came flooding back from my childhood and the many instances of wading in the lake behind my home capturing tadpoles and then taking them home for the remainder of their metamorphosis.

There is something so special, so powerful about tangible, impromptu science lessons like this.  We studied frogs last year, but even reading about it in books or doing some fun activity doesn't even begin to compare with the real thing.  Watching the transformation take place before our very eyes is simply amazing.  This morning our little tadpoles merely had two tiny legs. By dinner time, they are sporting tiny arms too.

It is a timely reminder to seize the 'real-life' learning opportunities that come our way because context and experience are potent allies in the learning process.

So we continue our daily outdoor challenge.  I haven't been doing it perfectly, but life is settling back into routine and with it the daily habit of time spent outdoors WITH my children.

Mesquite Gathering, Mesquite Eating!

Anyone who has known me for long, knows that I talk big about gardening and even make attempts every few years with sub-par to abysmal results.  I'm at it again, trying to get the soil prepared for a fall garden because hope springs eternal that I'll banish the black thumb someday.

In the meantime, I finally decided to pursue something else that has piqued my curiosity for several years - foraging.  For years I've had this itch to make something with the abundance of mesquite seed pods that we find each summer...

This week I finally stopped daydreaming about it and decided to give it a whirl.

The boys helped me collect mesquite pods.  We carefully inspected them for signs of insect holes and brought them home, washed them up and then set them in a still warm oven to sit overnight.

We remembered back to our adventures 2.5 years ago when we learned about the Tohono O'Odham indians here in Arizona and how they would grind mesquite pods.  We knew we weren't that ambitious, so I pulled up the internet to search for a better way to make mesquite flour.  I came across this insightful post written by Frugally Sustainable, a fellow Arizona blogger! 

This morning we set to work breaking up pieces and placing them in our Blendtec!  The kids were so intrigued at the thought of having mesquite pancakes!  It put them all in a goofy mood.  I've had an off-kilter day or two and their silly antics worked wonders in helping me to lighten up!  How can you not smile at faces like this?

Mesquite pancakes were our first order of business.  Cooking time was much higher than regular pancakes, but they were well worth the wait.  Even my hubby, who is {understandably} leary of some of my experiments declared them tasty!

Inspired by my brunch success, we tackled mesquite flour tortillas for dinner!!! The unique flavor of the mesquite and the zip from the cayenne I added to the dough were well, A.M.A.Z.I.N.G!!!!!!

We inhaled our southwest meal and all of us looked around longingly for more.   Which meant quickly departing for our nightly walk to forage some more! 

UPDATE:

* The mesquite pods ended up chipping the walls of my blender a bit.  So I'm not sure if we'll be pursuing that avenue of getting mesquite flour again.

* This site provides a lot of info and they even have community events in Phoenix and Tucson every October and November where you can grind your mesquite pods into flour with their heavy-duty mill.

*These recipes for pancakes and tortillas inspired me.  I replaced the dairy and eggs in the pancakes and upped the mesquite flour and switched in 1/2 c mazo (corn flour).

*Greta had a rough weekend and it turns out that her poor little tummy can't handle the mesquite, so we are on a definite break from this yummy flour for a while.

A Week of Walks!

I apologize for my break in blogging.  Blogger has been giving me grief and it appears that I'm going to have to figure something out since I'm close to maxing out my picture storage space...  But it is working tonight, so on to the Daily Outdoor Challenge!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Since evening heat isn't too intense yet, we've taken to an after-dinner walk. Greta's in bed by 6pm and my amazing husband does the dinner dishes each night (How blessed am I???), so the boys and I have taken this time to depart for an evening stroll! Because we get bored easily, we came up with a couple of variations to add some fresh spark to these adventures!

So here you go.

1. Color Walk

This was the most popular of our walks this week!  We simply took our colored pencils and a tiny notebook and marked a square for each main color.  As we walked, we hunted for different colors and kept a tally of what we found!  The only rule I had was that we couldn't count the bark of every tree for our brown category.  Although I did allow them to include twigs from a bush and bark from a tree as two distinct sightings!

This Red Bird of Paradise was one of our favorite sightings since we could mark off both the red and orange category in one fell swoop.

2. Listening Walk

We love doing these.  The book, The Listening Walk, inspired us to throw this into the mix.  {I mentioned this book last year when doing my series on Nature Walks and books that inspire them!}

Simply map out your walk and then keep as quiet as you can so you can see how many different sounds you can discern.  Keegan even bent down to the ground to see if he could determine if ants made noise.  I'm sure they do, but we were unable to detect it!  For these walks, any kind of sound counts - birds, lizards sliding through the bushes, an airplane going by, a siren in the distance...

3. Phonemic Walk

We play around a lot with letter sounds.  A favorite game in the car is to make our way through the alphabet trying to come up with as many words as possible to go with the currently assigned letter/phonemic sound.  Phonemic awareness is an important precurser to being able to read and the ability to break a word down into its phonemic units is an important skill in needing to be able to spell well.

We decided to try this out on our walk.  At the zoo, each boy was assigned a specific sound and kept a tally of what each found with that sound.  At home, we filled a notbook page with the alphabet and wrote down what we found on our walk that fit with each sound.  The goal is to fill up every space!

4. Animal Count Walk

These kinds of walks are a bit more rewarding if you head to a nature preserve, but we were surprised at how many different kinds of birds we found in addition to lizards, ants, cockroaches (ugh) and even a cottontail rabbit!  Not bad for our suburban desert neighborhood!

I'm not sure where they are nesting, but two roadrunners have taken up residence near our home.  We love catching glimpses of them running around our front yard!

5. Misty Walk

With the temperatures continuing to climb, we enjoyed filling our squirt bottles with ice water and heading out.  The boys had fun walking into a cool mist as they pumped away.  And naturally, it evolved into a squirt battle!

6. Race Walk

I don't know if anyone deals with this, but my boys like to RUN!  I ran into problems last year though when they would get carried away and run too far in front of me.  I didn't want to have to yell to get them to stop, but being hugely pregnant and trying to stay OFF bed rest didn't make it easy to race and catch up.  We instituted 'race walks' where I set a goal, i.e. two lamp posts, the stop sign, the end of the street, etc, where they can race to before stopping for me to catch up!  They love these race walks and it is an incredible way to burn their seemingly endless energy!  It also has been great at teaching them to pay attention to my verbal instructions which my four year old has a particularly difficult time doing. 

Since Greta has been going to bed early, I've had fun racing with them.

7. God-Talk Walk

These are my favorite of all.  Typically they work best when I only have one child with me, but we've also had a few God-Talk Walks that work out well when they are all with me.  We take the time to thank God as we walk for things we are enjoying in His creation.  I love slowing down and drawing our attention to the Creator of this beautiful world we live in.  Another way to have a 'God-Talk Walk' is to model using this time to just converse with God.  God and I have our very best conversations when I'm walking, hiking or jogging.  There is something about the fresh air and a busy body which helps my heart and mind slow down and connect with the Lord.  I've starting telling the boys about what I do on my walks and then will pray out loud as I walk with one of them.  My favorite part is when I share with them the importance of listening and then we talk about what God is impressing on our hearts.  Oh these are precious memories that I know I'll treasure forever.  My prayer is that they will see how natural and essential spending time with the Lord in prayer can be.

Well, that wraps up this week's Daily Outdoor Challenge.  How have you been enjoying time outdoors with your children this week?

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The Daily Outdoor Challenge

What would happen if we made a commitment to spend special time EACH and EVERY day outdoors?

I'd venture to guess that we would feel:

• more relaxed
• more connected with our family
• more connected with the Lord
• more productive with the rest of our day
  

I'd venture we would be able to:

• think clearer
• focus better
• enjoy life more

Recently, I was asked about spending time outdoors with my little one's.  Living here in the desert it is often assumed that the summer months just aren't conducive to spending time outdoors.  To a certain extent that is true and one of the main reasons why we do much of our formal academic learning during the hot summer months.  Because really, what else is there to do when it is 115 outside?

But what if...  what if, we turned that perception around and found time {albeit possibly at the beginning and the end of the day} to enjoy time outdoors?

I'm taking on the challenge of spending a minimum of 20 minutes outdoors each and every day with my children.  I'm not talking merely adding up time running to and from my car to the next air-conditioned building.  I mean fun, carefree time enjoying God's beautiful creation and playing with my children outside.

I often boot them outdoors because the benefits to letting them unwind are monumental.  But I think it is time that I give myself the boot too!

Each Friday, I'll be posting a diary of our outdoor adventures and I'd love for some of you to join me.  Do you think you can commit to spending some time outdoors each day with your kids?  It could be as simple as taking a walk, playing basketball, inspecting bugs or working in the garden.  I'd love for you to come back and share either by linking up a blog post or sharing your adventures in the comments or on our facebook page!  Let's see if we can inspire one another to spend more time outside with our families.  And for those of you in nicer summer climes, you can brag about how wonderful your weather is and the myriad of wonderful outdoor options you have.  I'm ok with that too!  Although, beware.  Come August, I might be packing up my bags and bringing the family for a visit!  And come January, I'll be bragging about our weather when you can't shovel a path to your car!

Want to join in on the fun?  Grab our button, and then link up your post each week!

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So here is what we did this last week:

SATURDAY:
I should probably start writing these things down, or start going to bed earlier, because for the life of me, I can't remember what we did that day...

SUNDAY:
I am sick and stay home from my boys AWANA Awards night. :\  Greta and I did enjoy spending almost 30 minutes sitting in the Adirondack chair staring up at the blue sky.  Sometimes we just need to be still and breath in fresh air!  I could feel my head start to clear and my tummy calm down.  Mercifully, it put her in a sedate mood too.

MONDAY:
We dig around in our compost pile and started transporting some of it to our garden plot.  I'm determined to get rid of my black thumb one of these days.  We are preparing our beds now for a fall garden and enjoyed inspecting all of the hundreds of tiny bugs and other organisms that took up residence in our compost pile.  The roaches that have taken up residence there were not appreciated or admired however. :shudder:

TUESDAY:
My sister is in town visiting!!!!  We meet at our favorite nature preserve.  The boys enjoy jumping in the creek and we count quail.  I bring our watercolors thinking they might want to paint as we've done previously, but they are too excited seeing cousins again.

Keegan and I had a Bible Moment-Nature walk that evening.  While our Bible Moment didn't quite live up to my {probably unreasonably} high expectations, we discovered a bee's nest that had been turned over and stopped to inspect it for a while.  Bee's were everywhere.  We noticed the flowers falling off of the prickly pear cactus and discussed the possibility of trying our hand at making Prickly Pear Jelly this year when the fruit ripens!

WEDNESDAY:
A storm swept in, making it a perfect day for an umbrella walk.  We took turns telling each other what we loved about God's creation.  At the top of my list is the creosote bush that gives the desert it's characteristic 'rain' smell!

I'm FINALLY starting to identify some of the birds around here.  We are thrilled to see several Killdeer on our walk around the neighborhood.

We stop by to see if the bee hive is still there.  Most of the bees appear to have died - either from the rain or hail.  We can't decide.  We simply sit and ponder.

THURSDAY:

In honor of the 237th anniversary of the capture of Fort Ticonderoga (hurray for practical math application!), we staged a re-enactment in the backyard!

FRIDAY: 
Despite temperatures around 98 degrees, we set out while dinner cooked to see what was happening with the beehive.

A Forest Walk

 Through a cacti forest that is...

The desert lured us out.  It is in full bloom - greener, with tiny splashes of color.  We ran, poked the dirt, inspected scat, played in dry washes and admired God's creation.  Greta managed to sleep through it all securely snuggled up to me.

This was a particularly windy day. It was fascinating to walk past soaring saguaro's and see them sway as the wind whistled past.  It was the most beautiful sound.  I've noticed the wind in the tree's when we escape up north to the pine country.  But I've failed to notice the sound of wind whipping past a statuesque saguaro.

It is so nice to slow down and use our senses to take in everything. 

As little fingers gently touched these thorns thoughts turned towards the crown of thorns placed on Jesus' head.  Oh what He went through for us...

Spring makes many antsy to get outside. For some it is because they have been home bound because of the cold. For us it is the knowledge of impending heat that limits our summer outdoor hours...

Have you had any outdoor adventures this week?