Nature – Page 6 – Preparation Education

Our start on Botany

June 26, 2009prayingmother

We decided to study botany this summer. We are going to use the Exploring Creation with Botany book by Apologia as long as we enjoy it. So far so good. We’ve done it two days. We also purchased the Botany Notebooking Journal to go with it. We’ll see how that goes. For the most part, JD Boy will have to narrate and I’ll have to write.

He enjoys drawing, so any and every page that has drawing will be up his ally. Not sure if I’ll have him do the scripture copywork or not. As for Zippy, I’m having her write the short answers and narrate the long answers to me and do all the copywork.

If you know us, you might wonder if we’re better off to just learn about flowers and not follow a book. I’m not sure. We enjoyed learning about birds so much and it was a lot more spontaneous even though we were following the challenges on the Outdoor Hour Challenges. I guess this is my reserve on this book. But it does give lots of ideas for outdoor activities, so we’re going to give it a try and I’ll let you know if we love it or not.

With all that said, my husband took the kids on a flower quest walk, which started off our botany journey. My children just love going to find what they can find. He took the camera to see what wildflowers they could find. I don’t know if this got the kids excited about studying botany, but it made me excited. Although, I enjoyed the pictures not the walk, because it’s when I had the flu and I sat in the car. I did my part though–I identified the flowers. I’m not a pro at identifying flowers, but I’m going to learn how to do it. Maybe you get the idea, that I was the one that wanted to learn botany.

Here’s what we found.

Mullein Pink Lychnis coronaria

(Purple) Foxglove Digitalis

(White) Foxglove Digitalis

Foxglove Digitalis A wide shot for perspective

Shasta Daisy Leucanthemum x superbum

I hope we identified this flower correctly. It is a bit hard to tell the difference between this and the Oxeye Daisy, but this one stunk and that was the identifying difference. The Shasta does grow wild west of the Cascades, which includes our area.

Shasta Daisy Leucanthemum x superbum A wide shot for perspective.

Well, we enjoyed the flowers. Now to see how we enjoy the botany!

Discovery Park–Seattle, WA

June 25, 2009prayingmother

A few weeks ago we got to take a very enjoyable walk at Discovery Park in Seattle, Washington. If you ever visit Seattle and enjoy walking and want to get away from blacktop and skyscrapers, visit Discovery Park. It’s really neat. We only scratched the surface. There was a lot more to see and many more walks to take. Maybe we’ll go back again sometime and do some more exploring.

One of the neatest things to watch from there is the sailboats. There are points where you can look right out on the Puget Sound and on a nice day, it is full of sailboats. You can also look across the water and see the Olympic Mountains–beautiful.

This is our only picture of the water. You can just barely see the Olympics in the background and our big bodies are blocking all the sailboats. Sorry my eyes were closed. It was very bright that day.

Whie we were standing on this deck, we got to see the most beautiful little bird. He stayed in one place for quite awhile so we got out the bird scope and each enjoyed a real close look at him.

Here he is–an Anna’s Hummingbird.

Zippy snapped this photo with her dad’s camera. I just love how his feathers reflected in this picture, even though it looks like he’s wearing a mask.

There were wild roses all around that deck. We enjoyed watching the bees fly in and out of them, but we really enjoyed smelling them.

Then we took off on a walk and these are some of the things we found.

This was an artifact saved from the demolition of a building in Tacoma, Washington that had been built in 1909. it is called the Guardian of the Spirit. There were even little bowls on the ground where somebody had left their offering to the spirit, I guess. My kids were convinced it was a real idol. They may have been right.

We had the opportunity to see some beautiful flowers along the path. I think they were cultivated at some point, but they definitely were not being maintained when we saw them. Not quite sure what the story was on that. My six-year-old son took this picture of the Iris.

JD Boy took this shot of a Columbine. I think Columbine are just such delicate and special flowers.

JD Boy also took this picture. He thought it was so amazing to see that daisy growing in that puddle.

JD Boy and Zippy were very impressed by the size of these Maple leaves. They might have worked for a hat!

And this little guy was our last discovery from Discovery Park, but I haven’t succeeded in identifying him. Insects are another thing we need to learn more about. UPDATE: Somebody helped me identify him: Buprestis aurulenta. It looks like he’s a bad guy. He can bore holes right through tar roofs and cause all kinds of damage to wood structures. And we thought he was just so pretty.

We didn’t take the time to read about anything that we saw from this walk, we just enjoyed seeing it and smelling it and appreciating it and being thankful to the God who made these things for us.

Here is a quote that I just love about taking children into nature:

"How can children receive a more correct knowledge of God, and their minds be better impressed, than in spending a portion of their time out-of-doors, not in play, but in company with their parents? Let their young minds be associated with God in the beautiful scenery of nature; let their attention be called to the tokens of His love to man in His created works, and they will be attracted and interested." Child Guidance, p. 534.

Gray Birds–Pigeons

June 23, 2009prayingmother

This is the last of the bird challenges from the Outdoor Hour Challenges. We have enjoyed doing these so much, that we are a little sad for them to end, but I guess now we can make our own bird challenges or maybe do some other challenges. We are thinking about learning about what’s happening in our garden or else learning about some botany. Those are kind of related.

This challenge was on gray birds–Pigeons and Mocking Birds. We do not have Mocking Birds where we live, so Pigeons it was.

We read all about Pigeons in the Handbook of Nature Study. The part from there that my kids enjoyed the most was the story about G.I. Joe the pigeon. G.I. Joe was a pigeon that saved a group of British troops from being bombed by Allies, by delivering a message just in time that the British had already taken occupation of the city of Calvi Vecchia, Italy, which had been scheduled for bombardment.

Here are the pictures that we were able to take of Pigeons that live just down the road from us.

As you can tell by looking at the ledge where they are standing, quite a few of them live at this bridge. When we saw that we were going to be studying pigeons, we knew just where to go.

Sometimes I think we get a bit jaded by common birds and forget that some of them are really pretty too. I think that that pigeon in the first picture is a pretty bird, even though I have seen a bazillion pigeons in my life. I have to admit, I probably would not have stopped to take his picture, if it had not been for the Bird Challenge. So we’re glad that we were challenged to learn about common birds.

J.D. Boy’s nature journal entry.

Zippy’s nature journal entry.

Black and White Birds

June 12, 2009prayingmother

Another bird study from the Handbook of Nature Study Blog. This Outdoor Hour Challenge is on Woodpeckers, Chickadees, Nuthatches and Towhees.

For us, these are all common feeder birds. On our property we have a Pileated Woodpecker that we hear regularly and a Northern Flicker and a Downy that come to the suet feeder. We have both Black-capped and Chestnut-backed Chickadees that come. And we have Spotted Towhees and Red-breasted Nuthatches. The Nuthatches are my favorite because they look like they’re wearing sunglasses and they’re just so cute.

This first set of pictures were all taken a few months back at our feeder or close to it. They were all taken by my daughter.

Red-breasted Nuthatch

Black-capped Chickadee

Spotted Towhee. Unfortunately, you cannot see the red eyes on this little guy. He’s got bright red eyes.

We have one special Spotted Towhee that comes each year and will eat out of my daughter’s hand. She’s been feeding it for three years. My husband also tricked it into thinking he was my daughter and got it to eat out of his hand once. When she started, we didn’t have the feeders up, so it’s more challenging now.

We also found a couple of birds from this challenge while we were out scouting away from home. We found a Mountain Chickadee in Bend, OR, while there. We found this Red-naped Sapsucker at Grandma’s house.

My daughter did two entries in her nature journal this week. Here is the one on the Black-capped Chickadee. Over the last several weeks, we have also been enjoying John James Audubon’s illustrations almost every day. So this is also her attempt at reproducing his Black-capped Chickadee painting.

Black-Capped Chickadee by Zippy (age 9)

My son didn’t want to do an illustration this time and I decided to let him off the hook; partly because I’m trying to foster a love of nature and nature journaling not make it a grueling.

This challenge also included learning about bird feet. Here is a simple webpage that we found about bird feet and it even has a fun activity that you can print off and do with your children. Natural HIstory Museum: Bird’s Feet.

I just have to say, and maybe I mentioned this before. We have the best videos on birds imaginable: The Life of Birds by David Attenborough. They are absolutely fantastic. Some of the segments can be watched on You Tube. If you love birds, you must have these videos. We’ve watched them so many times. I do have to give a disclaimer–They are evolutionist, but most of it is easy to skip. The videography is just outstanding. We’ve watched them so many times. This set was our first set by Attenborough that we ever had. They were a gift. Now we’ve been slowly collecting other videos by him, just because this set was so outstanding.

Black Birds

June 11, 2009prayingmother

I’m behind in my blogging again. We studied this a week or two ago and I’m just now posting. Hope you enjoy it anyway! This is from the Outdoor Hour Challenge: Birds-Crow, Red-Winged Blackbird, Starling, and Cowbird

We went on a search for blackbirds of every type and this is what we got to see: American Crow, Common Raven, Red-Winged Blackbird, Yellow-headed Blackbird, Brewers Blackbird, Common Grackle, European Starling and Brown-headed Cowbird and a Magpie. (Not sure if a Magpie is in the same category though.) We are going to have to go do some more searching for Crows, because we found out that according to some bird books and not according to others, we may have two species of Crows in our area: the American Crow and the Northwestern Crow. I don’t much know the difference. I actually just discovered this a couple of days ago. I just assumed that crows were crows, but now I know that’s not always the case.

We weren’t able to get pictures of every single one of these, but I managed to pull a few together, although they aren’t all from the same outing.

Yellow-headed Blackbird

Red-Winged Blackbird

UPDATE: I was looking through some more of our pictures and found another Red-winged Blackbird picture that I just love and had to add. Here it is:

Black-billed Magpie

Brewer’s Blackbird

The kids also added some nature journal entries.

Red-winged Blackbird by JD Boy (age 6)

Red-winged Blackbird by Zippy (age 9)

Yellow-headed Blackbird by Zippy (age 9)

We picked up another excellent book about birds. I love it even more than the kids do. It’s Field Trips: Bug Hunting, Animal Tracking, Bird-watching, Shore Walking by Jim Arnosky. We’ve been reading the section on Bird-watching. We learned a new bird-word from this book–Mantling. It means when a bird spreads out its wings on the ground, usually a sign of aggression.

The challenge also encouraged us to learn about bird eyes and ears. We found a most interesting post on Wikipedia about Bird Vision. Check it out, if you’re interested in the subject.

Butterflies

June 1, 2009prayingmother

We had to let our butterflies go. It was sad and exciting at the same time. If butterflies could be considered friends, then ours were. We spent lots of time watching them over the past month. We (not just the kids) were very interested with the famous transformation of caterpillars into butterflies. I’m sure it it ranks with the most amazing things in the world.

We ordered the caterpillars from insectlore.com. They sent us two cups with five caterpillars each in the mail. When our caterpillars arrived they were teeny, tiny things. Within just days they had grown multiple times their size. If my kids grew that fast, they would have to go naked, because they would go through three sizes of clothing every day.

This is a picture of some of the caterpillars just before they cocooned and one already cocooned.

The timing on our butterflies wasn’t the best for us. As soon, as they arrived, I started calculating and realized that they would start coming out of their cocoons while we were camping and birding in Malheur. (See previous post.) Sure enough that is what happened. So we had them in these little cups riding around in the cup holders in our car until we arrived a our hotel in Bend, OR. I was sure we had cooked them to death in our car, because it was so hot in Malheur; but they survived it. I pinned these little paper disks to our "cage" and by the next morning, we had a couple of butterflies. Whew! Just in time.

The one in this picture that is out of focus was shaking because it’s trying to get out. The cocoon would start shaking and then sooner or later the butterfly would just pop out. When they actually came out, it happened very quickly. Then, you’ll never believe this, they got blood all over the place. I had no idea that this was a bloody operation. I had to clean the counter where this "cage" was sitting several times. (After all, I didn’t want the hotel to kick us out because of our pets!)

We kept them as butterflies for a few days, but I had the feeling they would probably survive better outside than inside, plus we wanted them to be able to reproduce, so we let them go. We’ve already voted that next spring we’re going to watch tadpoles become frogs. We’ll see if that’s still what we think then, but I’m already excited…although if butterflies were to get loose in my house, no problem…but frogs!!

Fly away butterfly!

Birding at Malheur

May 25, 2009prayingmother

When I was a child, my parents took me to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. I have been wanting to take my husband, an avid birder, there for years. We finally got our chance and my husband’s sister’s family and my brother joined us on the trip too. We had lots of fun and saw scores of birds. On the trip my husband and I identified 82 birds. (My list is at the bottom of the post.) Rather than tell you anymore about our trip. I’m just going to share tons of pictures with captions in chronological order of how they were taken.

Horned Lark — taken in John Day, Oregon, shortly before we arrived at Malheur.

My brother with our new bird scope.

American Avocet

Great Blue Heron

White-faced Ibis

Common Yellowthroat

Bullock’s Oriole

Yellow Warbler–in flight and perched

Lazuli Bunting Pair

Happy campers enjoying a pancake breakfast.

Cliff Swallow

Northern Shoveler

Ruddy Duck–Can you see his blue bill?

Barn Swallow

Canada Goose with goslings.

House Wren serenading us during our lunch.

American Robin feeding her chicks. It was really special to watch the parents feeding these chicks. They were perched right in between a couple of our tents. This was one bird that the kids were actually willing to stay quiet to watch.

Looking at a Northern Pintail–sorry no picture of the Pintail, but boy, was I happy to see it!

My favorite photographer in the world! (My husband)

Common Raven and chicks–This Raven is landing in her nest. You can see the mouths of the babies wide open waiting for their snack.

Just a nice view (to prove that my point-and-shoot can take good pictures too! Actually, i took all the people pictures with my point and shoot too.)

Zippy, the birder.

We don’t completely have Zippy’s life list updated with her Malheur list. We have to finish weeding out the doubles, but she should have around a hundred when we are finished. Not too bad for a nine year old who’s been working on her life list for a year.

A displaying Red-winged Blackbird

Sandhill Crane

Yellow-headed Blackbird

Female California Quail

Western Tanager–Is he pretty or what?

Ring-necked Pheasant–This seemed to be the kids’ favorite bird to see and he really is a beauty.

Long-billed Curlew

Black-necked Stilt

Great Egret

We read the book The Boy Who Drew Birds: A Story of John James Audubon while we were on our expedition. (A few times actually. It was such a good one.) That is the artist that we’ve decided to learn about right now. I thought it would be fun to learn about him while we were getting to do this birding trip. We’re really enjoying learning about nature and art together.

We also tried our hand at our own bird illustrations. The two big kids and I did some nature journal entries in our individual journals.

Ring-necked Pheasant by Zippy (age 9)

Sandhill Crane by JD Boy (age 6)

American Avocet by me

Here is our list of identified birds from the trip:

1	Horned Lark	42	Yellow-breasted Chat
2	Bald Eagle	43	Common Raven
3	Wilson’s Snipe	44	Cliff Swallow
4	Wilson’s Phalarope	45	Goldfinch
5	Magpie	46	European Starling
6	Common Grackle	47	Song Sparrow
7	Western Kingbird	48	Bobolink
8	American Robin	49	Barn Swallow
9	Mourning Dove	50	Brewers Blackbird
10	Great Egret	51	Northern Harrier
11	Great Blue Heron	52	Mallard
12	Canadian Geese	53	Trumpeter Swan
13	Red-winged Blackbird	54	Spotted Sandpiper
14	Western Meadowlark	55	Black-crowned Night Heron
15	Killdeer	56	Black Tern
16	American Kestral	57	Ruddy Duck
17	American Avocet	58	Forster Tern
18	Black-necked Stilt	59	Tree Swallow
19	Yellow-headed Blackbird	60	Redhead
20	Long-billed Curlew	61	Lesser Scaup
21	Franklin’s Gull	62	Northern Pintail
22	Sandhill Crane	63	Bufflehead
23	Northern Shoveler	64	Willet
24	American Coot	65	Gadwall
25	Brown headed Cowbird	66	Western Grebe
26	Turkey Vulture	67	Black-headed Grosbeak
27	White Pelican	68	Western Wood Pewee
28	Ring-necked Pheasant	69	Osprey
29	California Quail	70	Western Tanager
30	Double-crested Cormorant	71	Olive-sided Flycatcher
31	White Faced Ibis	72	Evening Grosbeak
32	Cinnamon Teal	73	House Sparrow
33	Common Yellowthroat	74	Red-tailed Hawk
34	Bullock’s Oriole	75	Pine Siskin
35	Red-shafted Flicker	76	Warbling Vireo
36	Yellow Warbler	77	Eastern Kingfisher
37	Lazuli Bunting	78	Canvasback
38	Virginia Rail	79	California Gull
39	House Wren	80	Mountain Bluebird
40	Song Sparrow	81	Scrub Jay
41	Cedar Waxwing	82	Mountain Chickadee

Brown Birds

May 24, 2009prayingmother

I haven’t blogged for awhile. I hope you missed me! Once in awhile, life comes at me a little too fast and I just have to try to survive. I had one of those weeks, and then immediately after that we went on a much anticipated trip, but I’ll post about that later this week after I sort through a few hundred pictures. I’ll just give you a teaser now to say that we identified 80 species of birds in three days. What fun!

For now I’m going to post about the Outdoor Hour Bird Challenge that we did earlier, but I just hadn’t posted about it yet. This challenge was basically about brown birds: House Sparrows, House Wrens and Mourning Doves (all of which we saw on our trip, by the way.) We didn’t get any pictures of Mourning Doves, but we got pictures of the two others plus an extra sparrow.

I’ve never seen a House Wren around our home. We do have a Winter Wren that visits us some, but I haven’t managed his picture yet. This House Wren picture was taken on our trip this last week. This guy came almost within reaching distance of my daughter. He was nesting somewhere near our campsite. He thrilled in serenading us, and we couldn’t help but enjoy.

While we were watching and listening to this little guy, we talked about how typically the birds with bright and beautiful feathers are not the ones with beautiful songs and vice versus. There are exceptions, but it seems to be the general rule. This is actually a good life lesson for us. (Especially for adults, I think.) We often see others who are so talented in this or that and we feel a bit jealous because we aren’t, but God has given us each talents and we need to cultivate what God has given us and stop comparing ourselves to others. I’m quite positive that this little wren has never worried that he doesn’t have bright feathers to show off.

I took these two pictures of the House Sparrow at a rest stop on the way back from one of the trips that I’ve made recently to see my family. I kind of thought it was fun to watch him do the dust bath in the bottom picture. Now this bird doesn’t really have bright feathers or a beautiful song, so he probably has reason to complain, but not really. He is one of the few privileged birds to have been mentioned in the Bible and by Jesus Himself, when Jesus said that He’s watching out for each and every sparrow. Once again a great life lesson. Even if we think we are not important to anybody, at least we can know that we are important to Jesus and He’s watching us with His tender, loving, care.

This is a White-Crowned Sparrow. My husband took this picture on the same trip as the previous sparrow, but at my parents’ house. (With all of the travel that we’ve done in the last six weeks, a lot of our nature study and a lot of our learning in general has taken place away from home.) I just think this guy is so cute all fluffed up like he is. I think it was taken in the early morning and the birds seem to fluff up more then. Maybe it helps keep them warm.

I let the kids choose one bird to do their nature journal entry on. Here they are:

House Wren by Zippy (age 9)

House Sparrow by JD Boy (age 6)

Nature Study–Frogs

May 11, 2009prayingmother

It’s just that time of year when nature study is a lot more enjoyable around our home. In the winter, we do it, but not as faithfully as we should. That’s why I’ve been posting so much about nature study lately. We’ve just really been having fun with it. (Besides the fact that it’s a lot more fun to take pictures of nature study than of math books!) Sometimes impromptu nature study is the most fun. Something just surprises you and so you take the time to appreciate it, observe it and learn about it. That’s what this study was–impromptu.

My husband found this special little critter while he was rototilling our garden, so he brought it to the kids for their inspection.

We identified it as a Pacific Tree Frog, which is the most common frog on the West Coast of North America. It can be brown or green or both. The identifying marks are the size and the black patch on the eye. They are mostly nocturnal, so it’s a privilege to find one in the day. They have sticky feet which makes it so they can climb on slick vegetation. They catch they’re prey by ambushing the insects.

JD boy even got to hold it. This can give you an idea of the size of the frog as compared to a six-year-old’s hands. I think this one is a a female too and the males are supposed to be even smaller. I don’t know for sure that it’s a female though, but the markings are slightly different and from what I can see the markings match the female rather than the male.

Hummingbirds

May 5, 2009prayingmother

We got to stand and watch several hummingbirds this weekend, but they weren’t the kinds listed on the Hummingbird Outdoor Hour Challenge. Nonetheless, we enjoyed them.

Sometimes, I can’t quite figure out why God made certain birds. (I won’t tell you which ones.) I know why God made hummingbirds though. It’s because He wanted to us to see jewels flying through the sky. We learned however from reading the Handbook of Nature Study that they serve a purpose to the ecosystem, as well. They help to pollinate flowers that have long necks and whose pollen the wind can never touch. We were also amazed to learn that the hummingbirds like to eat bugs and will hover in front of a spider web and steal the spider’s catch. I thought they were just nectar suckers. The most amazing thing we learned though was about the hummingbirds’ tongues. Their tongues have little hairs on them and they curl in from both sides, causing them to have two straws in their mouth. Now that’s amazing! We have such a wonderful Creator.

We got to watch two varieties of hummingbirds at Grandpa and Grandma’s this weekend.

We got to see the most amazing Rufous Hummingbird, but I’m going to share one of the pictures that I posted a couple of weeks ago of the Rufous, because we couldn’t get a photo this time.

Rufous Hummingbird photographed at the feeder on our porch.

The hummer that we watched the most was a Calliope Hummingbird. There were several of them hanging out at the feeder. However, we observed one interesting phenomon–the Rufous was the boss. When he came to the feeder, the others left. And he perched on a tree not too far away to chase the Calliopes away just whenever he felt like it.

Calliope Hummingbird photographed at Grandma’s feeder.

Here are our Nature Journal entries.

Zippy’s (age 9) nature journal drawing of the Rufous Hummingbird.

JD Boy’s (age 6) nature journal coloring of a Rufous Hummingbird. From the Cornell Bird Coloring Book.