I wrote about how we kicked off our nature study focus on trees by writing poems about trees.  Since then we’ve been learning a lot about trees and I still feel like we’re just beginning!  I set up our nature table with any tree-related specimens and books and we added more cones and leaves throughout our study.  (Just a side note: I keep boxes in our basement for nature items and only display the ones for the nature topic we are focusing on.  Rotating what we have out keeps it more interesting.)

Leaves

One of Barb’s posts from a couple years ago on Seasonal Tree Observations linked to a great printable for leaf shape and arrangement.  It is one of those things I’ll add to my binder and try to learn but I have to reign in the urge to download my brain into my children.  Charlotte Mason cautions against talking at your kids so much in nature that you take away their chance to experience it and see what they are interested in.  (Here’s an older post of mine about stepping back when we’re in nature with some advice straight from Ms. Mason.) If I focus on learning the information myself I can answer questions and teach vocabulary in context as we marvel at the things we see.  The author of the Handbook of Nature Study states it this way:

The child should never be required to learn the name of anything in the nature-study work; but the name should be used so often and so naturally in his presence that he will learn it without being conscious of the process.” ~Anna Botsford Comstock

We’d been enjoying Maine’s beautiful foliage displays so our first quest was to understand how and why leaves change colors in the fall.   We watched a short video from the Maine Department of Conservation about the changing colors in leaves.  We brought some brilliant yellow leaves in and examined them with the stereoscope and microscope.  The kids drew as a way to record what they saw.  This quote from my son illustrates why I love using a hand lens, stereoscope and microscope when we can:

“I didn’t know leaves were so interesting!”

We learned about another timely aspect of fall: there is a thin layer that forms between the leaf’s stem (petiole) and the twig, allowing the leaf to drop and most importantly to kids: leading to piles like this to jump in!

Learning about the cycles of leaves forming a separation layer, then falling off and feeding the tree as they break down into the soil, followed by new buds in place just above the scar waiting to be next year’s leaves led us to take a trip around the yard to see these signs of years past, this year, and years to come on our own trees.

With the excitement of brilliant fall leaves we focused on deciduous trees initially, so then it was time to move onto evergreens. We made our annual trek to the Christmas Tree Farm and our studies continued with a beautiful specimen right in our living room!

Flowers, Seeds and Cones

I’ll look forward to revisiting this topic in the spring and early summer when the maple trees in our yard bloom, but fall was a great time to study cones and acorns.  We were able to get a good look at two different types of cones and one variety of acorn.  I grabbed cones from the ground under two backyard trees and placed them in empty cardboard containers so the kids could watch the transformation and see the treasure inside a cone.

Bark

The bark looked incredible under the stereoscope.  We read in one of our books about how bark was like skin to protect the tree, but since it doesn’t stretch it looks wrinkled and peeling and has cracks.  That is how the tree expands as it grows!

Roots

We took a couple hikes during the month to enjoy time in the forest.  It gave us a good chance to observe some root systems of trees that have fallen.  My son said this one looked like a dinosaur with a large eye and mouth coming out of the ground!

Trees just seem to spark the imagination.  This tree immediately gave my daughter an idea for a story, with the cut branch being a secret keyboard to access an underground world.

Identification

Our neighborhood is relatively young, and many of the trees in our yard (21 to be exact!) have been planted by me in the past 5 years.  I’ve been working to identify those that were already planted.  My plan is to make our own field guide beginning with the trees from our yard (Outdoor Hour Challenge #7).  We were inspired by a local homeschool family who showed us their leaf collection and this post from Brandy at Half-a-Hundred Acre Wood.  She includes a free printable notebook page to identify and record the tree and a leaf sample.

Luckily I’d collected and pressed leaves from a few trees this fall.  I want to include actual leaves and seeds when possible, and photos of items like cones and bark.  We’ll have to continue this project once there are leaves to be seen outside in Maine…like next May.  Commercial field guides are a wonderful resource, but there is great value in making your own book of things you have right outside your door.

After we learn a little about our different trees we’ll choose one for a year-long study.  We’ll probably start with the large spruce that forms part of what my kids call their “secret hideout” with it’s large drooping branches.  Barb has a helpful post with ideas for a year-long seasonal tree study and I also like this post that will persuade you of the benefits of studying one tree over the course of the four seasons.

Book and Internet Resources:

• The Handbook of Nature Study: the resource for all our nature study, used as a reference for me (not a read aloud).
• Barb at The Handbook of Nature Study Blog continually inspires me to study nature with my kids.  She has a great reference page with links to many of her tree studies (both specific trees, parts of trees, and seasonal ideas) and a free download.
• National Audubon Society Pocket Guide: Familiar Trees of North America East: I like this small, colorful field guide.  For each tree there is a sillhouete to show the overall shape, a full page photo (not drawing) of the leaves, and a small close-up of the bark.  My only complaint:  I wish it had a photo of the cones or seeds for each tree.
• I came across a great book at our library that I’ll be adding to our collection, though it is only available used.  Inside and Outside Trees by Sandra Markle is filled with beautiful photos and easy to understand explanations.  This was a perfect read aloud: just a couple pages at a time and then we’d look for the things we read about during our outside time.  It helped the kids have lots of “a-ha” moments when they found a leaf scar or something else they could recognize from the pictures in the book.
• Eyewitness Books: Trees is another reference we used.  When you can’t observe everything up close and personal in nature the gorgeous photography in the DK Eyewitness Books is a good stand-in.
• An online guide to the parts of a tree: this has some of the same information from the printable in Barb’s post (on leaf shape and arrangement), but also has nice graphics for tree shape, twig structures, and the different types of flowers, seeds and cones.  It does not give you the identification, but helps you learn about the structures used in identifying trees.  That way if you read details about a tree’s stipule scars, incised or pinnately compound leaves, or drupes you know what on earth to look for.
• The online guide from the Arbor Day Foundation called “What Tree is That?” is the best resource I’ve found for identifying a tree.  It is so easy to use: just answer one question at a time to arrive at the identification.  My kids enjoy using this with me as I ask them the questions and they tell me which choice on the screen applies to the tree we’re looking at.  We used this to identify our Christmas tree as a balsam fir.
• I always try to find a few related picture books for fun.  This time we’re enjoying: Christmas Tree Farm by David Budbill, an illustrated picture book of a Robert Frost poem called Christmas Trees, and Arbor Day Square by Kathryn O. Galbraith (which also ties into our history studies–it’s about the beginning of Arbor Day out on the prairie in the 1800’s).

Now our nature table has been cleared off to make room for our Christmas Village.  Our homeschool runs pretty differently during December.  Over the next couple weeks I’ll be sharing how we focus on the holiday and still learn a lot.  And then looking ahead in our nature study we’ll start a focus area on birds in January.  That way we’ll be ready for our second year participating in the Great Backyard Bird Count!

I’d intended to start our nature study focus on trees a couple weeks ago when the beauty of the fall leaves was at its peak in Maine, but we were very busy preparing for our science fair.  Then my basement flooded and messed with all my plans!

To get back into the swing of nature study (and do something that didn’t require a lot of planning or knowledge from me) we took a walk around our neighborhood using the ideas in Barb’s Outdoor Hour Challenge #2, Use Your Words.  My daughter recorded a list of the words that came to our minds when we looked at all the trees on our walk.  Our neighborhood is fairly young (20 years), and though most house lots had originally been completely cleared there are woods surrounding the neighborhood and many lawns are adorned with a variety of trees.  I’ve enjoyed paying particular attention to the variety of leaf color and timing for the change.  Many trees in our neighborhood are now bare, but a maple in our back yard is just glowing with gold leaves now.

The next day as the rain poured down and the wind howled, we spent a cozy evening turning our words about trees into poetry using Barb’s free printable with easy suggestions.  Each of us used a different idea.  My son (age 7) traced leaves I had pressed weeks ago, added veins, and I wrote his selected words inside the leaves.

My daughter (age 10) was intrigued by the cinquain idea.  I was very proud of her work.

I joined the fun (the kids love it when I do).  My particular interest was noticing the pattern of colors on each of the pressed leaves I traced.  I wrote my words around the perimeter of my leaves.

Our poems are hanging on our wall, and we are excited to spend some time studying trees.  Our first question:  why do leaves change color?

Before I end I have to add a note.  On our walk some movement in a fake spiderweb at a neighbor’s house caught my eye.  I looked closer and realized a small bird was caught.  Long story short, we had to help him.  The neighbors were not at home, but with the help of another neighbor and her scissors we soon had this beautiful nuthatch free from the web.  He was very shaken up but did not appear injured.  After some time in a box and some conversations with a bird rescue organization he flapped away from us up into a tree.

We had to leave an hour later and he was still there.  We named him Webber and hope he goes on to live a long and happy life.  The woman who answered my calls at the bird rescue organization told us that often owls get trapped and end up hanging for hours by a wing or leg.  I tell this story because after we saw firsthand the danger of those fake spiderwebs to wildlife I said I’d spread the word.  This is my little part of helping the birds.

We enjoy nature study using the gentle leading from Barb at the Handbook of Nature Study blog.  When I purchased her “Getting Started” ebook and read in Challenge #4 about picking a focus area the idea made so much sense!  When her September newsletter came out with a focus on insects and I saw that arthropods were coming up in our formal science curriculum, picking our first focus area was easy: Insects & Spiders.

I gathered related books, field guides and flashcard sets, our magnifying glasses, some specimens (purchased in acrylic and ones we’ve collected in jars).  I placed all these items on a sofa table that I dubbed our “Nature Table.”  The kids were intrigued and I saw a lot more handling of the specimens and flipping through the books with them all on display.  It also made it easy to identify bugs we saw with all the insect books in one place.

Using the September newsletter planning chart I mapped out topics I hoped to cover.  She said picking a focus area helped her family learn much more in their area of concentration and that they would see more of whatever item they were focusing on, and I found this to be true in our family.  Here are some of our nature study highlights for the month:

• We did a lot of reading, finally going through all the wonderful introductory pages in our Complete Guide to Insects and Spiders book.
• We watched some great videos.  We always watch the YouTube links in Barb’s Outdoor Hour Challenge posts because we can see things we don’t have the good fortune of observing, like a spider spinning a web or cricket making it’s “music.”  National Geographic Kids also has fun short videos and slideshows.
• We went on focused bug hunts, but also found ourselves pointing out insects to each other everywhere we went!  Sometimes it seemed like insects and spiders were just waiting to be observed by us.
• Barb’s September grid gave us some things to look for on our nature walks.  We found insects of many different colors, looked for ways they camouflage themselves, watched bees, and turned over rocks and logs.  One of the challenges also involved looking at things through a bug’s eye view, which my son thoroughly enjoyed.

• This large spider is the perfect example of why a nature study focus area worked well for us.  This exit door we’ve walked by a hundred times, but last week I noticed this spider and we stopped to observe and take photos.  We admired her web (and knew it was an orb web after our studies).  The most exciting part was searching all around for her children after reading about how the young spiders cast out on a line of silk in the wind.  A few were in the same window!  We then went outside and searched around the building, finding lots more smaller spiders that looked just like her.

• We went on a few bug hunts in our backyard.  We placed a Japanese Beetle and earwig in jars and the kids both completed a notebooking page (free from Primary Possibilities) for their journal.  My daughter loved the organized format, once again my son preferred the blank page and just turned his over to draw on the back!  That’s the beauty of notebooking: flexibility.

I’m not ready to wrap up this area yet–I’d like to talk about grasshoppers and flies.  Barb mentioned spending six to eight weeks on one focus area and I think that will be a good time frame for us.  At four weeks we still have more I’d like to cover, but after a couple more weeks we’ll be ready to move on.

Have you tried having a focus area for your nature study?

The last Outdoor Hour Challenge from Barb at the Handbook of Nature Study blog for August was all about enjoying these last warm days in the garden.  Barb loaded us up with ideas for spending a little extra time outdoors.  It was wonderful because not only were the ideas easy to do, but they had us all noticing little details and soaking up the garden with all our senses.

My favorite activity was probably sitting quietly in the garden for five minutes.  That’s an unusual activity for a family with young kids!  I set us up on a blanket in the shade with our nature study clipboards and we recorded what we heard and saw.

We also brought a couple flowers inside and the kids drew them for their nature journal…and like Barb suggested they drew them BIG.  I love having the kids draw things they see–it really slows them down and they notice details.

We did all the activities on the August Grid over the course of the week.  The weather was beautiful, and we soaked it up.  It’s good for those of us in Maine to try and store up as many summer memories as we can:  our seasons are already preparing to change.  You can feel the difference in the air at night, and many of my garden flowers are rapidly declining.  It’s all good because fall is my absolute favorite season:  crisp air, picking apples and pumpkins, jumping in piles of leaves!  I’m not going to think right now about January, February, March…winter is long here but I’m enjoying the rest of summer right now.  Barb posted another grid from her archives–it’s loaded with ideas and we want to accomplish them all!

I’ll be submitting this to Barb’s Outdoor Hour Challenge Blog Carnival.

Watching the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a Monarch butterfly first hand was the highlight of this summer’s nature study.  I wrote about finding Monarch caterpillars and observing them form a chrysalis a couple weeks ago.   We watched the jewel-like chrysalis and patiently waited.  Finally one morning the first chrysalis looked dark, and if you looked closely you could see the beautiful orange and black wing pattern!

We were so excited and began watching, hoping to see it emerge.  I had read they usually emerge mid-morning so we tried taking turns watching and I set my camera up for time lapse photography.  We watched all morning and my camera took photos until the battery died…no butterfly.  No one was watching when he finally emerged after lunch.  This was the same caterpillar (“Big Guy”) who formed a chrysalis when no one was watching, too, so perhaps he’s shy!

Two days later it was Little Guy’s turn.  The morning that we could see his black and orange pattern we were set to leave for a day trip, so I prepared the kids that we would miss his emergence, too.  We were bustling around getting ready and I happened to peak in and could see a crack forming in the chrysalis!  I yelled to everyone (causing the dog to bark wildly) and all four of us watched in awe as he emerged.

“I love you!” whispered my ten-year-old daughter, as if to a newborn baby.

“This is the most exciting thing of my life!” exclaimed my six-year-old.

Watching the emergence was amazing, especially how the body of the caterpillar was plump and the wings appeared small and shriveled.  I had read that they need to pump blood into their wings, but hadn’t thought of where the blood would come from!  We watched the body grow smaller as the beautiful wings expanded.

We had enough time to take in every detail of these beautiful creatures.  We were reminded of things we’d learned during our nature study: we caught a few glimpses of the amazingly long proboscis, we noted the brightly colored surface of the wings when open, but the paler color of the underside when closed, we counted the four longer legs but looked closely for the two smaller legs near the mouth.  The awe and wonder of a plump striped caterpillar forming a jewel-like chrysalis that appears to be adorned with gold, only to emerge 10 days later as this lovely fluttering butterfly!

We released both of the butterflies on the same day that they emerged, back into the lovely wildflower field we had found them in as tiny caterpillars.  Off they fluttered as we said goodbye.  We all hoped they were the generation of Monarch butterflies that gets to go to Mexico for the winter!

My kids turned to me and said, “We’re going to do this again next year, right?”

Absolutely!