Outdoor Hour Challenge #16 Growing Sunflowers

“Many of the most beautiful of the autumn flowers belong to the Compositae, a family of such complicated flower arrangement that it is very difficult for the child or the beginner in botany to comprehend it; and yet, when once understood, the composite scheme is very simple and beautiful, and is repeated over and over in flowers of very different appearance……The large garden sunflower is the teacher’s ally to illustrate to the children the story of the composites.”
Handbook of Nature Study, page 574

This week I am going to challenge you to start some sunflower seeds growing in your garden or in a pot. If you purchased some sunflower seeds back in challenge #12, you are ready to go with this challenge. If you are still in need of some sunflower seeds to plant, take another outing to the garden nursery to let your child pick a packet of their own. The idea behind starting the seeds is to provide a “laboratory” for your child to observe and learn in all summer long. Even if you just plant the seeds in a pot and watch them grow on your front porch, this is a valuable activity. If you don't have a sunny spot in your yard, ask a friend or relative if you could plant a few seeds somewhere in their yard. Be creative.

Note to those working on the earlier challenges: You may wish to do this challenge in addition to whatever other challenge you are working on this week. Sunflowers take about 12 weeks to mature, depending on the variety you choose. You will need to get your sunflowers going fairly soon or you will not have any sunflowers to observe later in the summer.

Outdoor Hour Challenge #16 Sunflowers-Summer Project

1. Read the Handbook of Nature Study pages 574-576-The Sunflower.

Find a sunny spot in your yard or on your porch to plant your sunflower seeds. These seeds will eventually sprout and grow and provide a late summer challenge all of its own. These sunflower plants can be subjects for your nature journal as well. After the seeds have matured, you will have something for the birds to enjoy. Follow the instructions on the seed packet and get your seeds growing this week. Make sure to keep your seeds moist as they germinate.

2. Take your 10-15 minute outdoor time to look for some garden flowers in your own area. If you already have some of your own garden flowers blooming, pick one to identify and see if it is listed in the Handbook of Nature Study.

3. Add any new garden flowers to your list in your nature journal.

4. Provide an opportunity for a nature journal entry. Practice your flower drawing skills that you worked on in challenge number 15. Record your flower seeds’ growth and/or record your sunflowers growth for the week. You may wish to sketch your sunflower seeds before you plant them, looking at them carefully with a magnifying glass.

5. Continue making field guide cards for your garden flowers.

6. Add flowers to your press from you nature time. (see challenge #14 for more information)

7. Post an entry on your blog sharing your experiences and then come back to the Outdoor Hour Challenge post and add your blog link to Mr. Linky.











This challenge is part of my Garden Flowers ebook. This ebook has ten garden related challenges that will walk you through a study of garden flowers using the Handbook of Nature Study. In addition to the challenges already written, there will be more photos, nature journal examples, book lists, and totally new notebook pages designed to go with each of the Garden Flower Challenges.
Follow the link below to view the ebook! Over 50 pages for $6.95

Sweet Peas-Green Hour Challenge #15

My daughter helped me out this week by drawing sweet peas in her nature journal. She used colored pencils to make this beautiful drawing.

We also spent some time planting more seeds in the garden this week. We are using a fantastic idea I found on Cocoa's blog for challenge number 12. If you go over to her blog, make sure to scroll down towards the bottom of the entry to see their flower garden project.


We prepared a small flower bed next to our morning glories, put some potting soil in the wheelbarrow, opened the packets of seeds and sprinkled them. We mixed up the seeds and the soil and then took handfuls and spread them on top of our new garden bed.

Here is the flower bed all seeded and ready for some water and sunshine.

We are hoping that we get a sort of wild looking mix of flowers here over the summer.

Here is a beautiful bloomer we have in a pot on the back deck. I just love the bold colors of this flower.

We are getting quite a collection of garden flower drawings in our nature notebooks. So much color and variety are found right in our own backyard.

Have a great week,
Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Spring Walk: Thistle, Ladybug, Daisy

Yesterday afternoon was a perfect time to take a walk on our local walking/biking trail. The weather has been rainy the last few days and we were ready to get out and enjoy some fresh air. The clouds kept drifting in and covering the sun but it was still warm and spring-like.

Three of the children decided to come and we had an enjoyable time walking and talking and just spending time together....as they get older that doesn't happen as often as I would like. My middle son brought his scooter and he was zipping in and out as we just walked along.

The photos in this entry are an experiment in uploading for me so forgive me if the captions are not exactly with the photos. :)










This is some kind of flowering clover...I think. It sure looks like some kind of clover but this is really close-up.
















Look at this guy....after all my observations yesterday of the ladybug larva, I was happy to see this shiny insect as we walked along.

Then there was this daisy and I am pretty sure this is a Mariposa Lily.



































Okay, this was definitely some kind of thistle.

Don't you love the view from this part of the trail?









"The thistle is covered with sharp spines, and these serve to protect it from grazing animals. It has beautiful purple flowers, arranged in heads similar to those of the sunflower."
Handbook of Nature Study, page 526

There is a whole section in the Handbook on thistles starting on page 524.

"Every child loves this flower (daisy), and yet it is not well understood. It is always at hand for study from June until the frosts have laid waste the fields. However much enjoyment we get from the study of this beautiful flower-head, we should study the plant as a weed also, for it is indeed a pest to those farmers who do not practice a rotation of crops."
Handbook of Nature Study, page 522

There is a section on white daisies in the Handbook starting on page 522.

"The clovers enrich with nitrogen the soil in which they are planted. They are very valuable as food for stock. Their flowers are pollinated by bees."
Handbook of Nature Study, page 594

There is a section on clover in the Handbook starting on page 591.

Sorry for all the vague descriptions but I didn't have a lot of time this morning to get a firm identification on all of them. I will try to come back and update as I have the time to research.

This is a life project I decided.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Sweet peas and blackberries

This morning I was out in the yard for morning rounds and I noticed how many blackberries we are going to have on the vines. There are so many blossoms and when you examine the plant closely, there are tiny little berries forming already. I am in a constant battle with the blackberry vines in both my front and back yards. If left to grow, they would soon take over all the corners. We have worked for years to manage these creeping vines and I have come to accept that we will have few here and there and I will just be at peace with their beauty and their fruit. I love picking a handful of sweet berries as I roam around the yard.

There is no information on blackberries in the Handbook of Nature Study so I will need to pull out another gardening book that I have to learn more about them.

Do you see the little green berries starting there? So delicate and beautiful....and it holds the promise of a sweet treat in a few months.

Along the base of our foundation we always have sweet peas plant themselves and grow up among the bushes that border our house. This year they are pink.
"The sweet pea has some of its leaflets changed to tendrils which hold it to the trellis. Its flower is like that of the clover, the upper petal forming the banner, the two side petals the wings, and the two united lower petals the keel which protects the stamens and pistil."
Handbook of Nature Study, page 589


You can clearly see all the parts of the sweet pea as described in the Handbook of Nature Study. I think we will use this flower for our Green Hour Challenge this week and try to draw it in our nature journals.

Can you believe how pretty these are? Such a pretty shade of pink.

If you have sweet peas in your neighborhood, you can use pages 588-590 to learn more about the sweet pea so you can share a few interesting facts with your children. There are also wonderful observation suggestions that you can use in your nature study.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Ladybug: Check out the Handbook of Nature Study

I took this photo the other day in the garden and I posted it here on my blog. Someone identified it as a ladybug larva. (Thanks Margie!) I checked it out and they were right. The amazing part about it to me is that it is so big compared to the adult ladybug.


Ladybug larva

I looked it up in the Handbook of Nature Study and sure enough there is an illustration on page 364 that really shows the differences between the larva, the pupa, and the adult.

"...for they do not in the least resemble her; they are neither rolypoly nor shiny, bur are long and segmented and velvety, with six queer, short legs that look and act as if they were whittled out of wood; they seem only efficient for clinging around a stem....the absorbing business of the larva is to crawl around on plants and chew up the foolish aphids or the scale insects."
Handbook of Nature Study page 365

Here is another photo I took the other day and I sort of thought it was a ladybug but it wasn't quite the same as I had seen before.


Here is my favorite all-time photo of a ladybug that I took a few years ago. This still makes me smile every time that I look at it.

I highly recommend reading the section on ladybugs on pages 364-366. If you read it now, the next time you see a ladybug you will be ready to make some observations with your children. This is the great value I find in using the Handbook of Nature Study. After just a few minutes spent reading this section on ladbybugs, I feel like now I can relate some interesting little tidbits quite naturally to my boys when we next happen upon this insect in our garden.

Go look for some ladybugs!
Barb-Harmony Art Mom

A Walk in My Garden This Week

My beautiful new Disneyland Rose that is blooming like crazy....so pretty.


The dianthus is starting to bloom in the butterfly garden. Heavenly fragrance. (also known as pinks or sweet williams or carnations)


Not technically in my garden but way too cute to leave out. My window cat...can you see the hummingbird feeder outside the window? She is going nuts with the hummers feeding today. And yes, that is a tent outside the window. My boys like to sleep outside as much as possible when the weather is warm enough. Why not?


This is an unidentified insect in Amanda's garden on her hollyhocks which are already really, really tall. Edit: Someone identified this as a ladybug larva.


I love the color and shape of this leaf. I think this is bee balm but we will have to wait until it blooms since I can't remember what it is for sure. I planted it two years ago and it hasn't bloomed yet. Of course it has decided to grow right in among my green beans but we will just let them coexist for now.


I spotted these cute little mushrooms in the flower garden. I need to draw these in my nature journal. :)



These sunflowers came up all on their own in my garden box and they are the tallest ones we have so far.

That is just a glimpse into what is going on here in our backyard garden. I love this time of year when we are busy planting and witnessing the awakening of the seeds. It is a miracle each time one sprouts and I try to say a little prayer as I water and weed to thank the Creator of all things for the variety of colors and fragrances He has given us to enjoy here on the earth.

Here's to getting our hands dirty this week,
Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Outdoor Hour Challenge #15 How to Draw A Flower

“The making of drawings to illustrate what is observed should be encouraged. A graphic drawing is far better than a long description of a natural object.”
Handbook of Nature Study, page 13

As your family makes progress with their nature journals, you will find that there is a desire to start making things look a little more realistic. I thought we would take this week to challenge ourselves to practice drawing flowers with some help with internet tutorials.

Please remember that the nature journal is not the place to give drawing instruction but you could use the tutorials during your art time and then gently remind your children when it comes time for a nature journal that they can incorporate some of their new drawing skills if the opportunity arises.

I would suggest that if you have younger children, take a few minutes to educate yourself first and then share with them little hints as they try to draw garden flowers. This is a perfect opportunity for you to model positive behavior about your own sketches, showing how to make your nature journal an expression of what you found interesting during the Green Hour. If your children are a little older and you are comfortable with them following the tutorials on their own, the link below is perfect for them.

Here is a link to get you started:
HowStuffWorks: How to Draw Flowers and Plants
This is a fantastic page that lists common garden flowers and how to draw them step by step.

Make sure to bookmark this tutorial page for future reference. You could use the lessons as you progress through the next few weeks during your art or sketching time as a way of learning the techniques of drawing flowers in your nature journal. If you start with this challenge and draw at least one flower in your nature journal every week until the garden focus is over, you will have five flower sketches completed. Wouldn't that be great? Remember no one else needs to see your drawings....we would love it if you would share but you can keep them private too.

"The book should be considered the personal property of the child and should never be criticized by the teacher except as a matter of encouragement; for the spirit in which the notes are made is more important than the information they cover."
Handbook of Nature Study, page 13

I guarantee you if you start working in your nature journal, your children will be more comfortable drawing in theirs too.

"As soon as a child is old enough, he should keep his own nature notebook for his enjoyment. Every day's walk will give something interesting to add-three squirrels playing in a tree, a bluejay flying across a field, a caterpillar crawling up a bush, a snail eating a cabbage leaf, a spider suddenly dropping from a thread to the ground, where he found ivy and how it was growing and what plants were growing with it, and how ivy manages to climb.....The skill of drawing may be addressed in some other way, but not in his nature notebook, that should be for him to fill as he sees fit." Charlotte Mason volume 1, page 54-55

One last thing before this week's challenge. I found another flower parts diagram worksheet that I like even better than the first one I posted. Here it is if you want to print it out for your children's nature notebook.
Flower Parts Diagram

Outdoor Hour Challenge #15
How to Draw Lesson-Flowers

1. Read pages 13-15 in the Handbook of Nature Study-The Field Notebook. This will refresh your memory about what is the purpose and aim of the nature journal.

“Nature-study offers the best means of bridging the gap that lies between the kindergarten child who makes drawings because he loves to and is impelled to from within, and the pupil in the grades who is obliged to draw what the teacher places before him.” Handbook of Nature Study, page 17

Keep all this information in your mind as you gently go about your nature study time and then encourage journal drawing.

2. Take your 10-15 minute outdoor time to look for some garden flowers that you can draw in your nature journal. The object this week is to find something that sparks your child’s interest and that he desires to record in his journal. If it is a flower, great. If it is something else like a spider or a bird, allow them to draw that instead.

3. Give an opportunity for a nature journal entry, work on drawing another garden flower in your nature journal. If you are growing seeds, use this time to record their growth perhaps measuring and recording the plants height or counting the number of leaves it has so far. All of these subjects make great additions to the nature journal.

4. Add any new flowers to your list of garden flowers. If you are making field guide cards for your garden flowers, add another card this week.

5. Add any flowers you collected to your flower press. We have found you can add another sheet of paper and another cardboard sheet to the mix and you will have a multi-layer press. Check on your flowers from last week and see if they are ready to go into your nature journal. See challenge 14 for more information.

6. Post an entry on your blog sharing your experiences and then come back to the Outdoor Hour Challenge post and add your blog link to Mr. Linky.



This challenge is part of my Garden Flowers ebook. This ebook has ten garden related challenges that will walk you through a study of garden flowers using the Handbook of Nature Study. In addition to the challenges already written, there will be more photos, nature journal examples, book lists, and totally new notebook pages designed to go with each of the Garden Flower Challenges.
Follow the link below to view the ebook! Over 50 pages for $6.95

Please note: Mr. Linky is for linking to your Outdoor Hour Challenge blog post only. Please do not link to your blog in general because then when others want to read your challenge post, they have to dig around in your blog to find it.

Our Green Hour Challenge #14 Bursting with Color: Composite Flowers

This week's Green Hour Challenge for us was very enjoyable. Our flower garden is just bursting with color and with garden flowers as our focus we decided to read and observe a special kind of flower, the composite.

"Many plants have their flowers set close together and thus make a mass of color, like the geraniums or the clovers. But there are other plants where there are different kinds of flowers in one head, those at the center doing a certain kind of work for the production of seed, and those around the edges doing another kind of work."

"Can you see that what you call the flower consists of many flowers set together like a beautiful mosaic? Those at the center are called disc flowers; those around the edges ray flowers."
Handbook of Nature Study, page 503

We had a great time studying these flowers and now we are going to be looking closer when we see a new flower to see if we can tell if it is a composite or not.

Here are some of our flowers that we observed.

Close up of a pink gilardia...can you see the anthers?


Yellow gilardias



Tickseed or corepesis


Pin cushion flowers where you can really see the flower parts


Pink cosmos, first one of the season


Close up of the different kinds of flowers making up the composite. Can you see the disc flowers and the ray flowers?

My son's nature journal entry.


We then put the flowers in our press. I am planning on making a flower calendar to make a record of flowers blooming in our yard for each month of the year. This will be a beautiful way to document our flower study throughout the year by pressing some flowers blooming in each month, pressing them, and then affixing them to card stock with the month neatly labeled on each page. I will share our first month's page when these are ready to be added.


Another great week in our garden. My son and I both learned something new and enjoyed our time outdoors with a focus and purpose.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Nature Journal or Nature Notebook?

I had a really good question from Joy and I thought maybe somebody else might like to hear my response.

Here is her question:
First off, I have read all of CM's Original Homeschooling Series as well as Karen Andreola's Charlotte Mason Companion, along with various others (and I've read all that you have on your site concerning Nature Journaling). But, I am still left wondering, is there a difference between a nature journal and a nature notebook? For example, the notebooking pages that are offered along with the GH challenges (that Tina made) would go into a nature notebook. However, I really like the nature journal idea, with the dry brush method, etc. and it would seem that this would be a different thing all together. The nature journal would seem to be a sketch book whereas the notebook would be something that would go into a 3 ring binder. So, how do these mesh together, and should I have my children do both? I know these questions are possibly silly to those who have done this for a while, but since I am just starting out, I don't want to overwhelm my little ones (2nd grade and 1st grade). I really just want a streamlined way to encourage them to interact with what they are learning outdoors.

Now my answer:
First off I think this is a really good question and if you ask ten different people, you will get ten different answers. But I will take a stab at it since it relates to the Green Hour Challenges. Clarifying things is always a good opportunity to fine tune our ideas.

I did a little research on what a "nature journal" is and the best explanation of it I found was in Clare Walker Leslie's book, Keeping a Nature Journal. She explains it this way.

"Simply put, nature journaling is the regular recording of observations, perceptions, and feelings about the natural world around you. That is the essence of the process. The recording can be done in a wide variety of ways, depending on the individual journalist's interests, background, and training. Some people prefer to record in written prose or poetry, some do it through drawing or painting, others with photographs or tape recordings, and still others through musical notation.....Many people use a combination of these techniques."

In the Handbook of Nature Study, Anna Comstock calls the nature journal a "field journal" but it is still the same thing, a nature journal. In Charlotte Mason's original homeschooling series in volume one, she refers to the nature journal as a nature diary. The idea is all the same idea, to record personal observations and thoughts about the world around you.



So Joy, to answer your question with the short answer, either method is still considered nature journaling whether you use a spiral bound sketch pad with watercolors, markers, or pencils or if you choose to use sheets of paper slipped into a 3-ring binder when you are finished. In our family, we do combinations of both recording in the nature journal and on paper.

Your children are still very young so you may wish to have them work on individual sheets of paper and slip them into sheet protectors when they are finished and store them in a binder. You may at a later date start them in their own spiral bound nature journal. Either way you can include many different types of mediums.

You can still watercolor and slip them into the binder. You can press flowers and slip those in too. If you come across a nature notebooking page you like you can fill those out and put those in the binder. The notebooking pages are nice for younger children because most of them include lines to write your notes on which is easier for younger writers. I have one son that likes the notebooking pages because he hates a blank page. If it is in a notebooking page format, he can easily think of things to fill it up.

I hope that clears things up a bit. I know there are a lot of choices and you will eventually come to the answer for your family about which one works the best. Nothing is set in stone either. You can start one way and change at any time. It depends a lot on how you are going to use the nature journals and how your children feel about recording in them. When my boys were little, we filled up lots of pages each year so they loved starting fresh each fall. Now we perhaps make an entry a week and we have slowed down considerably in the volume of notebooks.

Here is a slideshow of a few pages from my son's nature journal from about age 5 to age 7.
Flickr Slideshow of Young Child's Nature Journal

As you can see, he used a variety of methods for making his entry and it has made a unique keepsake of his observations. He has become more sophisticated as time goes on but the principle is still the same in that he chooses how to record his ideas and experiences.

Make nature journaling a pleasant experience. I know that many times for myself I end up not liking a page until it is all done. It has taken me many years to develop my own style of nature notebook. Want a glimpse into my nature journal? Here is a link:
Drawing in Your Nature Journal

And I always remind new families that the journal page is the icing on the cake. The most important part of nature study is the time spent outdoors together with your children. You are successful whether you end up with a page in your journal each week or not. :)

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Fresh Strawberries: Gardening Rewards the Patient

Look what we picked this morning before the sun got too hot...mmmmmm. Fresh strawberries smell so delicious and I can hardly stand to wait to wash them before I pop them into my mouth.

"Of all the blossoms that clothe our open fields, one of the prettiest is that of the wild strawberry. And yet so influenced is man by his stomach that he seldom heeds this flower except as a promis of a crop of strawberries."
Handbook of Nature Study, page 608

More on strawberries and how to include them in your nature study are found on pages 608-610 of the Handbook of Nature Study.

Gardening brings such sweet rewards.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom