Outdoor Hour Challenge #27 Bees

“During many years naturalists have been studying the habits and adaptations of the honeybees, and, as yet, the story of their wonderful ways is not half told. Although we know fairly well what the bees do, yet we have no inkling of the processes which lead to a perfect government and management of the bee community; and even the beginner may discover things never known before about these fascinating little workers.”
Handbook of Nature Study, page 391

We have lots of honeybees and bumblebees in our area of California. I love to watch them on my lavender plants and on my other garden flowers. I love to sit and let them buzz up right next to me so I can see them clearly. I have had a sting or two in my life but usually because I stepped on a bee in the grass with bare feet.

“The structure of honeycomb has been for ages admired by mathematicians, who have measured the angles of the cells and demonstrated the accurate manner in which the rhomb-shaped cell changes at its base to a three-faced pyramid; and have proved that, considering the material of construction, honeycomb exemplifies the strongest and most economic structure possible for the storing of liquid contents.”
Handbook of Nature Study, page 395

I am fascinated with the geometry of the honeycomb and read with interest the section in the Handbook on honeycombs starting on page 395. Maybe it has something to do with my love for eating honey.

Outdoor Hour Challenge #27
Focus on Insects-Bees
(You may also like to look at the Yellow Jacket and Mud Dauber Challenge.)

1. This week read about bees in the Handbook of Nature Study, pages 384-400. There are sections on leaf-cutter bees, carpenter bees, bumblebees, and honeybees in the Handbook of Nature Study. You may not have every kind of bee in your location but I found the information very interesting and maybe someday I will have the opportunity to observe all the different kinds of bees discussed in the book. Remember our focus right now is on insects so if you don’t find a bee to observe, you can always look for other insects to study.

2. Your 15-20 minutes of outdoor time this week can be spent looking for insects. Make your goal just to get outside in your own backyard and find something to observe with your child. If during that time you find an insect, take as long as you can to describe what it looks like, what it is doing, and then try to come up with some questions to answer later with your Handbook of Nature Study or a field guide. If you find a bee to observe during your nature time or at another time during the week, use the opportunity to relate some facts from your reading in the Handbook of Nature Study.



3. Give the opportunity for a nature journal entry. It might be hard to draw a bee from your outdoor time but it would be a great idea to find a photo of a bee online or use the diagram on page 391 to make an entry about bees in your journal. Another idea is to use a notebooking page and fill it in with your thoughts and observations from your Outdoor Hour time.

4. If you are keeping a running list of insects you have observed during this focus period, add the insect’s name to the list.

 
Post an entry on your blog sharing your experiences. You can link up by clicking the carnival button or you can send them directly to me: harmonyfinearts@yahoo.com.

Crazy for Ladybugs: Outdoor Hour Challenge #26

We love ladybugs in our garden. It is as simple as that. They always make me smile when I see them crawling around in the grass or on the rose bushes. Maybe it is the nostalgia of childhood memories that flood in when I see ladybugs....you know, singing *that* song. :)

Here is a link to an entry that I wrote a few months ago on finding a ladybug larva and a ladybug in my garden. This is an example of how taking the time to focus on something different in your own yard leads to a lot of really great information and then satisfaction.
Ladybug Entry

Anyway, we recently observed a different kind of ladybug. I did take photos but now they are missing...hmmmm, it might actually have something to do with the number of photos I take each week. I have a hard time keeping them organized. :)

Anyway, here are some thoughts from the Handbook of Nature Study that I enjoyed:
From the Handbook of Nature Study, page 366:

"The ladybird is a beetle. Its young are very different from the adult in appearance, and feed upon plant lice."

"These little beetles are very common in autumn and may be brought to the schoolroom and passed around in vials for the children to observe. Their larvae may be found on almost any plant infested with plant lice. Plant and all may be brought into the school room and the actions of the larvae noted by the pupils during recess."

From page 365:

"From our standpoint the ladybird is of great value, for during the larval as well as adult stages, all species except one feed upon those insects which we are glad to be rid of."

"The ladybird is a clever little creature, even if it does look like a pill, and if you disturb it, it will fold up its legs and drop as if dead, playing possum in a most deceptive manner."

Here is one of our nature journals.

I don't usually have to go far during the summer to find a ladybug or some aphids. The boys will point out that I have a ladybug in my hair or there will be one hiding among the weeds on the edges of the garden box. They just seem to go hand in hand with summer gardening.

Want an update on my garden? Here you go! All the photos in this entry are from this week in my garden.

Fading Coneflowers


Green beans growing up the poles in my garden box


My first nasturtium....we must plant more of these next year.


My morning glories are glorious.


Our butterfly bush in blooming...two different colors. Click to see them.

The days are getting shorter again and I can feel autumn nipping at my heels. It won't be long now...sigh.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Houseflies Around our House: Outdoor Challenge #25

Since posting my challenge on houseflies, I have been on the lookout for a subject of our study. My opportunity came the other day as I was making dinner and I noticed that there was a lone fly buzzing around. He was so annoying as he tried to land on my hamburger patties and my freshly cut garden tomato and some onion. I went to get my fly swatter and then as I was poised to swat him a good one, I stopped to remember and reflect on all that I learned this week by reading in the Handbook of Nature Study.

Houseflies as a topic of a challenge. What was I thinking? Someone called me a nature nerd the other day and I think it has stuck with me.....anyone else a nature nerd?

On another note, we also saw these insects crawling all over the garden box. I have no idea what they were but there were literally hundreds of them climbing up the green bean vines and the sunflowers. If you are interested, click the photos to enlarge them....beware, they get really big when you click.


We also enjoyed another insect in the yard this week, the Red Skimmer dragonfly. I never did get a photo of these beautiful dragonflies but I did draw him in my nature journal. He really is this reddish-orange with beautiful wings. This one is much more colorful than the Black Saddlebag dragonfly that I saw last week. Unlike the Black Saddlebag, this Red Skimmer does not sit still for even a second.

Now if you are tired of looking at my insects, feast your eyes on this photo of my red delicious tomato, fresh from the garden on my lettuce salad. With rewards like this, gardening is a great hobby to pursue. Hopefully the beautiful photo of the salad will erase any unpleasantness of the fly and black bug photos from your mind. :)

Enjoy,
Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Outdoor Hour Challenge #26 Ladybugs and Aphids

This week we will be taking time to read about and look for two different insects that seem to go hand in hand. I know in our garden if I see a ladybug, I will many times, if I look carefully, see some aphids too. Aphids are pretty small but if you get out your hand lens you may find you can see these insects in your flower garden. Look under the leaves.

“Aphids seem to be born to serve as food for other creatures-they are simply little machines for making sap into honeydew, which they produce from the alimentary canal for the delectation of ants; they are, in fact, merely little animated drops of sap on legs.” Handbook of Nature Study, page 352

Wow, that pretty much spells it out. I know that I have read somewhere that ants actually “farm” the aphids and “milk” them for food.

Here are some aphids that I photographed way back last fall. These are rose leaves from my yard and they were really eating them up.


Here are the same aphids above along with an ant so you can compare the size.


These aphids I photographed last February on the back of a blackberry leaf. I didn't eve realize they were there until I zoomed in on them when I got home. I was actually taking a photo of the thorns on the back of the leaf.



Ladybugs are always a welcome sight in our garden and I have learned over the years how beneficial they are.

“The ladybird is a beetle. Its young are very different from the adult in appearance, and feed upon plant lice.”

Have fun this week and remember your overall focus is on insects so if you don’t see any ladybugs and aphids, post your blog entry about what insects you did discover. I look at these challenges as a way to make a community of families who are interested in nature. We all learn from each other. Believe it or not, I feel as if I learn just as much from all your posts as I do from doing the research to come up with the challenges.

Outdoor Hour Challenge #26
Focus on Insects-Ladybugs and Aphids

1. This week read about ladybugs and aphids in the Handbook of Nature Study, pages 364-366 and pages 351-354. Remember our focus right now is on insects so if you don’t find either of these insects to observe, you can always look for other insects to study. If you do your reading, you will be prepared when you next come across these insects.

2. Your 15-20 minutes of outdoor time this week can be spent looking for insects. I know it is still very hot for most of us but if you get out early, even before breakfast, you might be able to enjoy the morning air and a few insects too.

3. Give the opportunity for a nature journal entry. If you need ideas for alternative nature journal activities, please see challenge 2 and challenge 3. You might want to draw the ladybug life cycle or show how ants benefit from aphids by providing them with food. Encourage your child to draw something that interested them from your nature time. When my children were young, I considered a drawing, a date, and a label as a successful nature journal. There are free Insect Study notebook pages in the Ant Study.

Make sure to pull out the Handbook of Nature Study to see if any insects you find are listed and you can read more about it there. If you are keeping a running list of insects you have observed during this focus period, add the insect’s name to the list.


 
Post an entry on your blog sharing your experiences. You can link up by clicking the carnival button or you can send them directly to me: harmonyfinearts@yahoo.com.

Crickets Inside and Outside the House: Challenge #24

We have lots of experience with crickets. Our fire-bellied toads eat crickets everyday. The boys have a cricket habitat that they keep the crickets in until they are rationed out as food for the toads to snatch up.

We had to buy really big crickets a few weeks ago and they made such a racket in the house. We normally buy little crickets and they are too young to chirp. The boys could not sleep with the large crickets chirping in their room. There must have been fifty crickets in the habitat. They solved the problem by turning on the light and that made the crickets stop. Interesting.

If you are looking at the photos of the habitat and you see orange cubes, those are cricket food that provides moisture and food for them. Most of the crickets spend their time in the black tubes in the dark. You can remove a tube and shake out a few crickets into the toad habitat very easily. It works very well.

I have included a sketch of one of the crickets that my son made for his nature notebook.

After reading Angi's entry, I feel like we cheated in completing this entry by purchasing our crickets. Angi's boys look like they had a great time searching for crickets at night. We may have to try that soon.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Special Outdoor Hour Challenge Give-Away

Don't Forget Tomorrow's Deadline of 8 AM! Read below for the details!



The participation in the Outdoor Hour Challenge has really dropped in the last week, or at least the number of links entered into Mr. Linky has significantly dropped off. I want to encourage all to share in some sort of nature study this week so here is my offer.

For every post entered into Mr. Linky this week, you will entered into the give-away for one of my daughter's Hearts and Trees Summer Kits.


These are fantastic kits and included in this package is a nature journal and lapbook designed by ME! There is also a nature scavenger hunt activity as well as a sewing project, a pressed flower project, and a whole artist study for Monet. They are really great tools in helping your family in their nature study and learning more about how art and nature are connected. Click the link above for more details on the kits. They are designed for kids ages 6-12 and the sewing project might need adult help.

For each entry into Mr. Linky that links to an actual blog entry describing how you accomplished your nature study this week, I will put your name down for the give-away. I will cut off the entries at 8 AM on Friday, August 15th. You can complete any challenge that you want to and I will count it towards the give-away tally. If you are just starting out, start with number one. If you started but haven't participated for awhile, start with any challenge you are interested in. If you have been keeping up with us all along, try the last few weeks for your challenges.

I will decide on a winner and announce them next Friday, August 15th.

Please leave me a comment if you add a link and it makes it easier for me to keep up. Email me if you have any questions. If you are interested in purchasing a Summer Kit, click over to my daughter's blog and read more about it there. She has a few left in stock and she would love to answer any questions you might have about the kits.

Have a great weekend and don't forget to take a few minutes of nature time.

Pass the word about the give-away!
Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Our Nature Notebooks: Challenge #21

This is from my oldest son's nature journal. This was just about the time we started using journals in our family...

We have been plugging away, page by page, for years. I have a whole row of nature journals lined up on the shelf in our school area. It gives us a lot of pleasure to pull them down and to page through them and relive some of the memories.

I thought I would just share some pages that are favorites that I don't think I have shared before. I will add them onto the bottom of this post so you see some "older" nature journal pages and some of the variety of ideas the boys have had over the years.

We are all trying to reach thirty pages by the end of the year.

Here are our tallies so far:
Mom=11
Amanda=1
Middle Son=0
Youngest Son=2
(We just started our school term a few weeks ago and the boys have been super-dee-duper busy with high school stuff. It looks like I need to schedule in some nature study time each week.)

If you are working on your notebook challenge, please post and link in Mr. Linky on Challenge #21 and let us know how it is going for your family.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Here is the first page in my oldest son's nature journal. It isn't anything fancy but it was a start. He would have been twelve years old when he drew this.

I thought it was interesting that he spelled "orange" correctly but not "shirt". I never corrected their spelling in their notebooks.

Here is an example of how my son drew what was important to him at the time. He wrote, "cat on top of the ruff of dads shope". Priceless.

This is an example of how sometimes they would just make a list of things they saw during our nature time. I have no idea what the orange boxes are for. I am sure there was a reason. Love the spellings of the words.

I made up little "scavenger hunt" cards (you can see it taped to the side of the journal) to help us with our nature study when we seemed to be going through a slump. They would try to find something from each category and draw it in their journal. You can find similar ideas on my daughter's blog. You will need to scroll down on her sidebar to her "Free Downloads" section and click on either Summer Nature Walk Worksheet or Fall Nature Walk Worksheet.

This is from my oldest son's journal. I don't often share his stuff but I thought I would today. He has a great sense of humor and it comes out in his nature journal. He also likes fine tip colored markers instead of colored pencils.

Just another from his journal....check out that date!

I know everyone always likes to see examples from our journals so this post is for your pleasure.

Outdoor Hour Challenge #25 Housefly

“The housefly is one of the most cosmopolitan members of the animal kingdom. It flourishes in every land, plumping itself down in front of us at table, whether we be eating rice in Hong Kong, dhura in Egypt, macaroni in Italy, pie in America, or tamales in Mexico. There it sits, impertinent and imperturbable, taking its toll, letting down its long elephant-trunk tongue, rasping and sucking up such of our meal as fits its needs.”Handbook of Nature Study, page 358

Flies are a nuisance and bother to most people but they do have a purpose. After reading this week’s Handbook of Nature Study pages, you will have a better understanding and appreciation for these particular insects. I was fascinated by the information that Anna Comstock shares about something that is literally right under our noses during our everyday life. It is like most things….what we don’t focus on, we can’t see clearly. Take some time this week to be on the look out for houseflies.

Here is a link to a YouTube video of a fly eating part of a sugar cube. Totally awesome photography.
Housefly Video
(You may want to preview this video, it is a really close-up look at a housefly, sort of creepy.)


Don't miss this opportunity for nature study this week. If houseflies do not appeal to you or your children, just have some outdoor time together. See what you can find to be interested in together.

Outdoor Hour Challenge #25
Focus on Insects-Housefly1. This week read about houseflies in the Handbook of Nature Study, pages 358-361. This reading is important this week since we rarely take the time to observe a housefly close-up. Highlight or underline interesting facts as you read so when you introduce the housefly this week to your children you will have a way to remember some interesting tidbits. I know some families like to read the sections together but it works just as well if you find a few points to share with your child after you do the reading yourself. The observation suggestions on pages 360-361 give us specific things to look for. Remember our focus right now is on insects so if you don’t find a fly to observe, you can always look for other insects to study.

2. Your 15-20 minutes of outdoor time this week can be spent looking for insects. We always end up with flies when we eat outdoors. I also have one window that always seems to have a fly buzzing around it. Keep your eyes open for a housefly to observe. Do not worry if you don’t see any this week. If you do your reading, you will be prepared when you next come across this insect.

3. Give the opportunity for a nature journal entry for the fly. If you need ideas for alternative nature journal activities, please see challenges 2 and 3. Keep it simple and let your child draw what interests them in their journal. Help with the writing if they need it.

4. If you observed some other kinds of insects during the week, give the option for making a nature journal for those too. Make sure to pull out the Handbook of Nature Study to see if the insect you found is listed and you can read more about it there. If you are keeping a running list of insects you have observed during this focus period, add the insect’s name to the list.


 
Post an entry on your blog sharing your experiences. You can link up by clicking the carnival button or you can send them directly to me: harmonyfinearts@yahoo.com.

Outdoor Hour Challenge #24 Crickets

Edit to Add: There is now another Cricket Challenge in the Summer 2010 ebook and here on the blog:
OHC Summer Series #10: Crickets, Grasshoppers, and Katydids.

Let’s take a look at crickets this week in our mini-focus on insects using the Handbook of Nature Study. Summertime is the perfect time to go outdoors in the cool evenings, listening and tracking these creatures close to home.

“The haunts of the cricket are usually sunny; it digs a little cave beneath a stone or clod in some field, where it can have the whole benefit of all the sunshine when it issues from its door.”
Handbook of Nature Study, page 344

If at all possible, try to spend some of your outdoor hour time outside during the evening hours to see if you can hear some crickets chirping in the twilight and evening.



Outdoor Hour Challenge #24
Focus on Insects-Crickets

1. This week read about crickets in the Handbook of Nature Study, pages 344-349. Most of us have heard crickets in the evenings and children will be very interested to learn more about these insects that play music with their legs for us to enjoy.


2. Try to spend some of your outdoor time in the evening air. Our family likes to sit on our deck and watch as the stars come out after sunset. This is a perfect activity to couple with listening for crickets because it is just about at the same time that you will begin to hear crickets singing their evening songs.

3. After you have your outdoor time, provide an opportunity for working on a nature journal entry. Use the Handbook of Nature Study or a library book to find an illustration or photo of an actual cricket to draw in your journal. Have your child label the entry with a title, the date, and the place that you made your observation. Parents can always help the child with this part if needed. This is a good time to work on using descriptive words as described in Outdoor Hour Challenge #2. The more you use the proper names for subjects you see during your nature study, the sooner your children will learn and remember them for themselves.

4. If you observed some other kinds of insects during the week, give the option for making a nature journal for those too. Make sure to pull out the Handbook of Nature Study to see if the insect you found is listed and you can read more about it there. If you are keeping a running list of insects you have observed during this focus period, add the insect’s name to the list.


 
Post an entry on your blog sharing your experiences. You can link up by clicking the carnival button or you can send them directly to me: harmonyfinearts@yahoo.com.

Moths of All Sorts-Outdoor Hour Challenge #23

This week's challenge was to focus on insects and moths in particular. We were able to see lots of moths close-up this week when we were camping. Once you turn on the lantern and set it on the table, watch out! Moths come a flying!

Here are some of the many moths we observed during the week. We were able to get good photos by turning on two lanterns and using one to attract the moths and one to light the moth for the photo. I did not use the flash on the camera.







I don't think this one is a moth but some other sort of insect that is attracted to the light.


The next set of photos is from the back porch. I turned on the porch light and a little while later, we had plenty of insects that were sitting on the wall near the light. We were able to get good photos by shining a flashlight on the insect and then turning the flash off on the camera to take each one close-up.








Edit: Roberta says this is an adult cabbage looper. I think it looks right to me. :) Thanks Roberta.


This looks more like a green lacewing than a moth but it was sure attracted to the light.


I have not taken the time to try to identify all these insects. I have a really hard time with that part of insect nature study. I spend hours and hours pouring through the field guides and rarely do I find what I am looking for. Insects are really hard to identify but we will persevere and try to update this entry as we find the names for these critters.

My son is going to help me identify the insects and make his journal entry on one of the moths we identify. He prefers to use a spiral bound sketchbook for his nature journal instead of notebooking pages.

We found this website informational:
How to Start Mothing



Barb-Harmony Art Mom