Wildflower Walk-Purple Chinese Houses, White Globe Lily, Indian Pink, and More

Trail with poppies-it is a steep hike but very rewarding

It was a family hike day down our near-by trail. We just discovered this trail over the winter and have now been hiking it for the last few months regularly. We are finding that every time we venture down it, we find something new and exciting waiting for us.

This afternoon we found lots of new wildflowers blooming, some familiar and some new to us. We also saw at least three different kinds of butterflies and heard a new bird but never discovered who it was.....shy bird with a lovely call. We need to come back with binoculars and spend some time quietly sitting and waiting with a field guide.

"Everyone should have the privilege of enjoying the natural beauty of the countryside. Such enjoyment is impossible if a relatively small number of people insist on picking and destroying native plants for their own selfish interests."
Handbook of Nature Study, page 460-461

Here are some of the beauties we saw on this particular hike.

Some kind of pea flowering on a vine.


California Indian Pink....showy color and you couldn't miss it!


Purple Chinese Houses
These are some of my favorite wildflowers. Not only are they purple but they are really big. On this trail they line both sides as you walk the upper part.


White Globe Lily or as we call them Fairy Lanterns. They are also know as Snowdrops, Indian Bells and Satin Bells. Whatever you call them, so pretty.


This is a new flower to us. I love the little purple dot on each petal and the yellow center. The interesting stems and leaves make this unusual shape. They were all over the trail...in the center as well as the edge. I have not identified this wildflower yet....any ideas?


This was so sweet smelling as we hiked along...deer bush, California lilac, or wild lilac. The bees loved it.

This was a wonderful way to spend our Green Hour this weekend. So many families have thanked me for starting the Green Hour Challenges but the reality is that this whole process has blessed me more than you can imagine. I have renewed zeal for finding ways of weaving nature study into our life too. It has been a mutually beneficial experience. :) So thank you to all you families who are participating.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Nature Study and Toddlers

I recently helped a friend with some advice on how to have nature study with your school-age children with your sweet toddler tagging along. I thought you all might like to hear what I shared with her.

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Here's what I related to her about my experience with nature journals:
Nature study is not so much about the journals, it's about the experience of being out-of-doors. It's great when it culminates in a nature journal entry but if it doesn't....no big deal. You said you wanted to instill a love for nature and you could quite possibly be already doing that just by focusing a bit of time outside. Let your kids direct you when you have the time to wander the yard or the neighborhood. Don't expect anything and don't try to force it.

Here's what we would do when the boys were younger:
I would send the boys outside and let them play. I find that if they get that initial burst of energy out they are ready to get down and focus on something.I would go with them and just wander the yard. I might find something of interest and call them over. "Hey guys look at this!"

It worked sometimes.....or they would do the same to me. "Look at that spider on the slide mom, do you know what it is?"

This was usually followed but utter horror by me because I am not a "bug person". I would usually go over and look at it and then I would point something out like how many legs it had or what color it was. Later when we were finished playing, we would go inside and I would pull out the journals. They could draw whatever they wanted as long as they narrated back to me what it was. I would write the labels or as they got older, they would write the labels. If we felt like it, we would look up in a field guide whatever it was we had drawn. I have a lot of the Audubon field guides so we could usually find something in there. I found the internet to be a great help.

Let your younger one do things like leaf rubbings or texture drawings for his very own nature journal. Send him on a scavenger hunt while you work with your daughter. "Go get me a leaf." "Find a rock." "Can you find a bug in the grass?" "Find me something brown." Just something to get him involved.

We handle nature journals a little differently now that they are older but you get the idea. Take a walk or just go to the park, there will always be something to draw their attention to. They have to learn to notice things and then it is easier.

Also remember you have *years* to work on your nature journal. My daughter that is 21 years old still works in her nature journal. It is sort of a "life project".

Enjoy God's creation!
Barb
Harmony Art Mom

Outdoor Hour Challenge #1: Nature Walk Notes

We successfully completed our Green Hour Challenge yesterday. We decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather and go for a nature hike. I had seen a sign a couple miles from our house that looked like it was the beginning of a trailhead. How could I have never put the effort into stopping and finding out before? It seems strange that such a gorgeous trail could be that close to my house and we had never walked it before. The Green Hour Challenge put it into my head to go ahead and give it a try. Here are a few photos of things we saw.

Delicate lavender flowers among miner's lettuce.

Ferns lined the trail on the way down the canyon. I love this photo so much that it is now the background image on my nature blog.

I have no idea what this bloom is but it was so unusual that I decided to try to identify it when we got home. Did you see the insect on it?
After we hiked this trail a bit we made our way back to the car and went down to the river to explore.

So here are some rocks along the river's edge. We decided that this week we are going to try to identify the pink and the green rocks in this photo. I have an idea of what they are but we are going to do some research and find out for sure.

Here is another shot of the green rock.

Here is a photo of the American River where we spent some time on our Green Hour Challenge. Can you believe this river flows about 4 miles away from our front door?

Who can go to the river without throwing a few rocks in?

It was getting late but we were enjoying ourselves so much that we lost track of time. The dog in this photo just appeared at the river's edge and convinced the boys to throw some sticks into the water so he could jump in and fetch them. My boys loved this added feature of our nature walk. :)

So that ends our first Green Hour Challenge. I got my reading done (I've read it before but I took the time to reread it.) We spent our time walking outdoors together. We found two things to investigate further. We had a wonderful time.

Success.

Winter Nature Walk-Boy's View

I was sick with the flu this weekend so my boys decided yesterday afternoon to talk a walk without me....the afternoon was bright and sunny in between a cloudy morning and a snowy evening.

Here are some photos they took on their walk to share with me when they returned home.

Love the sky in this one!

Here is a view coming down the walking trail with a beautiful perspective of someone's house with a horse in the yard. (click to make the photo larger and you will see the black horse by the house)

That fits our mammal study. We haven't ever really learned about horses but we can now in the Handbook of Nature Study on pages 274-280.

Anna Botsford Comstock says:
"Begin this study of the horse with stories of wild horses."

I have the whole collection of Marguerite Henry books on my shelf and I don't think my boys have ever read them. I know we read Brighty of the Grand Canyon on a road trip to the Grand Canyon but other than that, they have not tasted the delights of King of the Wind, Misty-Stormy's Foal, Justin Morgan Had a Horse, or any of the other wonderful books about horses that I read as a child. I need to dust those off and encourage the boys to read them. You can see my sidebar to find some of these wonderful horse stories that you can use along with your nature study with your children.

One last photo from their walk. Here is the llama that I have shared before but this time he was way down by the fence so the boys could take a photo of his head peeking out from the bushes.

Even though I didn't get to go with boys on their walk, I did get to enjoy the stories and the photos.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Nature Walk in the Big Trees

Big Trees.......Sequoiadendron giganteum

It is really hard to get a good photo of the big trees and all your kids at the same time. It is rather dark underneath this forest canopy .

Fallen trees are great for walking on, or falling off of in my case. I was so busy trying too look at some cool fungus that I slipped totally off and fell down. Okay, everyone laughed but it wasn't too funny for me. :)


Seed cones from the sequoia tree are rather small.

Baby sequoias


A variety of fungus was all around at this time of year....too bad I didn't have a field guide. Oh well, next time.



That is just a sample of our day out today.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom