Nature Study as We Go About Our Everyday Life

This week we had some new and interesting things come our way for nature study. We seem to find things. We saw this field of wildflowers along the bike trail in our local area. The field was so pretty in the early morning light and I couldn't resist taking a few photos.


Common Madia


I even got a photo with a bee in it as part of our insect study this week.

My son found this moth in the bathroom and called me in to get a photo of the "pretty moth" on the wall. Cool.

We visited the pond this week and we brought home some water, plants, and some fish. This snail came along for the ride.

This is something else new for me...not sure what it is. The fruit looks sort of like a cherry. Isn't it frustrating when you just don't know what you want to know? I will try to figure it out and come back and edit. This was in the parking lot where I was waiting for the boys.
Edit: Thanks everyone....rose hips! The bush is so big and I didn't realize it was a rose but I am sure that everyone is right....rose hips. Thanks again.


The cutest thing we saw this week was a squirrel eating walnuts from our tree. He had such a long bushy tail and he didn't mind that we watched him as he nibbled. There are plenty of nuts for everyone. My son discovered the squirrel while he was in the backyard working on a project.

We had a lot of incidental nature study this week. I love that when it happens.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Fascinating Millipedes (not a mammal)

(click to make the photos larger)

I know we are focusing on mammals this term but we had a visitor yesterday that is worth a post. We were cleaning up our snowy, wet things and found a millipede on the towel that we had under our gloves drying on a rack.


It was fascinating to watch him crawl around and his many legs were really interesting.

Here's some information from the Handbook of Nature Study, page 448 in the invertebrates section:
"Millipede, Spirobolus. These animals live in damp places and feed chiefly on decaying matter."

I have no idea how he got into the house but it was fun to learn about him. Here is a little video of him moving around.

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Wrapping up our Fall Term Study of Insects

We have had several insects that we have seen and identified but not taken great photos of for the blog. One was an earwig that I found in my kitchen. I hate earwigs.

The Handbook of Nature Study does not have any information on the earwig but it is a great insect to identify the parts of an insect with. I knew what kind of insect it was so we did a quick internet search and found loads of information about it.

We also found a millipede which we quickly discovered was *not* an insect. It is an invertebrate. You can find an illustration of a millipede and a caption about it on pages 448-449 of HNS.


We also found a tarantula in our garage, dead and stiff. This made for some interesting observations. At first I was horrified by its appearance but then, after I knew it was dead, I was able to observe its parts and really see it up close. I don't care to do that too much but it was interesting this one time. :) So even though it technically isn't an insect, we did learn something about tarantulas.

Here's what the Handbook of Nature Study says on page 435-436:
"There is an impression abroad that all spiders are dangerous to handle. This is a mistake; the bite of any of our common spiders in not nearly so dangerous as the bite of a malaria-laden mosquito. Although there is a little venom injected into the wound by the bite of any spider, yet there are few species found in the United States whose bite is sufficiently venomous to be feared. With the exception of the tarantulas of the Southwest, and the hourglass or black widow, which seems now to be extending its range from the South, the spiders of the United States are really as harmless to handle as are most of our common insects."

Believe me, I will not be handling any tarantulas in the near future. :)

We are wrapping up the focus on insects and we will be moving on to mammals for now. I am sort of excited to start since I know we are going to learn so much about what has been under our very noses and we have missed it.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom