Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden & Bird Sanctuary

"A tree with its delicate tracery

of leafless branches

is a thing of beauty to eyes

that are adjusted to see it."

~ Eloise Butler

Tyler's best friend, Jacob, joined us for our nature walk today. We decided to check out the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden & Bird Sanctuary. It turned out to be a gorgeous afternoon, despite some sprinkles during the drive there. The kids really enjoyed themselves and got to see a lot of neat things in nature. I took quite a few photos so here is a little slideshow...

We also worked on our Outdoor Hour Challenge #5 today... Keeping a List. Our focus area right now is Birds, so we are creating a list of all of the birds that we see during our walks. I used Melissa's Bird List. I have added all of the Birds we have seen so far to it as well as the two we saw today (Black-Capped Chickadee and American Redstart). I have it clipped in the front of my Nature Journal so that we can update it as we return from our walks. I also grabbed a little spiral-bound notebook today. I thought I could keep that in my pocket when I don't bring my Nature Journal on our walks in case we want to jot down the things we see along the way for adding to our Journals and Bird list later.

A new Nature Journal entry & Outdoor Hour Challenges #3 and #4

We finally took the time to journal our Nature Walk Marathon today.

Tyler really wanted to journal about the Green Heron we saw but he was a bit intimidated with drawing it, so we opted for a Notebooking page about it. He colored the picture at the top with colored pencils and then did some Copywork telling what we learned about the bird. "The Green Heron uses bait to catch its food. Its nest is made of sticks. Its eggs are green." We also added a printed copy of a photo of the Green Heron that I took on our nature walk that day.

Here he is working on the sky... made up of many shades of blue...

And here is his finished Nature Journal page...

Now, Tyler says his page is much better than mine, but I'll show it to you anyway. Don't make fun of it, ok? ;o)

So that is our Outdoor Hour Challenge #3 assignment. I am also combining it with Challenge #4 (We technically did 3 nature walks that day, so I say its ok to combine two challenges!), which is to pick a focus area for our Nature Study over the next 6-8 weeks. We are choosing to focus on birds, since there are a lot of them out and we seem to be noticing them the most and are very interested in them at the moment. Now this doesn't mean that the only thing we will study is birds for 6-8 weeks. We will learn from whatever intrigues us during our time in Nature.

Outdoor Hour Challenge #2 - Use your words

This was a really fun assignment that really got us thinking! Our assignment was to enjoy a nature walk and then use our words to describe some of the things we experienced. We used our nature walk on Wednesday for the assignment. Here are our words and journal entries...

Tyler:

One word to describe something I heard. Tweeting

Two words to describe something I saw. Brown worm

Three words to describe something I felt. Super soft petals


And here is Tyler's Nature Journal entry... he did some copywork and I let him have fun with the drawings.

Sherry:

One word to describe something I heard. Tweeting

Two words to describe something I saw. Purple flowers

Three words to describe something I felt. Slippery wet mud


And my Journal entry... I used it to teach us some of the parts of a flower. I added a little worm in the corner because this was Tyler's favorite part of the hike. He carried an earthworm around for quite a bit of our walk. I also added the date and location, and a list of the people who joined us for our walk.

Thanks, Barb (Harmony Art Mom) for hosting the Outdoor Hour Challenges! We are loving them! We can't wait to get started on number 3! Especially since I have new hiking boots now! After our 2 mile walk on Wednesday I thought my feet were going to fall off... actually I think it would have been a relief if they had!!! Obviously my cheapo hikers weren't going to cut it for our new Nature Study adventures. But I'm ready now!

Nature Walk at Wood Lake Nature Center

Today was the first nature walk organized through my new Nature Group. We planned to meet up at the Wood Lake Nature Center. We didn't have a real good turnout. One mom was sick and one must have had something come up, so it was just me and the kids... but we had a great time enjoying nature anyways, and there was a ton of it to enjoy!

Here's Tyler doing a little pose for us at the beginning of our walk...

There were lots of birds and other animals out and about for us to enjoy today. This Mama Robin was busy building her nest...

Tyler thought it was silly that she was using pieces of plastic for her nest!

Meanwhile, Daddy Robin watched from a nearby fence...

These Red-Winged Blackbirds were all over the woods. They were really showing off for us... letting us get exceptionally close to them while they sang their songs for us.

The Waterfowl were out in pairs today as well. The Mallard Ducks...

The Canadian Geese. This one was eating...

This one was napping...

We saw a beautiful pair of Wood Ducks...

And this pair of Hooded Mergansers...

After our walk we spent a little time inside the Nature Center Building playing and learning.

We had a great time and saw some very cool things in nature today. Part of the Outdoor Hour Challenge Assignment #1 was to choose something from our walk that we want to learn more about. Tyler thought we should learn more about those friendly Red-Winged Blackbirds. So that is our mission for the next week or so. We will begin by reading about them in our Handbook of Nature Study and The Sibley Field Guide to Birds. I told Tyler that I think there are some songs about Blackbirds, so we will look some of those up online and have fun with that as well. We'll also take some time to sketch a picture of one in our Nature Journal. I think he chose a good animal to study!

We used this scavenger hunt sheet during our walk. It really helped us to use all of our senses out there! Some of the other things we saw and experienced...


Things we saw:

A tree with blossoms on it

A bird

A bird's nest

Something moving in the breeze

A Squirrel

A Chipmunk

A Downy Woodpecker


Things we heard:

The wind rustling the leaves

A bird chirping


Things we felt:

Something cool in the shade

Something smooth

Something rough

Something wet

A goose feather


Things we smelled:

The grass

Smoke (they were burning off some grass near the building)