Outdoor Hour Challenge

Imagine walking down your driveway, looking up and seeing this over your head.

This little critter is a spiny orbweaver. It kind of looks like a crab and a spider had a baby :) They make their webs between the trees - at least in our yard. I've never seen them before we moved into this house, but I guess they are pretty common.

This is not the same one, but it's a better picture. We found this one in the yard a few months after we moved in. Since then we've found red and green ones as well. They are quite colorful little critters. See what I mean about looking like a spider crab?

This is some sort of river birch. We got out our Florida tree field guide and try to narrow it down, but that's as close as we got. We have a few trees like it in our yard and none of them are the same.


Sydney's journal. She drew the birch tree and added some leaf rubbings for good measure.

Delaney's journal

My journal

Outdoor Hour ~ Challenge #5 (more like a repeat of #4)

After all our drama, and after I came to my nature study senses, I sat the girls down yesterday with the Handbook of Nature Study and told them that we needed to pick ONE are to focus on for the first few challenges. They had a hard time choosing, but in the end, and after quite a bit of dizzying back and forth-ness (like my new word?), we finally decided to study trees.

At church on Sunday, our homeowner asked if we had found any pecans in the yard or if the squirrels were eating them. Pecans? We are pretty clueless about these things and never bothered to look for the pecan tree the last time Mr. M mentioned it. So the girls and I decided that that the first order of business for our tree study would be to find the pecan tree.

We went online and Googled pecan leaves so we knew what we would be looking for. You just have to love Google, don't you? Up popped hundreds of pictures of pecan trees/leaves and my oldest daughter says, "I know where those are!" So out we stumbled into the yard. Imagine my surprise when I found that the mysterious pecan tree is only about 20 feet from the back door. Doh!


We checked out the tree, gathered some sample leaves and nuts and then headed back into the house as the crazy mosquitoes swarmed.


The girls were pretty eager to check out the inside of the nut. We got out some screwdrivers and pliers and went to work.

We didn't find much on the inside...I guess that's why the squirrels left these behind.


In our study we learned the scientific name for the pecan tree (Carya illinoinensis) and that it is a deciduous tree related to the hickory. Next week we are planning to see if we have any hickory trees in our yard. We did some leaf rubbings and in the next few days I'd like to do some bark rubbings since e have some smooth and rough-barked trees in our yard.

We did not make a list as the challenge suggested, but our goal for this study is to identify as many of the trees on our property as we possibly can. We live in the woods so I don't think we'll run out of material.

The girls did a great job with their journals.

Sydney (9yrs)

Delaney (6yrs)

Sadey (3yrs)

Mom (not 9, 6 or 3)

Outdoor Hour Challenge #4

For this Outdoor Hour Challenge, we were supposed to pick an area of nature to focus on for the next 6-8 weeks, take a nature walk, discuss/research what we saw that related to our area of focus and make a journal entry. But here's the problem...my children can't agree on a focus area!

This doesn't surprise me as they seem to take great delight in being opposite of each other, but it can be frustrating when we're trying to do group projects. Sydney wants to study birds because she is trying to write a movie script about birds. Delaney wants to do trees. I'm not really sure WHY she is so insistant on trees (aside form the aforementioned desire to be opposite of her big sister) but she is not willing to budge.

Needless to say, we took this week's nature walk without a focus area, but a good time was had by all.

We went back to the park that we visited on our last walk - only this time we went down to the beach area and walked along the shore.

This isn't a great picture, but we saw a crane standing in the bay.

The girls found lots of rocks...

snails....

and butterfly wings.

I think what I'll do to settle the big "area of focus" debate is just let Sydney work on birds, Delaney can learn about trees and Sadey and I will do our best to keep up with them both. It would be easier if they were doing the same thing, but I think we can handle both topics - at least in a basic way.

It'll work.

Outdoor Hour ~ Challenge #3

I'm very late blogging about this, but we did our third Outdoor Hour Challenge two weeks ago. We grew tired of all the mosquitoes in the yard, so we decided to load up the kids and head to a local park overlooking the bay.

We are originally from NW Indiana and it took us a long time to understand that there was more than one type of Oak tree. This park (and really, the whole city) is filled with Live Oaks - which are absolutely grogeous trees with acorns, but leaves that look nothing like the Oaks we are used to. The Live Oaks are filled with Spanish Moss!

Color me silly, but I had no idea that Spanish Moss is actually a flowering plant (Tillandsia usneoides) and a member of the pineapple family! Apparently it's an air plant and grows on the Live Oaks because they leach minerals through their leaves that the Spanish Moss thrive on. We all thought that was pretty darn cool.

Delaney has been learning about bugs in her science lessons and rarely hesitates to lift things up to see what may be lurking underneath. This was a tree that fell during the winds of Gustav.

She didn't see any critters around the roots - but she was looking!


These are some mushrooms (I think) that were growing along the driveway. I haven't looked them up yet, but we didn't touch them just to be safe.

This "little" guy is our favorite nature find. Dad found him hanging on the edge of our extremely overworked mosquito/bug zapper. We believe it's a luna moth. It's HUGE, but absolutely gorgeous.

I have noticed that we have all changed our attitude about science and nature since we began taking our weekly nature walks. The girls run up to me with seeds and leaves every time we leave the house now and I find myself trying to listen a little closer to see if I can discern the various bird calls from the noise of the crickets and frogs. I even took my preschoolers from co op on a nature walk last week! We are still not thrilled with the mosquitoes, but otherwise, this has been a great addition to our studies and something we will continue doing through the years.

Outdoor Hour - Challenge #2

We are actually a week late finishing this challenge, but we did give it the old college try last week. We made it home early from a Thursday afternoon meeting so I thought we would wander down to the mailbox and do our listening exercise before TS Fay brought bad weather our way. So the kids piled out of the van and we headed down the drive only to be overcome by mosquitoes and fire ants. I don't think I'll ever get used to living in the Florida countryside. So after being delayed a few days by supposedly impending nasty weather, today was take two for Challenge #2 and a good time was had by all.

I don't know if you can hear the brook bubbling in the background, but it was probably our favorite stop on the 45 minute walk. If you look at the drainage pipe, you may be able to get a glimpse of the little lizard we stopped to watch. He was pretty quick though. You can definitely hear the wind, crickets, frogs and birds. It was a pretty noisy day!

Sydney was overcome with the sights and sounds of our walk today. I think she's a nature girl at heart even though she tries to deny it. She fell in love with this view, imagining another world just underneath and behind that dying bush in the background. She's decided to use it as the setting for her next book.

Her descriptions for what she heard, saw and felt were, rustling (the brook), beautiful woods and a soft, small flower. Her favorite finds on the walk were the wildflowers that were growing along the drainage ditch. Unfortunately the big tractor was out today and nearly mowed them all down.

Delaney seems to have the most fun chasing after frogs, collecting nuts and picking flowers for her sisters. She wasn't impressed by the sounds of nature, but the lizards, bugs and anything else she could touch definitely caught her attention. It was hard for her to put her impressions of nature into a few words, but she told me that she heard "crickety crickets", saw lizards that were "yellowish, reddish, stripey-ish" and felt the wind. Her three word description of the wind was actually several sentences and involved a bucket of water. I don't know how her mind works sometimes, but she has a very vivid and detailed description of what the wind felt like against her face. She was taken aback by all the water in the drainage ditches along the side of the road. It's funny how we live so close to the Gulf of Mexico and the world's most beautiful beaches, yet the kids think standing water in a drainage ditch is the best thing they've seen in a long time.

Sadey - eh - she'd rather be in the house. But I don't blame her because the mosquitoes go after her regardless of how much bug spray I bathe her in. Poor kid. She was thrilled with one of the weed/flowers that we picked by the side of the road and this leaf though. I think she'll have more fun with our walks once the weather cools off and some of the bugs die down.

Outdoor Hour Challenge #1

I should begin by saying that I know how blessed we are to be living where we are. It was only by God's hands that my family has been able to experience country life while living so close to the Gulf of Mexico. I'm not even sure how it all happened, but here we are in the midst of some of God's greatest creations.

Having said that though, we are also "blessed" with more than our fair share of mosquitoes, spiders, snakes, lizards, bears, sand gnats and creepy crawlies that make my skin crawl. I am trying to be a good homeschool mom and embrace nature in all it's glory, but it'd be easier if I wasn't (a) seriously creeped out by some of it and (b) constantly swatting at the mosquitoes regardless of how much bug spray I've bathed in. Brian is much more willing to get out there and see what he can find and he's done a good job of taking pictures so the girls and I can identify some of the strange or down right disgusting things we've seen since we moved into the woods about 16 months ago. Honestly though, I'd be fine if I never went into the yard. The butterflies and dragonflies are very pretty through the glass and I don't even need to don the mosquito netting to see them.

However, now that we've switched curriculum and have fully embraced the Charlotte Mason style of teaching, I thought I should probably also embrace the nature study aspect of her method. Today was one of those rare days that was just rainy enough to keep away the mosquitoes, but not too rainy to get outside so I thought it was a good time to start our first Outdoor Hour Challenge.

So we stepped into the backyard to see what we could find....



This bush is right by our back door and our homeowner says it's called a Chaste Bush. I don't know if that's true or not, but he told me all about how he planted it in honor of his three daughters :) It is in full bloom in early spring and is covered with bees for most of the summer. You can't see the bees, but you can hear them and it's a little scary to walk by the bush everyday to get into the yard. We had to cut nearly half of it down last year when a nearby tree fell onto it - but it grew back fast! It just started blooming again a couple of weeks ago, but it'll be all green for most of the fall and winter.


Delaney is in love with all the frogs in our yard. It's a bit like a bad black and white horror movie out there with all the tiny frogs hopping about. All three of the girls think they are great though and it's funny to watch the dog try to catch them. Even Sadey likes to chase them around the yard. Someday I hope to gather some tadpoles from the pond so we can watch them develop.


This is the pond on our property where all the frogs live. Unfortunately it's pretty overgrown and there are too many snakes for me to feel like it's safe to go exploring around the pond. It's prettier when the lilly pads are in bloom, but it's kinda' cool to have our own pond. We'll have to keep our eye on it to see how it changes with the seasons.

Sydney and I both thought this was a neat little weed. We have no idea what it is, but the little flower thingies (I'm such a true nature lover that the vocabulary obviously comes easy for me) are prickly. They aren't as stiff as burrs, but maybe they will become burrs in the fall or maybe that's just God's built in defense mechanism for the flowers...I have no idea.

These (below) are the goodies we brought in from the yard. Sydney was really interested in the heart shaped leaf (top left). Our house was vacant for several years before we moved in, so everything is overgrown and several bushes and vines are wrapped around trees and it's hard for us to tell what comes from what. The heart leaf came from a "tree" with about 4 other kinds of leaves and some dew berries (which I think might be a southern term for mulberries but the homeowner calls them dew berries so I just don't know yet) growing around the bottom of the tree.

Here (above) are the girls' journal pages: Delaney (6) Sydney (9) and Sadey (3)

The girls decided that they loved doing the nature study because it was fun to spend time together and to learn new things. They picked out a couple of leaves they want to try identifying and D wants to learn more about those darn - er I mean LOVELY - frogs.

So our first real nature walk turned out to be a pretty good experience and we're looking forward to figuring out what our leaves are and getting back into the yard again soon. Did I say that?