Autumnal Outdoor Hour

It has been said that people usually favor the seasons in which they born. As a November child, I've always loved autumn-- the colors, the fragrances, the food! I'm thrilled that our outdoor hour nature walks will morph into these beautiful strolls among fiery leaves and cool morning air.

Yesterday morning, we were luckily enough to have Dad home with us, and we decided to take a walk to the corn field. It grows behind where we live, and, over the last few weeks, we have watched it sprout like magic beanstalks.

Venturing in always stirs up the excitement. For me, I was thinking of every horror movie I'd seen with creepy children or creatures emerging from the eerie corn fields. The two guys, though, bravely soldiered in.

It wasn't long before they started disappearing.

Aidyn, standing on Daddy's shoulders.

I love the excitement on his face.

 

And here's the Daddy. :)

This is going to be a beautiful season. I can just feel it.

To read about our other outdoor hour challenges, peruse these posts.

Outdoor Hour Challenge #4

The next challenge at The Handbook of Nature Study blog encouraged us to focus on a specific element of study. Our lesson with Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel asked us to look at trees and things in motion. We decided to combine our studies to focus on trees in motion.

First we observed the tree nearest to us, touched its bark, commented on its high-up branches. We saw another tree further on with striking differences to the first. We simply traveled from tree to tree, comparing each to the last.

Eventually we plopped down and began sketching. We talked about the "shape" of some trees, that many evergreens look "pointy," while other trees like more rounded.

Aidyn sketched a mammoth evergreen tree and a little tree with pink flowers blossoming on it.

When we returned home, Aidyn added splashes of color.

 

 

Adding some brown bark.

 

As we read Mike Mulligan, we noted the illustrator's style in creating motion in her drawings. Aidyn noticed the blurs of color to show that something was moving. We revisited our tree picture, and I showed him how to take a piece of chalk, create lines from the moving part and blend in the direction it moved.

He tried it with his evergreen, and his tree looked like it was experiencing a blustery day!

We are both so enjoying our outdoor hour challenges. We both come in refreshed and ready to start the day. Aidyn's attitude, as well, is much calmer and peaceful if we've had a morning nature walk.


What we were able to accomplish this day:

• Aidyn wrapped up Unit 1 of his math book and took the unit test.
• We played a few rounds of the sight word/tower building game, only this time he had to also put the word into a sentence. I lost three times.
• Aidyn wrote his sentences for the day with very little assistance from me.
• We read about the gods of ancient Egypt, specifically Osiris, Isis, and Set. Afterward, he colored a picture of Osiris and shared the story with his grandma and dad.
• Aidyn played outside with his friends, with his new cement mixer toy (from the Dollar Tree) inspired by Mike Mulligan.
• I made a "Neat and Square" Mike Mulligan Chocolate Cake.

Check back for more Outdoor Hour Challenges and the FIAR row of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel!



Outdoor Hour Challenge #3

Yesterday's Outdoor Hour Challenge was to find something in nature to draw. Aidyn snoozed way past normal, and I made 'Neat and Square' chocolate pancakes a la Mike Mulligan so I was sure a nature walk just was not going to happen.

Although I had informed him that it would be a quick walk, taking our time proved inspiring.

We walked around, trying to decide what to sketch. We eventually watched a colony of red ants soldiering around. These guys were HUGE and walked like beasts. Because the goal was to eventually draw them, we observed them quite a bit longer than we ordinarily would.

There were some poor little ants that looked like they showed up to the wrong  family reunion, but we just watched how they all seemed to get along.

After I had finally asked, "So are these red ants what you'd like to draw?" he said, "No, I want to bring something in the house with us."

Nearby, he found a small log, just resting on the ground. Turning it over, he quickly found that the damp part of it was home to a family of pill bugs. Even though Aidyn was startled, he was so excited and watched them scurry, saying, "I wanna draw these!"

On our way home, he asked me what pill bugs eat, where they like to live, if we can have one as a pet, etc. As usual, I had little knowledge of the pill bug but told him we would definitely find out.

As Aidyn drew in his nature journal, I found a pill bug site for kids and shared with Aidyn that:

• pill bugs are the only crustaceans that live entirely on land
• pill bugs eat rotting vegetation
• pill bugs enjoy moist environments

(::GASP:: "We found them under a wet log!)

• pill bugs have 7 pairs of legs
• pill bugs have armor
• pill bugs have antennae
• pill bugs do not spread disease or contaminate food

What has surpised and delighted me about these outdoor hour challenges is that we never know what we'll find or what questions these walks inspire. I also realize how little I know about nature and the holes in my own education. Every day I say at least once, "I don't exactly know, but we can find out!" Nature walks also help with calming and grounding us for the whole day. We both have better attitudes and more patience.

Keep checking back for more Outdoor Hour Challenges, and maybe start your own at The Handbook of Nature Study blog.

To read about our other Outdoor Hour Challenges, visit Our Outdoor Hour Challenges.

Outdoor Hour Challenge #2

You might remember that last week we went on our first Outdoor Hour Challenge from The Handbook of Nature Study blog.

For this morning's challenge, we decided to find 5 living things, be they flora, fauna, and/or human.


It's funny how amongst all the grass, trees, and nicely landscaped bushes that, when asked, "Do you see anything living?" Aidyn's first response was, "No, there's nothing here."

Eventually we found a pearly white cat that met Aidyn's qualifications for a living being. Afterward he happily picked a sunflower and asked a bajillion questions about sunflowers, and I confidently supplied the answer to about four of them.

Then we walked amongst rows and rows of growing corn stalks.

"See anything alive?"

"Nope."

At some point, he accepted that so much around him was alive, and we spouted off all the living things near us.

We even spotted a small tunnel opening with scores of ants slowly marching around it.

"Why do you think they're moving so slowly?" I asked him.

"Maybe 'cuz it's cold."

I was intrigued by their colors, half black and half brown-red. When we got home, I looked up these crazy ants while Aidyn drew the five living things he found in his nature journal. We also read about sunflowers and tried to answer the last 996 zillion questions.

 

 

Same as last week, going out on a morning nature walk granted me a calm and collected little student today. His attitude was stellar, and we got a lot accomplished, including:

 

• "Digging" into our new book, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, talking about characters in the story (and how stories need characters) and writing his thoughts in our lapbook.
• Cuddling on the couch and watching two old Disney shorts featuring steam shovels as characters.
• Playing the sight word/tower building game again. Losing twice.
• Letting Aidyn work independently on his phonics sheet. He did so well!
• Jumping into a new chapter book/graphic novel.

Outdoor Hour Challenge #1

Yesterday we had our first emotional roller coaster. I felt it, too. I was tiring of the textbooks and itching for something more fun.

This morning we decided to go on a nature walk to enjoy the quiet of the morning, reconnect with nature, and let the world be our classroom.

I am much inspired by the Handbook of Nature Study Blog and followed their guidelines for an outdoor hour challenge. After reading the first twenty pages of The Handbook of Nature Study (available for free here), I printed a blank nature journal that the Handbook of Nature Study blog offers FOR FREE.

I asked Aidyn to create a challenge, and he chose a "no talking" nature walk. We laid some ground rules (our poor attempt at sign language was acceptable, do this ::waves hands erratically:: if you hear something we should record, nearly poke yourself in the eye if you see something you want to record, and if someone we pass talks to us we may talk to them.)

And we were off.

It took Aidyn exactly five seconds to find something both alive and slimy.

He decided to bring his new friend along.

We jotted down a bunch of stuff we saw and heard, communicating it all in our terrible sign language.

We also found some weird brown seed pod something-or-other that had fallen from a mystery tree. We took it back home for dissection and to try and figure out if we could identify the tree.

The answer is no. We were not able to. But we did learn some thing about leaf types! And we learned and recorded the latin name for snails and that they can live for 20 years!

Using a corkscrew to crack it open.

We returned to the mystery tree to bring back a branch and leaf sample, but we had zero luck.

The tree who remains unidentified.

But we did find an adorable and cuddly cat.

Enjoying nature in the morning created a completely different child than the one I taught yesterday. His attitude was positive, he was engaged in every task, and he seemed more relaxed. Activities that went well include:

• third reading of The Day of Ahmed's Secret while paying extra attention to the art throughout the book.
• watercoloring (Aidyn a kaleidoscope and me a sunset behind Mt. Diablo-- or pyramids, as Aidyn called them)
• sight word/tower building game (We cycle through sight words on flashcards. If he reads it correctly, I stack a block; if he doesn't, he stacks a block. First person whose tower of blocks falls loses. I lost four times.)
• math lesson on number lines and worksheet
• reading of Story of the World on Two Kingdoms become One. He was so disappointed that the Red Crown king lost and that King Narmer became king of Egypt. Aidyn, it was 5,000 years ago. It's cool.
• map coloring of Egypt and bonus points for coloring the Nile River "up" northward, in the direction it flows.
• coloring a small picture of King Narmer for our timeline.
• plowing through the last three chapters of The Magic Treehouse: Mummies in the Morning.
• coloring "stained glass" pictures (Aidyn- King Tut, Me- Cleopatra)