Outdoor Hour

This is our first week enjoying this more focused study with Barbara's Outdoor Hour blog. We love to be outdoors anyway, and spent countless hours studying birds, feeding them, photographing, them, etc. this past spring. During summer, we look for birds & plants while on vacation in Maine but we rarely spend much time learning more about these.

My hope is that this more focused study will encourage a new routine in our week. My only worry is that winter is fast approaching...will the momma really want to bundle up and head out?! :)

I have read the Handbook of Nature Study pages for this first week and have requested the book from the library for future weeks before deciding to purchase, but so far, I like it and will likely need to indulge my book-buying issues and get one.

So, yesterday, in the beautiful sunshine, out we went! We spied a path down the road a bit and decided to go there. The girls packed small books we had made a while back but never used, so they packed some pencils and off we went to see what we could see! I, of course, packed my camera.

The leaves were bright and beautiful so we gathered all that we cared to and even drew a few in our books while sitting in the warm dappled sunlight. Back at home, we pulled out a field guide to trees & leaves to see if we could find the leaves. We have more to do, but we know we have maple & a few kinds of oak. We still have some birch to figure out and a few others to continue researching. We need to do a little learning about how leaves turn color because we found some a beautiful maple where only the tip of a leaf had started turning red. And it was on the branch that extended out the farthest. Very cool!

Can't wait to start the next assignment!