Summer wears me out. It’s all good, but whew am I ever ready to start school again by the time August rolls around! I have tons to post about, so I thought I’d do a giant post and try to fit in as much as possible. Hang on to your seats! First, some exciting news […]
God has given all creatures a line of defense, something to give them a better chance of survival. And lately I’ve become intrigued by seeing evidence of this on our nature walks. For instance below you will see a picture I took at our last Nature Club meeting. Notice the tiny red and black bugs. But especially […]
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A study or observation of nature would not be complete without adding the element of music. After all, music is most often naturally inspired by the sounds of nature.
Recently, I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing nature music CD’s from Global Journey Music. As you may already be aware, each of our NaturExplorers studies includes themed music recommendations. So, I was quick to jump on the opportunity to review these particular CD’s as they could potentially make lovely additions to the recommendations in our units.
After spending several weeks listening to the variety of CD’s that they sent my way, I’m happy to report that they most certainly do make a wonderful addition! Here are some of the specific CD’s that I was given (the others I will be reviewing soon at my personal blog, In the Sparrow’s Nest):
Click on each of the icons above to visit the Global Journey Music website and learn more about the CD and to listen to a sample.
I have listened thoroughly to all of the selections I received, and I enjoyed each and every one of them. I’ve always found peace in getting outside in nature and experiencing the sounds first-hand, but it is also wonderful to be able to listen to the calming sounds while in my home or in the car. I particularly love choosing a selection to listen to at bedtime; it always calms my busy, overfull mind.
We are adding each of the titles above to the appropriate NaturExplorer study in which the theme fits. The Nature’s Best and Classical Nature CD’s will be added as a recommendation in all of our studies.
While I took pleasure in all of the provided CD’s, my personal favorite was Thunderstorm! There was something about it that was extra calming and inspiring all at the same time.
I highly recommend all of the above selections as wonderful additions to your CD collection. And as a pertinent addition to your nature studies!
and butterfly season, but those fast and furious butterflies won’t sit still long enough for me to snap a picture!
On a recent walk with my hubby – alone (do you know how precious a nature walk alone with my husband is?? ) – we came across some beautiful, blooming milkweed.
I’ve known for quite some time that monarch butterflies and caterpillars can be found on milkweed, so I took a peek. Instead of finding monarchs, I found these.
Actually, I found hundreds of them! Talk about a munching crew of caterpillars – they had at least half the leaves from the entire cluster of plants eaten away.
From the looks of the caterpillar, I was just sure it would turn into a magnificently colored butterfly. After doing some online research, it was hard to believe the Milkweed Tussock caterpillar would turn into such a dull moth.
Activity Idea: The following day, I sent my children out with a treasure map of sorts to locate and photograph the milkweed plant and the caterpillars. Once they came back with photos to prove they found the treasure, I gave them some chocolate treasure as a treat.
Later in the week, I came across this caterpillar on the leaf of a tomato plant.
My husband grew up calling these tobacco worms because they could always be found in the tobacco fields. After some research, I found them to be called Tomato Hornworms – because of the innocent stinger-like horn found on the back end. Tomatoes and tobacco are both in the nightshade family, which is why these caterpillars can often be found on both plants.
At first, I assumed the white objects on the caterpillar’s back must be its eggs. Boy was I wrong – these are parasites! More specifically, cocoons of braconid wasps. From the perspective of a gardener, the parasites are a GOOD thing because they destroy the hornworm. Wow, the things you learn when you take a little time to research nature finds!
Now is the perfect time to take advantage of the Butterflies Flutter By NaturExplorers study!
Thanks to everyone who entered the Incredible Creeksgiveaway! Becky Lee is our lucky winner. Congratulations, Becky! We wish you many wonderful moments with your family at the creek!
In our neck of the woods, July is wild blackberry month. Over time, we’ve located several wild brambles growing along fence lines around our farm. I have to admit that harvesting is a tad difficult because of all the thorns, but well worth the effort. I wanted to share just a few pictures from our walk that day.
The big kids are busy picking berries. The three-year-old decided that thorns don't make for much fun.
Beautiful, ripe blackberries are almost too hard to collect. Everyone wants to eat them before they hit the bucket. Sound familiar fans of Blueberries for Sal?
I couldn't resist showing you the beauty of an uncut hayfield in July.
As hard as we tried, we never made it home with enough for jam or freezing. Oh well, the walk sure was yummy!
If you thought our other NaturExplorers studies were chock-full, just wait until you see this one!Incredible Creeks is our biggest unit to date with so many ideas and activities that you might just decide to camp beside the creek and keep studying for weeks!
Of course, we can’t possibly release a new unit without a giveaway! You have until this Friday (July 23) at midnight to leave a comment here for a chance to win your own e-book copy of Incredible Creeks. We’ll announce the winner on Saturday morning. Good luck!
And just a little reminder:
Our spring and summer sale will only go through the end of August, and then the prices go back to normal. (Yes, you CAN get Incredible Creeks for the $9.00 sale price!) In September, we hope to begin offering volume discounting, so keep your eyes open!
Cindy and I have decided that periodically we’d like to start sharing specific ideas from our units with you to show you exactly how we are applying them. Also, you may find a free notebooking page every now and then in these posts!
This week I’m going to feature how I applied ideas from our Butterflies Flutter By unit in my nature club yesterday. I’ve been thrilled that been able to use the ideas from the studies for my children, but also they’ve helped me lead my nature club. This is the second summer that I’ve lead the nature club and I can’t imagine not doing it now! I’ve enjoyed it so much.
Yesterday’s meeting started out with a usual 10 minute teaching time. I took the information directly from the “A Bit of Background” section in the unit. We learned about the following: metamorphosis, the butterfly life cycle, pollination, camouflage, how a butterfly drinks nectar (proboscis), and the fact that butterflies are cold-blooded. At the end of the teaching time I gave the children an objective that I took from the “Getting Outside with Butterflies” section in the unit.
If you are able to get close enough, see if you can watch a butterfly’s proboscis dip down into a flower.
Wow! We had a great time exploring! We searched the edge of fields that contained lots of wildflowers and were able to see several butterflies fluttering about. We also searched a butterfly garden that the park had planted where we were able to observe several Black Swallowtail butterflies.
In my photo below you can see a couple of the butterflies towards the top of the photo. They were sipping away on the flower drinking nectar with their proboscis!
With our objective satisfied, we went on to explore further. Here are some more photos. We were able to safely catch a couple of butterflies to observe. One was a Cabbage White butterfly and the other was a Red Admiral butterfly.
Then, Julie, one of our nature lovin’ moms and her son found our prized attraction…caterpillars! They found two little green caterpillars munching away on a plant. It was an excellent lesson in two things: camouflage and caterpillar defense mechanisms.
First, the caterpillars were a perfect green to blend in with the plant they were on, and as you’ll see in the photo below, the caterpillars have a “stinger-like” thing on the end of their tail. This is just a harmless hair, but predators don’t know that.
And of course, me being the crazy nature lady that I am, I had to take the caterpillars home to try and identify them, along with some of the plant they were on to keep them fed. When I got home, I was full of excitement to find they are Snowberry Clearwing Hummingbird Moth caterpillars! These are very special moths which don’t really look like moths and aren’t nocturnal like most moths. I became acquainted with these unique and very friendly little creatures a couple of years ago. Please check out my post Snowberry Clearwing Hummingbird Moth – Up Close to find out about my experiences.
I am going to attempt to keep them through turning into moths. I’ve made them a habitat (again using the instructions in the Hands-on section of our unit), but will probably have to go back to get more of their host plant. if you look really hard in the picture below you can see both of the caterpillars (look at the top right corner and bottom left corner of the leaves)!
In the meantime, I’d like to share one more thing with you…a notebooking page from our Butterflies Flutter By unit! Click on the preview below to download. And don’t forget, our study is FULL to the brim of tons more ideas and notebooking pages! Parts of a Butterfly
Actually, I found hundreds of them! Talk about a munching crew of caterpillars – they had at least half the leaves from the entire cluster of plants eaten away.
From the looks of the caterpillar, I was just sure it would turn into a magnificently colored butterfly. After doing some online research, it was hard to believe the 
My husband grew up calling these tobacco worms because they could always be found in the tobacco fields. After some research, I found them to be called 
