In our Animal Signs NaturExplorers study, we make a suggestion to build a secret hiding place in which to observe animals without them observing you.  Rosina from Rosy ~ Posy, and her children, spent some time recently making an indoor bird blind.  We loved the idea so much that we asked if she would mind guest posting her idea here.  And she graciously agreed!  Not only would her idea make a good all-season observation blind, but it could be used similarly outdoors during decent weather.

Rosina and her husband Len have been homeschooling their three children ages 11, 6 and 4 for the past seven years. Their goal is to instill a life long love of learning in each of them through living books, exploration and imagination. Rosina is an enthusiastic home educator & nature lover that enjoys sharing creative projects, ideas and more. You can visit her at www.rosinahuber.blogspot.com.

“Anyone who has met our family will know that we are without a doubt crazy about nature! One of my children’s favourite hobbies is to watch the birds that come and visit our feeders throughout the year. So what sort of craft do you make to keep a couple of bird brained nature lovers happy? Why you construct a simple bird blind of course for hours and hours of bird watching fun that keeps you up close and personal while incognito.

You will need:
A large cardboard box
A small cardboard box
Masking tape or clear packing tape
Exacto knife
Scissors
A glass
Brads

We had fun drawing on ours so that they looked like eyes looking back at us. We also thought it would be neat to use our bird blind as a bulletin board (see very first photo) for our nature drawings as well. So we taped up a bunch of our bird drawings from out of our nature journals and photos from bird articles in our local newspapers so that the we could try and spot different species as we watched our feeders. The entire project from start to finish took us about an hour to complete and it is amazing to be able to sit less than a foot away from the feeders watching unnoticed as the birds munch away on their bird seed. Don’t be afraid to get creative with your bird blind either. Take it outdoors on a nice day and have your children cover it with branches and leaves to really camouflage it or let them paint it to blend into the surrounding shrubbery. Set it up near a place you know the birds always gather at, bring along a couple of lawn chairs and some snacks and have fun!

If you decide to make one let me know. We’d love see how you make your bird blind special :)”

Thank you, Rosina!  You can find her original post here.

Jessica’s Post…

“So it has been raining a lot here lately. Fortunately, I came across this awesome unit study by Shining Dawn Books entitled Remarkable Rain.  There are so many activities in the book. We will be busy for months. Seriously.

The first thing we did this morning was to make a homemade rain gauge. Super easy to make. We have a chart in which we can record each day’s total amount of rainfall.

We have been so excited to check the amount of rainfall every few minutes today. So far it’s 1/2 inch!!

I put it on top of the car this morning. Everywhere else seems to be covered by trees.

Next we decided to build a dam to collect the rainwater into bigger puddles. The kids noted how the rocks stopped the water flow, and the way the water filtered around both sides of the rocks.

Nick loves the mud squishing between his toes.

We had so much fun. I can’t wait until tomorrow. I hope it rains!!”

You can view Jessica’s complete post here.

Jessica is a Christian, homeschooling, lawyer-turned-stay@home mom to 4 kids, ages 11, 4, 3, and 1.  Her family currently lives in Taipei, Taiwan for her husband’s job with the U.S. Government.  They spend a lot of time outdoors in an attempt to enjoy as much of the culture as possible while they have the opportunity to live on such a beautiful island.

Alicia from La Famille and her children spent some time studying landforms this past school year and created a diorama of each topic they covered.  We found their dioramas to be excellent examples of how to prepare a complete and visually pleasing diorama. You’ll notice each of the dioramas include:

• Full use of the space in the box
• Realistic landforms
• Entire habitats – food, water, shelter, and animals that live together
• Creative use of materials from plastic figures to magazine cut-outs to clay shapes
• Lots of color
• Plants and animals to-scale as close as possible

The Desert

"We made some clay snakes and cacti, used cornmeal for the sand, and added some "tumbleweeds" we found in the yard."

The Mountains

"...papier mache mountains, some rocks, and little mountain animals."

Cindy's note: Notice the use of paper mache, real rocks, plastic toys and magazine cut-outs - all tied together wonderfully.

The Woodlands

"Noah painted pine cones we gathered to make the trees. We painted some little wood thingies to look like toadstools...and most of the other stuff we found at the crafts store."

Cindy's note: This is my favorite! Notice the background magazine trees in comparison to the foreground pinecone trees. I also love all the attention to detail!

Thank you, Alicia, for creating wonderful dioramas with your children and allowing us to share them here!

Alicia is a CM-loving, busy homeschooling mama of three.  School days at her house consist of lots of living books, short lessons, exploring nature, unit studies, hands-on activities, and plenty of time to learn by playing! When she’s not teaching her kiddos, you can find Alicia jogging, reading, cooking, studying her Bible, crafting, sewing, or watching movies with her sweetie.

You can see each of the original posts about their landform studies by clicking on the links below.

• Deserts
• Mountains
• Woodlands

However, many people don’t want to print entire e-books and we understand!  Like most of you, we’ve purchased PDF files from other companies and stored them on our computer only to forget about them.  Out of sight, out of mind.  We don’t want you to forget about the NaturExplorers units – they’re far too much fun to stay hidden in the depths of you computer!  :)

Sheri from Scrapbooks and Lapbooks agreed to allow us to post her wonderful idea for keeping a visual file of all the e-books on your computer.  She has specifically written her post about the Hands of a Child lapbooks (which we love, too!), but the idea can be used for any e-books you own.

Sheri’s Post…

Ok, so after attending a conference last weekend, and hearing Niki from Hands of a Child speak and show her wares, I got to thinking….I know I have a lot of their ebooks, but which ones and where are they all.  Well, yes-I am that unorganized with such things-I have them burned to CDs and on my flash drive…but not all in one spot (now I do, as I made one CD with just those on it).  So then I thought-hmm, when I am planning, I don’t want to have to go thru the CD to see what I have…how can I make it so I know which ones I have and have it all neat and tidy?  Hmm…then duh!  I have had some postcard plastic sheet holders (I used them in my SU demo chick days to showcase the cards I made) and well-why not…

So I right clicked/saved then transfered to MS Word, the pics of the ones I have. I resized em to fit the holder slots, and now I have a nice display and reference of what I have.  No more guessing.  I can easily slide them out and rearrange to add more down the road too.  I did copy em in color, but one could easily do just gray scale.  I used what I had laying around…so these holders are bigger than what most would want.  I know you can buy those baseball trading card holders (most stores carry them in the sporting goods or in the trading cards area) in a pack, and then you could just size them for those slots.  It would save on ink as well as get you more per sheet, due to the smaller size.  I also am have a section going for my Home School in the Woods lapbook collection, my Live and Learn Press and the A Journey through Learning lapbooks too.  I just haven’t printed those but for one, due to running out of colored ink and time (IE: having to go thru my CDs to find them again…after knowing I had to get my puter diagnosed and then subsequently get it switched out from Vista to Windows 7-I had to do a quick “save it or lose it” CD burn-a-thon…so they are everywhere).  SO that is for another day when I have nothing better to do.

Hope this idea helps you organize your ebook collection too…and man, frankly-I could do this for all my ebooks I have. Hmm, another project for down the road.

I have these stored in my Lapbook 3-ring binder.  I also have the stuff I copy off from Homeschool Share in tabbed sections behind this-that way if I revisit the stuff, I have it already to go.

That empty spot is for the Hot Diggity Dog cover…I believe it is the current free one for the semi-annual freebie on HOAC..so until that is back on the site…that spot sits all empty like. Oh that is funny-just realized the Galaxies needs to go down to that blank spot and Hot Diggity can go after…guess I need to brush up on my alphabetizing skills-LOL!

I have one more on the back side of this…a couple are the free sample lapbooks (so I only have some sections of it-and plan on just writing “sample” on a slip of paper to slide in on top of them until I buy the full kit).  Many of these are ones I got for free, others I bought, and one was a part of the goodie package I got when  I renewed my TOS magazine subscription.  I am awaiting the States, and the Astronomy one (just purchased them at the conference)…looking to check them out. Fun, Fun!

Thank you, Sheri!  Be sure to check out her original post.  Others have commented with some of their own organization ideas, too.  And below is a little more about her and the FOUR blogs she maintains.

I also like to find ways to organize, and remember the huge collection of eBooks I now am in possession of. The highlighted post is one way I came up with to do just that.

On to Amy’s post…

“It’s been impossible to ignore that springtime (or is it summer?) has arrived in full-force, so for the last few days, we’ve been enjoying our own backyard, our brand-new pup, and talking about our five senses.  Today, we focused our attention on our sense of smell and conducted a very simple–but very exciting–backyard flower fragrance experiment.

Backyard Fragrances: Any time I give my kiddos the ‘go’ to hunt for flowers in our yard is a great day in their book.  To have permission to walk around and cut one of every flower?

We walked around together with pair of scissors, taking turns spotting flowers and making cuttings. We clipped flowers from trees, from bushes, from baskets, flowerbeds, and hanging baskets.  We snipped every color we could find and swatted away bees along the way.  We knew we were on a mission to find one of each flower in our yard, and that’s what we did.

When we circled the yard, and Maddy’s basket was full, we headed to the back porch.  I said, I love the way that springtime smells.  The flowers are blooming, the trees are flowering, and everything smells fresh and new.

Did you smell the flowers that Cora and I found on our walk earlier today? I think they might be the most fragrant flower around.  ‘Fragrance’ is another word for ‘smell’.  Like Fancy Nancy says, it’s a ‘fancier’ word for ‘smell’. You could say, ‘I like the way this flower smells’, or you could say, ‘I like this flower’s fragrance’.

Let’s spread out all of the flowers we found and figure out which ones have strong fragrances, or strong smells, and the ones that have weak fragrances.We’ll put the ones that smell strongly here, near the sign that says, ‘Most Fragrant’.  The ones that only smell a little or not at all we’ll put here, where it says, ‘Least Fragrant’.

I wanted to introduce Maddy and Owen to a new word, ‘fragrant’, and I wanted to have them compare the flowers to each other, using their sense of smell to determine whether one was more or less fragrant than another. ‘More’ and ‘less’ are super math vocabulary words to get our kiddos familiar with and comfortable using.  So during our ‘experiment’, we all practiced using phrases like, ‘This flower is more fragrant than the tulip,’ or ‘The purple flower is less fragrant than the other ones.’

We started with the one that Cora and I found–and I wasn’t hung up on names of flowers because really just wanted to focus on one thing at a time–but we started with the Most Fragrant flower and compared each of the other flowers to it. The flowers with little or no smell we put closer to the Least Fragrant sign, and those in the middle, we placed accordingly.

We debated some, smelled, and sniffed some more, but our point was not to nail down absolutes; it was to use our sense of smell to determine which flowers on this particular day had the strongest fragrance. Because some were on their way out and others were more fresh, fragrances varied considerably, and we did have trouble when Maddy got stuck on some ‘bad’ smelling flowers that she wanted out of our list. But the experiment was fun, it wasn’t that involved, and it got us a little closer to nature on an absolutely gorgeous afternoon.”

Amy’s original post in full can be viewed at Our Easy and Exciting Backyard Fragrant Experiment.  You might also like to check out her We Teach forum as well.  Thank you, Amy, for allowing us to share your post!

As we’re always on the lookout for great guest posts, you can imagine our excitement when we came across a wonderful hands-on nature study activity just perfect for preschoolers!

Diane from Mackville Road enjoyed this fun activity with her little one, Bea.

Grab yourself some waxed paper, a pile of leaves and flowers and grasses. You should also peel up some crayon bits or tear up colored bits of paper. Arrange them on one piece of waxed paper prettily, leaving a margin around the edges. Then lay the same size waxed paper over top — don’t fuss, you can always trim the edges when you’re done. Lay a towel carefully over the top so as not to move anything around underneath, and gently press with a hot iron. Voila!

Poor woman’s stained glass.

Isn’t it cute?  I’ve done crayon melts in waxed paper before, but never imagined adding fresh nature collections.  I just love the effect of the colors along with the greenery!  And I venture to say that more than the preschooler could have fun with this nature project!

Thank you, Diane, for letting us share this idea!

Diane lives in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont with her family and blogs on Mackville Road.

The Wisdom of Nature Study

by Jimmie

I’ve come to understand that nature study is a responsibility of Christian homeschoolers, and recently in my daily Bible reading, that belief was reaffirmed.

In 1 Kings 4, King Solomon’s wisdom is described. Of course, you know that God gave Solomon wisdom greater than any man of his time. He wrote the Proverbs, those pithy nuggets of wisdom, as well as Song of Songs, the sensual allegory. So it’s not surprising that verse 32 of 1 Kings 4 lists his wise words as a great accomplishment.

But did you ever notice verse 33? Continuing to describe Solomon’s great wisdom, the Bible says,

“He described plant life, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of walls. He also taught about animals and birds, reptiles and fish.”

Solomon was an expert in nature, especially plants and animals. When the writer of 1 Kings was inspired to record Solomon’s great depth of understanding, he spoke specifically about the king’s writings and his study of nature.

Think about it. Solomon also built the Temple, a massive undertaking that gave God much glory. But that project is not listed here as a demonstration of his wisdom. Instead, we have the study of nature. This humble and seemingly “useless” topic for one as mighty as a king is listed in this royal resume.

What does that tell us?

• Being nature-wise is a godly characteristic when it is rooted in a firm belief in a Creator.
• It is wise to study nature.

Be like Solomon; be wise. Study nature and teach your children about nature. If you lack wisdom, start making baby steps toward understanding. Observe with your own eyes. Read field guides. Most importantly, take a sense of wonder with you outdoors. You are looking at the very handiwork of God.

Don’t discount your nature walk as useless, non-academic playtime. You are walking in the footsteps of the wisest king of Israel, Solomon.

Gail Bartel is an artist living in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.  A mom of three, Gail became involved with the local elementary school seven years ago to assist with some art and crafts projects.  She is now the “artist in residence” at the school providing art education to students from Kindergarten to Grade 6.  She is also the author of the blog “that artist woman” which features step-by-step tutorials for many of the art projects she teaches at school.  In her personal work, she is a developing watercolorist focusing on the beauty of the Canadian Rockies.

Materials Required:

salt dough, recipe to follow
artificial silk leaves
round container to use as cutter
oven
acrylic paint
mod podge for sealer



Salt Dough Recipe

4 cups flour
1 cup salt
1 1/2 – 2 cups water
extra flour for kneading

Mix first 3 ingredients together to form a nice soft dough. Knead smooth with extra flour. The more you knead this dough the easier it is to work with.

Keep leftover dough in the fridge.

Make up your salt dough. This recipe will make enough for 8 rounds.

Roll out dough and the using circular container or bowl, (coffee can) cut your rounds.

Pick a leaf for your design. I initially tried this with fresh leaves but they did not leave a good imprint. I think it would have worked with clay.

The silk leaves leave a better impression in the salt dough.

Place where you want it and press the leaf into the dough.

When you lift it off you should have a nice impression.

Place on a parchment or foil covered cookie sheet and bake at 250 degrees for about 2 – 3 hours or until hard.

Let cool.

Take some acrylic paint in Autumn colors.

After trial and error I found the best way to paint these is to paint the leaves in different colors first. Let dry.

Then using dark brown paint that you have watered down apply a wash, like an antiquing glaze to the entire surface. The dark color picks up the veining in the leaf and still lets the Autumn color show thru.

Let dry and then apply a coat of glossy Mod Podge as a sealer.

That’s it. A good project for all ages.

We realize Gail has used artificial leaves for this project rather than real leaves.  If you prefer, try real leaves first to see if they leave a good enough impression for you.  If not, use artificial leaves and use it as an opportunity to talk about leaf parts and how fragile they are.

Also, Melissa completed a similar project with her children last year called Nature Prints in Clay that you won’t want to miss either!

Don’t forget – the new and improved Delightful Deciduous Trees NaturExplorers unit was released a few weeks ago!

Catching Fish

• Find a boardwalk on a pond.
• LAY ON YOUR BELLY to get a close up look in the water AND stay safe. :-)
• Sprinkle little bits of crackers in the water to get some little fish & other little creatures near the surface. This is a good time to scoop them up OR just observe how they act.
• You can use a bucket or ice cube tray with some pond water in it to place your catches temporarily for observation.

Pretty simple, huh?  Thanks so much Dana for sharing your idea!

In transferring posts from her old blog to her new blog, she found the following article she originally wrote in September of 2007. Not only is it a wonderful post, but in case you don’t know, Jimmie lives in an urban area of China where nature study can be quite challenging. We hope her thoughts encourage you to work hard at nature study no matter where you might live! Thank you, Jimmie, for allowing us to repost your article here!

Nature Study – the Duty of Christian Homeschoolers

By Jimmie – http://jimmiescollage.com

My daughter is learning a catechism. We’ve been reviewing these for about thirty weeks now and something new just hit me!

Very early in the question/answer series are these:

Q: How do we learn about God?
A: God reveals Himself.

Q: Where does God reveal Himself?
A: In His word and in nature.

God reveals himself through His word; therefore, we must study His word. Every Christian knows that. Christian homeschooling families put a high importance on the Bible.

But this is my eye-opener — God reveals Himself through nature; therefore, we must study nature! There is actually a theological reason to study nature! God reveals Himself (His character, law and wrath) through the natural world that He created.

Romans 1:20 “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead. . . “

If we neglect to study nature, we will probably miss some truths about Him. I don’t want to miss it! I want to learn all I can. And more importantly, I want my daughter to see God through nature. I would never dream of omitting the Bible from our curriculum. Likewise I should not omit the study and enjoyment of nature.

Psalm 19:1-3 “The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, And night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard.”

I am so excited by this discovery. And now as part of our working on the nature journal the next day at home, I’m going to add this question, “Since God reveals His character, law, and wrath through nature, did you sense any of that on our nature walk yesterday? Did God reveal any of Himself to you during that time?”

DD’s answer this week was, “He’s amazing! He made those insects so beautiful!” Yes! God revealed His Divine Creator character to her through nature.

I’m not talking about worshiping nature here. We understand what animism is, and we don’t fit the bill. I’m talking about seeing up the beam of light all the way to God (as C.S. Lewis said).

You know, I blogged about the nature walks mostly because I knew that if I did, I’d be accountable to my readers to DO it. But now I see that I’m actually accountable to God to lead my daughter in the study and enjoyment of nature!