"Fire Pink"

And some wildflowers are especially interesting because they have unique leaves, such as the Goldenseal below. Not to mention the quantity of petals involved too!

"Goldenseal"

Because there is such a large diversity in the wildflower kingdom it makes for a great teaching tool. I think the biggest of which is it sharpens observation skills.  As suggested in our Wonderful Wildflowers unit, each time my children and I discover a new wildflower we take note of the shape, feel, size and color of leaves, stalk, and bloom. We note the details of the bloom such as how many petals does it have, what color are they, what does the stamen and anthers look like. We also talk about what we find most beautiful about it.  It takes just a minute or two to make our observations, but it teaches my children attention to detail and appreciation for the vast variety in creation. This rolls over to help them in other subject areas as well.

Another angle that we suggest in our unit is to use macro photography to foster this attention to detail and appreciation. Such as in the picture below of the Red Clover. Most people step over this wildflower everyday and do not notice the beauty it holds. But with Macro photography (or even a magnifying glass) suddenly this “every day” wildflower becomes quite intriguing.

"Red Clover"

Also, the Common Chickweed, again as it’s name suggests a common wildflower that you may step over or on every day, becomes a colorful show of anthers when you zoom in on it.  This wildflower is tiny, so you may never notice it otherwise.

"Common Chickweed"

However, sometimes the color of a particular wildflower, such as in the case of the Cow Vetch below, will stop us in our tracks and command our attention. No macro needed to observe this wildflower’s flare.

"Cow Vetch"

Then there’s the below wildflower. Every now and then there’s one that make us go “hmmm, interesting”.  We’ve come to know these as either wild onion or garlic. Did you know they were wildflowers too?

"Wild Onion or Garlic"

And don’t forget that every now and then while observing wildflowers, you can find something else pretty amazing; a shiny, tiny creature in an armor of red with black polka dots.

"Ladybug"

And one last thing of note is that one of my favorite things about wildflowers is the fact that the varieties are always changing from week to week. It’s as if you get to observe a different landscape every time you venture out to observe. One week Philadelphia Fleabane is blooming in all it’s splendor, the next Wild Petunias, nature is constantly donning a new outfit of wildflowers.

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to dive into the diverse, ever changing, fantastic world of wild, wild, wildflowers!

]]> http://shiningdawnbooks.com/2010/06/03/wild-wild-wildflowers/feed/ 0 http://shiningdawnbooks.com/2010/06/01/the-semi-dry-creek-walk-a-winner/ http://shiningdawnbooks.com/2010/06/01/the-semi-dry-creek-walk-a-winner/#comments Tue, 01 Jun 2010 12:20:57 +0000 Cindy http://shiningdawnbooks.com/?p=1360 Thank you to all who entered our quick giveaway of the newest NaturExplorers unit Remarkable Rain.  Melissa used a random generator to choose the winner and I have the pleasure of announcing her – Lynn Watson from the UK!  Congratulations, Lynn!

Never fear, another giveaway is just around the corner because…

Melissa and I are busy writing the newest NaturExplorers unit Incredible Creeks which has put me in the mood for plenty of creek-side nature walks.  (Like I really had to be put in the mood!)

This walk was taken about two weeks after a very serious flood on our farm.  Much of the creek bed is still muddy, but dry again as it’s only full during bouts of heavy rain.  You’ll notice some photos of water.  These are small spring-fed pools that stay wet year-round.

It's very typical to find moss on the rocks since the bank is dark and damp, but the dark slime mold was caused by the flood.

These are obviously eggs of some sort, but I'm hoping Melissa will pop in here to help me identify the critter they belong to.

Popping in here to say that I’m taking a good guess that they are some type of salamander eggs!  BUT, it could also be mudpuppy eggs.  Frogs lay in masses, toads lay in strings, many species of salamanders and mudpuppies lay individually on rocks. ~ Melissa

Tadpoles!

"Come here, little guys, I won't hurt you." (The tadpoles didn't trust his chubby three-year-old hands either.)

Wild multi-flora roses were blooming everywhere.

Wild strawberries even survived the flood. We measured the water line on the trees at about 10 feet! Remains of mud were everywhere, even after several cleansing rains.

Erect Skullcap grew all along the creek bank.

Rough-fruited Cinquefoil was a new find for us!

Those of you who live in Kentucky and surrounding states will find KY Wildflowers to be a tremendous help in identifying wildflowers.  I hope others will comment about their favorite regional wildflower identification websites, too!

We’ll let you know as soon as the Incredible Creeks study is released.  Until then, enjoy one of our other units such as Wonderful Wildflowers or Peaceful Ponds. Happy nature hunting!

***Before I go any further, you need to know: There is a book of the same title that I do not recommend.  The book includes both evolutionary and “new age” material.  It is not suitable for a Christian family.***

The card game, however, is just lovely!

There are several games to play with the deck of cards, but our favorite happens to be a simple memory style game where you look for flowers that are in the same family.  Through the games, you are taught and begin to recognize easily the characteristics that make up the flowers in each family.  The aster, grass, lily, mint, mustard, parsley, pea and rose families are covered.  HOPS Press even offers some lesson plan ideas to supplement the game.

Because of the actual photographs on the cards, my children are not only recognizing flower families now, but also naming the particular flowers when we see them on a nature walk!  This is a two-thumbs up addition to your Wonderful Wildflowers NaturExplorers study!

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!

The last few days have been nothing short of gorgeous here. Temperatures have been in the 70′s and low 80′s and the rejuvenating sun has been shining strongly. So my family and I have spent lots of time outdoors at the parks. I would love to share with you some photos that I’ve taken of wildflowers we observed.

Dutchman's Breeches

Bloodroot

Marsh Marigold

Spring Beauty

Common Blue Violet

White Trout Lily

Unidentified

Dandelion

Purple Dead Nettle

For the last few years we have been keeping a wildflower journal. You can read about that at Wildflower Walks, Identification and Notebooking.

The idea for keeping a wildflower notebook and SO MUCH more can be found in our Wonderful Wildflowers unit. Don’t miss out on this wonderful opportunity to study one of God’s most beautiful creations in nature!

On my personal blog, I posted about our scavenger hunt and dissections.  I hope you’ll take a peek if you’re planning to study wildflowers anytime soon.

Queen Anne's Lace

To end the study, we went on a short walk to the back of our farm.  The goal was to see how many wildflowers we could find and how many of those we could identify.  In about 500 feet, we tallied 30 types of wildflowers!  Considering it’s late August and many of the flowers are gone already, I was amazed!

After much practice, we’re getting pretty good at knowing the flowers around our farm.  I’d estimate that we were able to name half of them without using our field guide.  Of the other half, we only lack the names of three or four of them.  Not bad!

I couldn’t help including this picture!  As we were in some weeds trying to get a good picture of the Spotted Touch-me-not, Mahayla screamed.  She was standing right beside an orb web almost as tall as her.  Right in the middle was a really big Black and Yellow Argiope.  It was absolutely beautiful!

You can find these ideas for studying wildflowers and MANY more in the Wonderful Wildflower NaturExplorer unit!

~Cindy