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

“Several moms in our homeschool group want to start a nature club but we have no idea where to begin with forming a club. Can you tell me a little about yours? Thanks for the help!”

Thank you for your question Lecia and since this is a popular one I decided to write up a blog post entry about it.

This spring and summer will be my second time leading a nature club for our homeschool co-op, and I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am. Our nature club was a huge success last year and I truly loved leading it. As you probably know from my blog, I am very passionate about God’s creation and especially about sharing my love of it with others, and a nature club is an excellent way to do just that!

Here is my list of steps and recommendations for getting a club started:

Determine the interest level in your group. – Poll your group to see if you have a high enough interest level to make it worth officially forming a group. In my opinion, two or more families is great! These things have a tendency to grow quickly anyways once word gets out.

Determine a vision for how you want your nature club to be ran. – Would you like a more structured time including an appointed “leader/teacher” for each meeting and a focus topic for each meeting such as birds, wildflowers, etc? Or would you prefer a more relaxed club where you just meet and freely enjoy nature together? Again, you could poll your group to determine what the majority is looking for in the club. Determine if you want parental involvement to be mandatory at each meeting. I recommend this for a couple of reasons: parents will be responsible for their children and not the leader(s), and I highly believe in parents being involved with and connecting with their children in nature study.

If a more structured time is desired, appoint a leader or leaders who will steer the meetings, being sure the meetings stay on task to what is desired of them. – Perhaps all the members would be willing to take turns leading a meeting; however most often there are a small group of people who are “natural leaders” and/or are more knowledgeable on the subject of nature and will gladly do this. Or perhaps you will determine that having just one leader/teacher works fine too.

Determine the frequency of your meetings and the topics and locations. How many times a month will you meet? Will you meet year round or only in the warmer months? Where are the places you could meet? Make a list of local parks or other locations that your club could meet. After doing all of the previous, make a list of the dates you will be meeting and locations where you will be meeting. Decide what you will do in the case of inclement weather. Will you reschedule?

After determining this, and if you chose to make your meetings a little more structured, make a list of topics your group would like to see covered throughout these meetings. When you are picking topics, match appropriate locations that would work well. For instance, a particular park may have huge wildflower fields that would make it perfect for a wildflower focused meeting. Or another park may have a beautiful creek which would make it perfect for a creek focused meeting. When determining what to teach on the focus subjects that you will be covering keep in mind the NaturExplorers unit studies at Shining Dawn Books each have a section dedicated to giving you ideas of things to do with Nature Clubs and Co-ops. I use these for each of our nature club meetings.

After you have all these details, put the information together coming up with a calendar of dates, meeting topics and locations for your club.

Now you are ready to start implementing your meetings! It is helpful to send out weekly reminders to the group, perhaps via email or another online means. In the reminders it’s helpful to list all the basics (where, what when, etc.) and also any helpful information such as if the children should bring anything special (nets, containers, etc.) or wear anything special (mud boots, long pants, old clothes, etc.).

I have tried to be very thorough in these recommendations for starting a nature club, hopefully I have not left anything out. And hopefully I have not left you feeling overwhelmed. If done correctly a nature club will NOT be overwhelming and tedious to run. It will be well worth the minimal effort! Do not make it too structured and “textbook educational”, keep structured teaching time minimal and hands-on exploring maximal.

Lastly, here is how our nature club looks:

We meet only in the spring and summer, starting in April and going through July. We meet every other Friday morning from 10:00am to 12:00pm, having a total of eight meetings. Some of the families stay after the meetings to have a picnic lunch together. Parental participation is mandatory. We start our meetings with a 10-15 minute teaching session on the chosen focus. Then the remainder of the time is spent exploring and doing fun hands-on activities. I send out reminders at least 5 days in advance giving all the details and recommendations for the meetings.

I will be happy to answer any other questions that you may have. And may God bless you in the study of His creation!