My preacher’s wife and I have become wonderful friends.  She also homeschools and we have so much in common otherwise.  Her children were recently studying fossils, so I suggested a short walk on our farm to see if we could find any fossils in the many rocks that are lying around.  I knew we’d find some, but I had no idea that nearly every larger rock we looked at would hold a treasure!

Take a look at some of our finds.  Unfortunately, we don’t know exactly what most of these are, but I’ve made some educated guesses.  My friend’s husband (my preacher) was actually an archaeologist in Israel many years ago!  We’re hoping to have him come on the next fossil hunt to help us make better determinations.

This looked very much like a backbone.

This rock was *covered* in a bone-like material.  We were able to bring a sample home and my preacher felt like it’s probably coral.  Coral in rock on a farm in the middle of Kentucky?  And some say there was no worldwide flood!

These smooth rocks, almost shell-like, were embedded in the rough rock.

These were shells like a snail wears.

Take a look at this impression!  Anyone want to venture a guess?  I’d love to know!

This looked like plant material.

There you have it!  I took tons of pictures, but these were the most varied and interesting.  As moms, we had just as much fun on this nature hunt as our children did – maybe more!  I’d love to hear about your finds after you take a fossil hunt!

You can find this activity suggestion and many more in the Hard as a Rock NaturExplorers unit!

~Cindy

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!

Our most interesting find also happens to have stumped us.  Maybe you can help us figure out what tree this is?

The pictures below show several different saplings of the same variety in different stages of their leaves unfurling.  It was a magnificent site to behold!

We were able to identify locust, walnut, hickory, buckeye, maple and oak trees in the general area.  A quick leaf identification hunt led us to this page on About.com.  My first inkling is to say the leaves were most similar to an ash tree, but we couldn’t find any other proof of this in the wooded area or online.  So, what’s your guess??

~Cindy

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