Nature Study at the State Fair!

Friday is our nature study day, so this Friday, rather than roam around in our own backyard looking for something of interest, we took our studies to the state fair! Chloe got to learn about farming and milking cows at the McDonald's farm. We also learned about the natural resources of New Mexico while Grant learned about boat safety. We saw farm animals and wild animals, but our favorite event was the White Bengal tiger show. White tigers are almost extinct, and the snow white tigers that have light, and almost no stripes, are very rare. We got to see four of the snow white tigers at the fair on Friday! These tigers came from India and their trainers helped them to put on a fabulous show.

Challenge #3

Today we again combined our study of nature with art. Nature seems to inspire some of our most fun and favorite projects. We are on challenge #3 from The Handbook of Nature Study. I have to tell you that I did not really want to do nature study today. The kids have seemed less enthusiastic about what we might find in our tiny little backyard, and the laundry among other chores was calling my name. God must have known our need for a little encouragement today because we found lots of things to look at! A beautiful rose on our bush that had produced little to nothing this year, a leaf bug, and a lizard with a metallic blue tail were among some of the wonders we found in our little space of yard. After the kids chose something to put in their nature journals, we got out the tempera paints and the kids made printings with rocks, leaves, flowers, sunflower seeds, and anything else they could find. Enjoy the slideshow.

New Hummers

We've had fun this summer watching the hummingbirds migrate through Albuquerque. This little guy is a part of the third group of hummers to come through and eat at our feeder. He's pretty plain with mostly just gray and white feathers, but he is not as mean as the brightly colored Rufous hummers we had back in July!

Sunflowers Through Nature and Art

This school year, I decided we needed to have nature study time and more art time. The kids love this kind of learning, and I discovered a couple of blogs that have inspired me in my new endeavor. Friday I decided to combine nature study with art to go along with the sunflowers we've been growing all summer. The sunflowers are getting heavy with seeds, so I thought this would be the perfect time to dissect one of the flowers. Barb at the Handbook of Nature Study has a sunflower Outdoor Hour challenge listed on her sidebar that I reviewed before getting started.

The kids and I discovered all kinds of things about God's creation as we studied the rays of the flower, it's florets, and the growing seeds underneath the florets in the disk of the flower.

We then studied Van Gogh's painting of sunflowers online and completed an art project that I found on Kathy Barbro's blog. Check out her blog, Art Projects for Kids, if you are looking for some great art ideas to do with kids.

Allison's drawing

Abby's and Chloe's drawing

Mom's and Grant's drawing

I Spy a Firewheel

Last night, we took a walk along the trails in the foothills of the Sandia mountains. A game I like to play with the kids is "I Spy". The object is to spy something on our walks that is interesting or different to them. Last night, Chloe spied this pretty little flower that we think is known as a Gaillardia, or Firewheel. The red and yellow center was unique to us!

Allison and Chloe collected lots of little wildflowers on our walk, and Allison helped Chloe press them today in her new flower press!

Southwest Desert Tree

We have a Yucca tree in our front yard that, being from Texas, amazes us. After the tree blooms, these spiny branches are left sticking out of the top of the tree.

After a wind storm last week, we found two of them on the ground by our front door!

So we had a little fun with them!

Autumn Beauty Bloom

We didn't know sunflowers could come in any other color other than yellow. We are enjoying our Autumn Beauty sunflowers.