Honey Eating Bee

The Botanic Gardens held their annual Fall Harvest Festival this past Saturday here in ABQ. To see pictures of the apple cider making and other things we did, check out Allison's blog. I just had to post this picture that I took (The kids didn't like being around the bee lady.). She allowed this bee to eat honey right off of her finger!

Challenge #5

We just completed week 6 of school, and have made it to challenge #5 in our nature studies! I'm very excited that we have been able to keep our nature studies an important part of our school week. If you haven't checked out Barb's Handbook of Nature Study blog, you really need to get over there and check it out! I think our focus area is going to be trees and leaves since fall is in the air, and we are spotting more and more colorful leaves everyday. This little guy, however, caught Grant's eye today.

Leaf rubbings are so fun to do!

Rio Grande Nature Center

Today we drove to Albuquerque's nature center to see what they had to offer. We saw beautiful Cottonwood trees changing colors.

Wow! That's a big tree trunk!

We finally snapped a picture of a roadrunner. They are quick little birds!

Barn Owl

Nature Study at the Park

With lots of sunshine and cool temperatures today, we just had to take our studies and a lunch to a nearby park.

We studied leaves, and are trying to find out what kind of tree this one came from. If anyone knows, please comment and tell us! We all had fun doing leaf rubbings in our nature journals.

Chloe found these berries and the tree they came from.

We are going to try and observe the different trees in our area in the coming months and note their changes.

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!