Our Journey Westward » nature walk

Nature Study – Pond Resources

Cindy — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:53:22 +0000

What a wonderful month studying ponds! Here are the resources that have been in the sidebar.

Nature Study at the Creation Museum

Cindy — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:13:24 +0000

When you think of the Creation Museum, the first thoughts that pop into your head are probably things like Bible truths, dinosaurs, Noah and the flood, the need for Jesus and so on. We took a tad different approach to the normal routine of simply touring the museum this time around. Even though it rained the entire day, we spent time enjoying the beautiful and wonderfully varied nature trails.

Even though we probably would’ve had a lot more time to observe and look closely at plants and such on a pretty day, the rainy walk was a great way to see things we might not normally see. God’s creation is beautiful in any weather!

Water was dripping from everything, including us!

They have several water areas like waterfalls…

marshland….

And ponds

Plant life is just as varied from native to tropical.

Five different bridges make for a fun walk. My children’s favorite is the swinging bridge seen here.

Water, water everywhere!

Even clinging to the spider webs!

Trying to stay dry… Caleb found the leaf a bit too late. If you can’t tell, he’s soaked through and through.

And my personal favorite find of the day - itty bitty, teany-weany, less than 1/4″ each Bird’s Nest Fungi! It’s hard to tell, but each little cup has little egg-shaped pieces that are actually the mushroom’s spores and are ejected into the air by the rain!! How cool is that?? Now, see what we would’ve missed on a pretty day?

Have more fun in the rain than you can imagine with NaturExplorers’ Remarkable Rain!

Wild Turkeys

Cindy — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 18:04:25 +0000

As we were finding giant turkey prints on a farm walk, one of the giant turkeys who had been hiding in some brush decided to get out of dodge. I know you can’t see him very well, but in the middle of the bottom picture is the very fast flying turkey skedattling across the field to safer hiding places.

This is a two-year-old hand beside one of the prints we found.

This is a nine-year-old hand inside an even bigger print.

Bye, bye Mr. Turkey!

NaturExplorers’ Beautiful Birds has great ideas for studying birds of all types!

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Fungi of Summer/Late Summer

Cindy — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 15:42:21 +0000

Many people think fungi are only around during the wet and warm spring months. How are these for August and September fungi finds??

Unidentified Polypore

Silky Parchment

Mustard-yellow Polypore

Tapioca Slime

Likely another image of Silky Parchment

Likely some sort of Carbon Mushroom or a Slime Mold

Likely a Jack O'Lantern or False Chantrelle

This area of fruiting body was huge!

I have no idea what this is, but it looked like a mold.

Hairy Parchment

Possibly Carbon Balls or Red Cushion Hypoxylon

Possibly Bear Lentinus

I took these pictures near the edge of a creek on rotting logs and on a walk in the woods. They were everywhere! Finding fungi is one of my new nature study passions ever since writing the Fungus Among Us NaturExplorer unit! Since there are many thousand varieties of fungi, it’s sometimes hard to pinpoint exactly what you find. But that’s okay, just seeing them is enough for me!

Ending our Month Spent with Wildflowers

Cindy — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 13:38:48 +0000

I admit that wildflowers are quite possibly my favorite of all nature studies. I’m always in awe of God’s creativeness, beauty and majesty through such delicate little things like wildflowers. I’m also amazed at how each season presents me with new flowers that I’ve never noticed before – each with awesome characteristics that are different from any other flower.

A field of wildflowers can move me, while a single wildflower observed closely makes me marvel at the constant, yet diverse design that makes a flower a flower. And to think that wildflowers are “planted by God” reminds me that He cares about me enough to bring me flowers!

Last week, we took a very up-close and personal look at wildflowers through comparisons and dissection. There was no long nature walk involved – only long enough to collect several flower samples to bring back inside. Since the yard wasn’t off limits for picking, the kiddos brought in a couple of flowers that aren’t considered wild. No matter, it made for a great opportunity to discuss the difference between the two!

The first activity was to compare two completely different flowers for similarities and differences. This is another of the notebooking pages that comes with the Wonderful Wildflowers NaturExplorers unit.

The second activity was flower dissection to identify all the parts of a flower.

We own a very old dissection kit that made the dissection not only easy, but exciting for the kids.

We were able to see the ovules (eggs) in the ovary on this hollyhock (not a wildflower).

Eli always gets in on the action!

The third activity was drawing the cross-section of a flower and labeling all the parts.

And the final activity was to complete a watercolor still-life of wildflowers. We have been studying Cezanne, who painted several still-life works, so this tied art and nature study together quite well. And to get composer study in the mix, we listened to a CD of Chopin (our composer of the month.)

“Wildflowers in the Rain”

Seining – A Family Event at Church

Cindy — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 13:13:31 +0000

Most of you probably remember that my husband is the youth minister at our church. We try to be as family oriented in our activities as possible, making sure there is at least one family event per month. This month’s event was planned by a very neat family that used to homeschool and love the outdoors. We went seining in the creek on our church’s farm!

(Seining for sport is actually not legal in Kentucky, but fear not, we were only seining for educational purposes. All the “catches” were put back into the creek unharmed.)

Our big “kids” – my husband and the gentleman who planned the event – enjoyed the seining tremendously. Everyone else did, too – for a time. Then there were bigger and better things to tackle.

Here are a few nature shots I took while I waited on the creek’s edge with Eli.

And here’s Eli deciding his turn had come to get in the water.

A wonderful time of food and fellowship ended the evening. What better way to worship God than enjoying His creation with brothers and sisters in Christ?

Great Spring Nature Finds

Cindy — Sat, 30 May 2009 00:20:05 +0000

Here are some more very cool discoveries from a recent nature walk.

Can you see inside the hole? The picture below this one shows the mushrooms that were growing in the hole – and they were huge even if the picture doesn’t show that very well.

We wondered who enjoys this cozy little burrow.

Ants were busy, busy, busy going back and forth on this little path they had created between two ant holes.

Conks aren’t a good sign for the health of the tree, but they sure are pretty to look at!

We have several old brick piles from a house we tore down on the farm. Take a look at this amazing and fuzzy orange fungus! We believe it might be called Spreading Yellow Tooth.

Can you see the puff of pollen floating off of the plant? Every time we stepped on one of these plants, pollen dust went flying through the air like a little bomb.

What cool nature finds have you made lately?

May’s Creation Club

Cindy — Wed, 20 May 2009 18:11:27 +0000

This month’s Creation Club focus was on creeks and creek banks. Sadly, though, the creek bank was grown up more than I had imagined and we didn’t get to do nearly as much exploring as planned. For me, it didn’t matter because I can enjoy any nature walk. For the children expecting to explore a creek in wet and wild ways, they were a bit disappointed. Below are a few pictures from our walk.

These were bright red mushrooms!

This one is bright red, too, although the color didn’t show up quite as well in the picture. See the little snail sitting on it? Can you see the worm holes in the wood?

This was found in the yard once we returned. Our best guess is a Brown Headed Cowbird. Any other suggestions?

And this one wasn’t found yesterday, but I couldn’t resist posting it. We found it at Melissa’s house this week when we went for a visit. It’s a cowboy hat shaped mushroom! Eli tried to pick it up to put it on his head!

Mushroom Nature Study

Cindy — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:59:28 +0000

Spring is such a fun time for studying mushrooms! It’s been raining a lot around here and a quick trip around the yard led to six different types of mushrooms found in about five minutes time yesterday.

Towards evening, we headed to a spot on the farm where leftover hay has been decomposing. What treasures we found there!

If you’ve never taken a mushroom walk, now is a great time to do it! Damp ground, decomposing logs, old leaf piles, and dung piles are great places to look.

A Spring Walk on the Farm

Cindy — Fri, 01 May 2009 16:21:16 +0000

We found some beautiful signs of spring on a farm walk the other day!

A fallen robin’s egg

A huge ant hill – they are everywhere!

All sorts of mushrooms

A big snail

1,000′s of ants on a rock

A shell fossil

Raccoon prints

Woodland wildflowers – several varieties

A tired nature walker