Green Hour 5, 6, 7

I’ve been getting behind in posting about Green Hour but we have been doing them and they are greatly loved. We changed our focus from flowers to birds and have been spending hours looking at birds soaring around. Eagles are what fascinate us the most, so graceful, so big, so beautiful.
In Green Hour 5 we made a list of birds that we saw, we’ve continued to add to this list over the weeks, here it is:
Crows
Robins
Heron
Eagle
Hummingbirds
Swallows
Little Brown Birds (we are so scientific)
Ducks
Chickens
Pigeons
Some other unidentifiable birds

In Green Hour 6 we made collections, we already had a book of pressed flowers which we’ve continued to add to. We have also started collecting feathers, leaf rubbings, rocks and sticks. Douglas is the only stick collector but his collection is larger than the others put together. Little boys and sticks, the perfect combo. :D
We also have a beautiful centerpiece of flowers from our garden, Laura loves to arrange and water them.

In Green Hour 7 we made field guides. They are at the doctor’s office getting laminated right now (that’s where DH works) when they come back they’ll go into our nature backpack so that we’ll have them when we’re out and about. So far we only have ones for birds but we’re hoping to make some for other animals as well as plants. The part we all really enjoyed was taking pictures, I’m one of those people who doesn’t like to put pictures on their blog so you won’t be getting to see them unless you come to visit.

Other nature activities that we’ve been doing include gardening, Tomatosphere, and picnics. So far 8 “A” tomatoes have germinated and 13 “B” tomatoes.
I’ve been debating what to plant in the garden this year because we hope to be moving ASAP but if we it takes a while I don’t want to have nothing in the garden.
So far our garden has:
Carrots
Cucumber
Peas
Strawberries
Blackberries
Grapes
Blueberries
Raspberries
Apples
Onion
Garlic
Various herbs
Lots of flowers including cascades of Morning Glories

Hopefully whoever buys our house likes to garden. :D

Green Hour #4

This week we jumped into Green Hour Challenge #4 and LOVED it. :D
We are supposed to choose a focus and have decided that we will look at flowers, both wild and in the garden.
This week the thing that caught our fancy was cherry trees. We saw a beautiful one and made friends with the lady whose garden it is. She loves nature and would like to participate in our study. The kids and I created a cherry tree lapbook as well as their journal pages. We have another book of pressed flowers and have added a few cherry blossoms to there. We will be going to show our friend on our next visit when we plan to go to the park and see what flowers we can find among the mud. :D
I am a lamination geek so I created a cherry tree life cycle poster and sent it off to work with DH to be laminated. I see a collection of laminated nature posters being added to our other science ones.
We went on a few more walks after our cherry tree one where we observed daffodils, a spider which Megan (6) insists is a black widow even though it wasn't black and heavy, heavy rain. Douglas said excitedly "It's H2Oing!!" However our favourite observation was a crow with a worm hanging from it's mouth. It was flying overhead so we didn't have too much time to watch. We read about crows in A Handbook of Nature Study , Crows and Crows!: Strange and Wonderful. We are in the process of a crow lapbook and will probably complete it on the weekend.
We haven't done any chemistry or physics for months and I'm not feeling motivated to do it so for now our only science will be nature study. We've had a great time with it so far and the kids are very excited to take DH for a walk tomorrow.:D

Zip-a-dee-do-dah

"My oh my what a wonderful day."

I feel like I could dance around singing right now. I'm so happy.:D Today was a GREAT day!

We started off with Bible, all good. Moved on to math, all good. Did a mixture of reading and music practice, still all good. Did history, really good. But the highlight was our first ever formal:

Nature Study

It was a hit, hit, hit, HIT!
Here is Green Hour Challenge Assignment #4 where we're jumping in. We have chosen flowers, both wild and in the garden, as our focus. I'd thought each kid would want to do something else but it was a unanimous vote that flowers are the perfect thing for us. This is Morning Glory Academy.
So we set off for the park, flower spotting eyes on the ready. There were lots of nice flowers on the way but the kids wanted the park so we kept going, until we saw a beautiful cherry tree. Out came the nature journals and we plopped ourselves down on the side walk. :D
We were getting ready to go when a lovely old lady came out of the house. She said she'd been watching us draw and how glad she was that children were still interested in nature. She lets us take some petals to press and did a tree rubbing with us. She told us about her childhood in the woods in the times when people cared about nature and how it changed so that now many people are ignorant of the natural world. We learnt about the stages of a cherry tree and about her favourite flowers, morning glories being one. :D
Then we got caught in a down pour and all went inside for tea and cookies. The kids all turned their cups upside down and said that they'd really rather not have because they'd just been learning about the Boston Tea Party but hot chocolate sounded very good.
We will spend the rest of this week learning about cherry trees and when we got out next week our new friend will come too.

I've been in a happy mood all day and then I just found out that there is an offer on our house!:D It is condition that the bank will give this couple the money and that the house has no major problems but still, I'm happy!:D