Nature Journal: Bogs

Honestly, I was pretty skeptical about the whole Nature Journal Thing when I started. I mean, Nature Study, yes, that makes a lot of sense, and I was excited. We started to do it pretty early, after a fashion: we'd go outside and look for Interesting Things. It wasn't until much later that we started to carry sketchbooks with us, and even then, there was a while where dragging them around was pretty much all we did. But I'm halfway through my second volume now: the first one filled up. And it's gradually become something that I absolutely love doing. There are so many Interesting Things, and drawing them is both fun and educational: it helps me remember what I've learned. (Bonus points for getting some watercolor on the page!)

So this past week, I went to Cub Scout daycamp with Dragon, and we had a good time. We had to drive a little way to get there, and the environment was just a little bit different from what we see closer to home. Amazing how a relatively short distance can change things! It was a little different, except for one area: they have a bog.

The bog was very different.

And so very fascinating: I could have gone in there with my nature book every day for a long time and not been done looking at All The Things.

This isn't exactly the same as the place that we visited, but it was similar: our bog was a "quaking bog": when the guide told the boys to jump, the trees and everything around us shook. It was pretty amazing.



So I took some pictures, and I've been putting the stuff that I saw in my book in the past week since I got home. I started with a page about Monarch butterflies. Didn't see those in the bog, but I did get a picture, and I'm glad I did: it was fun to paint, and very interesting to learn about their migration patterns.

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But once I'd finished learning about Monarchs, then I wanted to know more about bogs. Because that place was amazing. Turns out, I've had to work a bit to find out much about them.

National Geographic has a nice overview.

And this crazy bit of news about a "wandering bog" came up in one of my searches. I would never have guessed that was possible!




I've got some cool photos of carniverous plants to include as well: it's likely that this project of recording what I saw in our 30 minutes or so in the bog will take more than one page to get into my book, because it's just so different from "regular" ecosystems. I'm excited to see what I can learn about it all.

#GraphTheWeather

Early this month, I saw a post on Facebook from a lady that was doing something to track wildfires in her nature journal; I wasn't real clear on what it is that she was doing: wildfires are not a thing in our neck of the woods. But she had it in a circle, and it was colored different shades of red, and it was really quite striking.

I thought, what if I did that with the daily temperatures?

So I built a chart.
In a circle, because I loved how that looked.

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And, because it was already the fourth, and because I don't actually have an outdoor thermometer to look at, I grabbed some data from the Weather Underground. Which is pretty cool, actually, because that means that I've got the actual high and low for the day, rather than just whatever it is whenever I remember to look at the thermometer. This also meant that I have a range of colors to represent each day, which turns out to be quite striking, even after only a couple of days of data. I got the kids into the project; it totally counts as math!

Natural History Illustration

There's this Natural History Illustration course going on, and I'm trying it out. I think it's going to be lots of fun. They recommended getting a few of the fancy pencils - the HB, 2B, different types of softness fancy ones, and I did, and this time they actually make sense to me. That's fun. So I'm starting to play with them. Nothing fancy yet, just doodling around to get to know the new toys.

I like them.

I'm looking forward to being able to do my nature journal better. That has become one of my favorite parts of homeschooling, and an important part of some of my self-education projects, and I'm excited to be learning to do it better, so it's an even better asset to my learning than it already is.

Frog Study: Blanchard's Cricket Frog

We're learning about local frogs this year, in the hope of possibly recognizing them better when we're out and about. Our State has only about 12 of them, so I've slipped them in here and there on our schedule. Today's frog is a cutie: Blanchard's Cricket Frog.

This is the first time I've done a study like this, and I'm not quite sure how to take it from our kitchen table to being able to actually being able to identify frogs when we find them next summer, but I figure the chances are better with a inexpert effort than they are if we don't try at all! So right now, we're drawing them. And listening to some YouTube recordings of their song. And that's pretty much it. Today we did Blanchard's Cricket Frog, which is a cute little thing: fits on a fingertip with plenty of room to spare.

This is the drawing from Dragon(6). In addition to learning about these cute little guys, he's also learning to see well enough to draw. I have him sit on my lap (ufta! he's not little anymore!) and help him know what to look at, and how to really see it in a way that works for drawing:

He draws a circle for the eye, which is the most prominent feature.
"Look, the eye is cool, but it's easiest to start with the outline of the whole frog, and worry about the inside details later; let's save the eyeball for last, so you can tell more easily where it belongs. Look at the frog's nose, instead. See how this part is part of a circle?" -I run a pencil along the curve of the frog's mouth, showing him the circle-
"Next to that big circle part, there's this small curve, where the other eye is hiding. See how those connect?"
"Yes."
"Do you think you can draw the big circle part and the little one? Can you see how they go?"
"Yes." And he did it pretty credibly.
"Good. Now, look, first. Put your eyes up here on the picture. See how his back goes along like this, not super round, but not quite curvy, either?"

We went along like that, trying to help him to see what he needs, and reminding him to look at the picture before he draws, and at the end, his frog is pretty credible, particularly the front half, and the front leg, which he did entirely by himself. He's making good progress with his drawings, though judging from his comments after it was done, I don't think he can see his progress, yet. Unfortunately, his nature book is lost right now, so we didn't put this in there, just on regular paper, which makes it hard to look back and see how progress really has been happening. Hopefully, we'll find it soon and tape in this drawing.

Hero(10) is well past the point where he needs me to sit and hold his hand. He's been turning out stacks of ever-improving drawings for quite a while, now, and I didn't have to do any more than just show him the frog I wanted him to observe, and let him choose which picture he was going to do; he takes care of the rest.

It's been too busy a day for me to get this drawing into my own nature book, but I'm hoping that, here in the next little bit, I can put a cute little frog in my notebook, and possibly even paint him a little to show his lovely colors. I've got a cottonwood leaf pressed in my book that I'm finishing up this evening.

Watercolor Instructions

I have been very frustrated the last few times that I tried playing with watercolor, because I couldn't seem to make pictures. I can make nice backgrounds for art journal pages (this one is Watercolors and colored pencils), but I just couldn't make pictures.

So I went and asked the girls that use Ambleside Online's facebook group. And they helped me out with tips, instructions, tutorials, and sample journal pages. There are some really lovely people using Charlotte Mason's methods.

They gave a number of tips, and also some links to various tutorials. Like this one. Which helped me to understand better what to ask for when I'm trying to get my kids to do nature journals. That was really helpful, and when I did it that way, I immediately started to see cool things happening with Hero's journal.

They also showed me some a couple of great video tutorials. I have watched some (and seen fantastic progress in my paintings!!) but not all of them, yet, and I want to keep track of them so that I can continue to improve my work.



This one isn't a video tutorial, but it does have some really interesting bits on doing a drybrush technique - I hadn't even realized that was possible with watercolors.

Next, they shared a whole YouTube channel with me full of watercolor tutorials. I'm really looking forward to digging into that a little bit! Looks like there are some fun things to learn there.

Then, I started trying out some of the things I'd learned, and the directions we had were so good that, even without someone here in the kitchen showing us what to do, both Hero and I showed marked improvement in our work on the very first try. We get the paints out regularly; Hero knows how to do it on his own and starts painting independently on a regular basis, as well as the work that we do together as an official activity. I'm excited to see how we can improve over the next few months, messing around. This is some cattails that we saw, though I didn't paint the whole stand of them. There just wasn't time for that much, so I simplified it down to two stalks. It was so exciting to see a real picture, even if it wasn't much. You can see from the way the paper has buckled that I'm still using a lot of water in my "dry" brush. I'll be working on that, especially since this is just a sketch book, and the paper isn't really excited about being that wet.

Hero(8) did this one of a Black-capped Chickadee. We had seen a chickadee at the park, so we found a picture on the internet, and he copied it. He just grabbed whatever pen was handy, so he ended up with a blue outline, but I still was pleasantly surprised by how nicely he did.

Dragon(4.5) doesn't do a nature journal, yet, but he does like to paint. And the lines (he tells me it's a transporter) are a new addition. He's been making "Pegasus eggs" a lot lately - little ovals of color. This was the first time he'd tried drawing and painting it.

A week later, we stayed canceled Nature Study because it was all of 3F outside (and windy), and we have a toddler. This is pretty typical of our winters, but the birds helped us out. We had some House Sparrows show up at our (empty) feeders, so we watched them a while, and then Hero filled the feeders. We looked online at the All About Birds entry for House Sparrows, and found an internet picture to use as reference.

Hero's completed drawing turned out fantastic - easily the most realistic art he has produced to date, and a marked improvement over last week. I have no idea what was different this week, but I love it.

Dragon loves to paint, too. We were listening to Thomas Payne's Common Sense while we did this, so he drew a "Liberty Cannon" and a "Liberty Bow" (with arrows). You can see the "cannon" next to him; it's the orange and green splot.

I was cooking lunch, so I didn't get to play, much, this week, but Dragon loves to mix up colors on his mixing tray, and wanted me to use them, so I drew a quick flower-like object. I didn't have any particular type of flower in mind, just "flower," so the shape isn't so hot. But I was really excited about what I was able to do with the colors on the petals and leaves!

I can't wait to do some more!

Snapshot of Our Day

The Daddy and I stayed up a bit last night, watching Thor and chatting. It was a much-needed after-hours date, though it did make waking up this morning a little harder. No sooner had we got up then my phone reminded me that we had to take the Dragon up for a shot. He didn't like that much (neither do I; it always feels like a betrayal), but when it was done we all went for ice cream. Dragon got bubble gum ice cream. I remember liking that, once. It was like two treats in one: ice cream AND gum. Dragon liked the screaming pink color.

We did some history when we got home. We read the next section of Story of the World and then Hero narrated. He decided to talk about feudalism, and it looks like he has a pretty good grasp. Then we read some picture books to expand on the content a bit. 

Hero did some of the writing. We'll be doing more of that. I realized I needed to have him do more writing in English when he decided to join me in practicing written Japanese last week, and turned out an impressive mass of work in a short time. So he'll be doing more of his own writing. 

Tigress spent some time playing with the cute skirt her Nana and I made, and then she fell asleep only a few bites into her avocado. 

While she was sleeping, I did some math with the boys. Hero had another rod picture to make up problems from, and Dragon spent some time coloring on the marker board first, then after a while he decided to switch and play with the rods. 

With shots, Dragon will definitely be having a nap, and then the plan is to spend a good chunk of the evening outside. 

Art and Artists

We're having another go at learning about art, artists, and drawing. I found a set of lesson plans that go with Drawing with Children, and they have made my life so much easier! I love the ideas in that book, but just could not figure out how to translate them into doing stuff with Monkey. Those lesson plans are wonderful. We're actually making (slow) progress now. And I'm OK with slow: it's so much better than none. One of the first things the lessons plans wanted us to do was make a notebook for our Great Artists Studies. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with this until I saw this idea.



A "smashbook," where order is not so much a problem. One of the blogs I looked at said they'd created a table of contents by numbering the pages- but leaving the first 3 or 4 blank. I like that. Stuff goes in. Learning goes in, and gets remembered because we come back to the book from time to time. So we got those little composition books, and we're going to do it. A little at a time. In Baby Steps. Because small things add up, and it doesn't have to be a huge thing on any given day. It can wax and wane. We can do a whole bunch this week because making a collage to decorate the cover is fun, and then wane as we look at other things, but wax again when we find an interesting artist. And that's OK. Because in several months or even years, when it's done and the book is filled it will be much more than nothing. Which is what we're presently doing. Here are some ideas for what to put inside a Great Artists book.

I made this graphic to go on the cover of mine; Monkey just wrote on the lines on the front of the composition book. When they're done I'll come back and add pictures. But you can  have this "teaser" for now. And if you like it, you can use it on your Great Artists notebook. Drop me a line if you do - I'd love to see pictures of your finished product!

There. The cover is finished. Here are some pictures of mine. Monkey put his name on his, so you'll have to imagine the cuteness. We looked through Usborne's Introduction to Art and picked interesting pictures, which I looked up online and printed out. Then we glued them on our decorated notebooks. And, because our printer ink is very water soluble runs if you look cross-eyed at it, I covered them with contact paper. This will also make the covers generally tougher, which is a plus for a book I'm hoping will be sticking around for a while.

Front cover.

Back cover.

Front cover detail

Weekly Wrap-up: The Late One

We tried out Postcrossing this week, and I'm really excited. I think that once the postcards start coming in from around the world Monkey will too. Plus, he loves the globe we got. For our first card, sent to Malaysia, we looked at Google Maps (he loves google maps), & printed a copy for a geography binder, put a sticker on our wall map, and found Malaysia on the new globe. We also got a sort of social studies atlas that we looked up Malaysia in - did you know they sometimes have floating markets? Sort of a grocery store on the river? Plus we also watched this travel clip.


Phonics we did, but in an easy-going way. Nothing exciting happened here.

Math went well too. The lessons we're working on right now are shape-heavy, which is fun. We've done a couple different shape drawings, including a cute circle monster, but I didn't get any pictures.

Probably the most fun of the week was building a new science binder and doing some more experiments. We've been playing with vinegar again, this time adding salt to clean up some pennies. He also did a narration for it and one the floaters and sinkers experiment we did late last week. Plus, he's had "science" in almost every bath since then. Gotta love requests for repeats! Looks like the pennies are something he also is going to want to revisit.





We also made some craisins dance.



This ended the first two weeks for my new planning schedule thingamajigs, and so far it seems to be working nicely. I'm learning that I'll need to be more organized about having things ready to go. Getting things ready to go currently uses up a bunch of our time. I'm going to need to both adjust my expectations of how long this is going to take in any given day and also become better at being ready to go so the transitions are smoother. I'm beginning to understand more clearly why people talk about homeschooling as a lifestyle: it's going to be a huge part of what I do.

My other cutie fell asleep in the high chair, and knowing that I wasn't going to be able to move him, I let him snooze... and snapped a few pictures. No, that's not snot by his nose. I think it's a bit of the biter biscuit he was working on. Still gross, but I'm such a sucker for his chubby little self that I didn't even notice until I looked at the pictures!

A Notebook for History

Whereas there is nothing quite so likely to make me feel half-educated as reading The Well-Trained Mind (TWTM), and Whereas I have never actually studied world history in either High School or College, I Am Resolved to begin the process of remedying my own ignorance by studying World History.

Additionally, it strikes me as useful to know something about history in prior to teaching it. Now seems like a good time to do something with this project because I know that it's going to be a very long, slow project.

I began by setting up a binder. First I made it pretty. Because pretty is important. Then I put tabbed dividers into it and labeled them the way that TWTM suggests for the logic stage. I chose the logic stage because it seemed like that's where most of my education would have fit, more or less, if I were to categorize it into the Trivium.

These are my labeled sections:

*Outlines
*Great Men and Women
*Wars, Conflicts, and Politics
*Inventions and Technology
*Religion
*Daily Life
*Cities and Settlements
*Primary Sources
*The Arts and Great Books

Since I have the Usborne Encyclopedia of World History (found it at the thrift shop for half-price; looks brand new), I'm using that. The Kinfisher History Encyclopedia is on my wish-list, since that's the actual spine that TWTM suggests for the logic stage, and the Usborne is a little elementary. But the Usborne has all those lovely internet links, and with that and a little help from Wikipedia I'm getting along.

I started with Jericho. The Book of Joshua clearly goes under "Great Books." I read about Çatalhöyük. Fascinating stuff. Again, pretty easy to file away, under "Cities and Settlements." Next came Sumer. I thought I'd push through it quickly so that I could get on with Egypt, which sounds very interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which is my Egyptian friends from college. Plus, ancient Egypt has mummies. How cool is that? Only, Sumer turned into a bigger, more interesting project than I thought it would be. And it posed some interesting challenges.

For instance, I didn't have a very clear idea of where Mesopotamia was. So I looked it up and printed out the map, along with a map of that same area today. It's basically Iraq. Now, where do I put this in my book? I ended up converting the "Primary Sources" section to "Primary Sources and Maps." Though there will likely be some maps that find their way into the cities section.

For some reason, this whole "where do I put the maps" question was very stressful to me, and I consulted on the TWTM's message board, AKA the Hive Mind. After an interesting discussion about the merits of a sectioned notebook vs. chronological notes vs. a commonplace book arrangement, one of the ladies made this very interesting observation:

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TWTM has you study things chronologically and keep a timeline, but file them non-chronologically. That way you get to look at things both ways. Having sections makes you choose which is the most important aspect of something. Choosing makes you think about it.

Read her whole comment.
Read the whole thread.

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Seems to me that having things set up in a way that forces you to think is an excellent way to go, so I'm sticking with the sectioned notebook for my history. Plus, this has the added benefit of letting me try out TWTM's suggested sections before Monkey needs to use them so I can have some idea of how they work in practice. I like it!

How We Do It

Question from Trish:

---

Question for you. On the Nature Hour blog on her sidebar where it has all the lessons or challenges. Do you print these out each time you use them or do you just follow what she says on her blog? Basically, I'm asking exactly how are you doing it? And to what degree?

---

Answer:

Most of the Outdoor Hour challenges are geared for older kids than my Monkey, so we end up modifying them quite a bit, and many of them we're waiting to do until he's ready for more formalized "school" activities. I've done some of them myself, and Monkey and I have done some of them together.

The first several challenges are easy to adapt for the young participant. We did the "Using Your Words" challenge over the period of several trips outside. This mostly consisted of me being aware of what Monkey was interested in and feeding him words to describe what he was playing with or looking at. We did this in the Spring of 2008, and it's developed since then into an awareness of things outside. My desire to be able to tell him about things outside has lead me to work on my own knowledge so that I have the ability to tell him about what we're seeing.

Looking through her list, I think there are some more that we could try, now that Monkey is a little bigger: the Magnifying Lens, and the Picnic, both of which could be done over a period of time, rather than just once.

Looking at all those beautiful notebook pages I wanted to do something similar, but Monkey's too little to do that kind of thing yet. So we got him a photo album - just one of the ones with pockets that you slip the pictures into. And when we're out if we notice something I will often be taking pictures anyway, so I'll say, do you want to put this into your nature book? And he's starting to ask me to take pictures of things, rocks mostly, that he wants in his book, so I'm feeling like it's working. The other cool thing is that he's starting to point out clouds and flowers and bugs and feathers and things that catch his eye. His powers of observation are really quite good! I often feel like I have to work hard to keep up with him sometimes.

Freebie!

I have no idea how long it's going to be there, but CurrClick's got a 90 page Charlotte Mason nature journal available for free!

Kudos to Cocoa for finding & posting about it!

Sketcy Business

Here's a fun idea for a variant on Notebooking: Skatchboking!

Article: Sketchy Training
When we came to the Depression, we drew Hoovervilles (shack towns), Hoover flags (the change pocket flapping inside out of a trouser), and Hoover blankets (newspapers). Hoover was blamed for the Depression because people felt he was protecting businesses.