Be joyful though you have considered all the facts
Bad weather and illness delayed our second Outdoor Hour challenge – we did Challenge #1 over a month ago and it’s supposed to be a weekly challenge! But yesterday we were – and we still are (knock on wood) – healthy, and the temperature deigned to rise above freezing (though only barely), and the sun …
Continue reading “Outdoor Hour Challenge #2: Using Our Words”
The year comes round again. The Earth stands still, tilting, tilting. Let us all lean on our axes, toward the sun, toward the sun!
Dark-Eyed junco and American Goldfinches Who knew birdwatching in winter would be more fun than in summer! We’re experiencing our third snowstorm in five days – or is it the second one come round again? The scene outside is magical, but to me there is also an aspect of danger. I see the trees laden …
Finally we got some snow: about an inch, I should say. Amie ran out to play before school. For once it wasn’t difficult to get her into her clothes! Sadly the snow was too hard for snowmen, snow angels, and snowballs, but she had a lot of fun just scraping it off our car and …
We had two experiments going on here yesterday and part of today. First: dunking cones When we found this cone on our Outdoor Hour walk last week, we identified it as a Norway Spruce cone. It was wet and cold when we brought it in, and we (I) had observed that the scales were slowly …
Sorry for my absence here. I’m ill in bed. Not the little sickness, which asks for bed and tea and a stack of books and reading all day – that doesn’t happen anymore, with a child too young to care yet: it feels like too much of an indulgence. No, a more serious illness, with …
{This was written yesterday but I had already posed two entries so kept it for today} I slept badly last night, or rather not at all (this cold is getting the better of me). Ever since having Amie I can function pretty well on very little sleep, on a certain level. But this morning I …
The first Outdoor Hour challenge is simple. Read pages 1-8 (did that, read my “book review” here) and head outdoors! The focus is Comstock’s principle that “In nature-study the work begins with any plant or creature which chances to interest the pupil.” So yesterday we went for an hour-long walk around our block and we …
Continue reading “Outdoor Hour Challenge #1 and Field Book Drawing”
Though I am still feeling sick, we went outside. It was a good day for it and Amie really wanted to. It was bright, with some clouds moving in, a few gusts of wind but otherwise not too blustery, and unseasonably mild (mid 40s). We bundled up and went for a long walk around the …
Besides birds, we have also been observing the resident squirrel eating our three ears of Indian Corn and guarding it from other squirrels. He/she somehow got it down from our porch light. Amie was enthralled by how he carried a kernel in his mouth, ran along the balcony ledge, then down and through the drain …