You're gonna love this!

We love nature over here. We really enjoy exploring and learning through it. Like I've said before, with nature studies you can knock out science, language arts, art, and appreciating God's amazing creations all at one time. You can't beat that.

We love to find a spot outside in parks or our yard to observe, sketch or paint. Sometimes gathering supplies and keeping them together is a bit of a problem.

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Well, look what my sister and her family got Cole for his birthday! We are very excited. It is a backpack that stores all kinds of art supplies.

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It has spots for paints, brushes, colored pencils, markers, sketch pads, and any other supply you would ever need. There are so many different compartments you won't even believe it. Even pockets where you could store binoculars and magnifying glasses. Everything has a spot. And it all stays organized! WoooHoooo!!!!

Here is what the box looks like. You can get them at Hobby Lobby.

We are just going to store everything we need in the backpack so it is ready at a moment's notice. Cole and I are taking it on it's first nature walk today. It belongs to Cole, but it's going to benefit everyone! My sister rocks the house.

Cole also got a ton of cool art supplies from his grandparents.

Ahhhhh...organization. Be still my heart.

Our first day 2008

Today was our first day of school. We spent the day looking at our new stuff and discussing what we would be doing. It was fun just hanging out and talking and getting back into a routine.

We looked through a book about nature journaling, and then went on a nature walk. I love nature walks because they help everyone appreciate the beauty that is around us and they always naturally lead to other lessons.

Does anyone else find this funny? We are in the middle of nature finding all kinds of cool nature things and what do you know, we find a cherry. From our Hi-Ho-Cherrio game.

Riley sketched a couple of things she found. These things led us into a conversation where I introduced her to compound words as she labeled her mushroom. We also talked about past tense and writing -ed when she wrote uprooted. I love the natural progression of learning this way.

Garrett and Tyler were looking at something with a magnifying glass which led to
melting chocolate with a magnifying glass in the sun...

And that led to…you guessed it, lighting leaves on fire with a magnifying glass, which led to a lovely lesson in fire safety and why burning our house down in the name of a science experiment could possibly lead to regret…and how we must try to avoid regret. Anyone feelin' an "If You give a Mouse a Cookie" book comin' on?

We also did our traditional diet coke and mentos experiment that we always do on the first day.

And then we took a break for showers.

We ended our day by meeting David at Incredible Pizza to celebrate the beginning of our school year.

I can not tell you how thankful I feel today that I get to do this with my kids. Sure it is challenging sometimes, but we are smack in the middle of each other’s lives, and I couldn’t be happier. It is truly a blessing.

As we get started on some of our units this week I will be posting what we are doing so stay tuned!

Nature Studies

We put a lot of focus on nature studies. It is great for building curiosity, research, and learning to appreciate our surroundings. In doing nature studies, we can cover writing, language, science, research skills, and art. We put things we learn about nature into our nature notebooks. They are 3-ring binders with page protectors for each page. They end up being kind of a scrapbook of our findings. Here are some samples of the types of things we do for our notebooks. Some of the pictures are a little light, but you can get the idea.

As they get older, their books become more advanced and you see more papers, poetry and diagrams.

Backyard Nature studies

We like to explore our own backyard for nature studies. We always find something new to learn about and put in our nature notebooks.

Inspiration

We love to set the easel up outside and be inspired by nature.

Nature studies 2006- 2007

Here are a few pictures of some of our nature studies from our first year. Each child has a 3 ring binder for a nature notebook. As we complete our nature papers, we put them in page protectors and put them in the notebook. Nature notebooks provide a great opportunity for research, sketching and writing. They are really fun to look back at, also!

We raised silkworms



We found this cactus in our yard and came back to the house to look it up. We learned that it is edible and found directions online for sauteing it! It tasted like sour green beans.

We observed this spider for weeks.

Ew. Tyler found a brown snake.