Outdoor Nature Hour #2

Today we continued with our Outdoor Nature Hour with the second challenge.  It was a beautiful 60 degrees outside.  The boys were up before the girls after nap today.  So we went for a short walk down the dirt road while the girls slept.  The boys did fairly well being quiet and we heard lots of birds in the pine trees overhead. 

When we arrived back in our yard, I walked with the boys to the edge of the woods.  Just a little piece into the woods was a small moss covered dirt mound.  Bo sat on this mound and listened while Boo and I started to walk back to the house to check on the girls.  As we were leaving the woods I looked down and saw a marble in the grass.  I know a marble is not a natural object, but Boo sure was excited to find it.  The marble was the source of two of his descriptions.

I returned to find Bo still listening. He had heard the dogs and cat running in the leaves.  The chickens were down in the woods scratching around as well.  We walked around a bit, checking for any hidden nests from our chickens and Bo took a picture of a fallen tree.  We thought it looked like a perfect place for a nest to be hidden.

This afternoon when we came inside I asked the boys to describe something they heard.
Bo-crunching
Boo-tweeting

Something they saw:
 Bo-black birds
Boo-little marble

Somthing they felt:
Bo-breakable soft stick (mommy did help to get the words right)
Boo-cold hard marble (mommy also helped a little)


A couple of quotes I liked from the Handbook of Nature Study.

If a teacher knows a fact in nature's realm, she is then in a position to lead her pupils to discover this fact for themselves.

Make the lesson an investigation and make the pupils feel they are investigators.  To tell the story to beign with inevitably spoils this attitude and quenches interest.