Captivating Clouds

We used Shining Dawn Book's Captivating Clouds nature study this week. It's been a good week for clouds here. We have learned to identify each type of cloud along with the prefixes that tell us the altitude of the clouds. Monday was a good day for looking at shapes in the clouds since we had large cumulus clouds everywhere. The boys made cotton ball models of the 3 main types of clouds at the 3 different altitudes. We talked more about the water cycle (we had already discussed this with our creek study) and evaporation. We made it rain in a bottle and talked about the different types of precipitation. Tomorrow the boys will practice being meteorologist's and give me the weather forecast for the day. Here are some pictures of our journey:


Cumulus Clouds:Cirrus Clouds:
Cumulus Clouds:
The boys filled out one of these sheets for each day of the week about the cloud type and weather along with a drawing of the clouds for that day.

Their cotton ball models of the cloud types:The "making rain" experiment:

Incredible Creeks

We are using Shining Dawn books Incredible Creeks this week and probably next week. So far we've enjoyed the exploration of our own creek, although there aren't many places that are easily accessible to the water. However, we are hoping to explore a local river this weekend when we go camping. We like these nature studies because we can pick and choose what fits best for our family. So far, here are the things we have done:

-Read The Raft by Jim Lamarche
-Discussed other words for "creek" including brook, stream, and river.
- We talked about how all creeks flow to larger creeks or rivers and they all eventually flow into the ocean. We looked at a local map to see where our creek flows - it eventually gets to the Wabash River, which flows to the Ohio River which flows to the Mississippi, which flows to the Gulf of Mexico!
- Drew pictures of the water cycle to help us understand the process. Isn't it amazing to understand that some of the water flowing in our creek was here hundreds of years ago?
- We made underwater viewfinders to use at the creek, although our creek is so clear and shallow right now that we really didn't need the viewfinders.


- While at the creek yesterday, we took a water sample and brought it home to look at it under the microscope. Unfortunately, we didn't see any microscopic animals. We'll try again at another creek.
- We observed the rocks and the smoothness of them from the water's current.

- We observed the things floating in the water and the vegetation growing on the banks of the creek.


- We observed the living things in the creek - leeches, crawdads and small fish.


Today it's raining, so we won't be down at the creek, but we will look at some paintings by Monet of rivers and read a poem by Emily Dickinson, "The Sea Said 'Come' To the Brook".

More Nature

Update on our nests - the robin and cardinal nests are now empty (even before the storms.) Pretty sure a predator got them. Our finch eggs hatched, however, I just checked on them and there are only 3 left in the nest and they look dead. It looks like something got to them because a couple have knicks on their bodies. They don't appear to be breathing, but when I went to the nest, the mother was sitting on it. I guess she'll figure it out.

While Alex was outside today shooting his BB gun, he found a bat in a pine tree. He actually shot it, but I'm not sure it was hurt. He didn't know it was a bat until after he shot it and the bat opened his wings. He said it scared him and he ran to get me. Of course, I had to take pictures. This is in the same tree that we originally found the robin's eggs. I wonder if bats eat eggs...?

Egg Hunt

While we were doing a nature walk today looking for the colors of the jelly bean prayer, we decided to check the nests we found while looking for eggs last week. We found 3 nests with eggs and one with a robin sitting in it, but no eggs yet.

This one, Alex saw a female Cardinal fly out of:

We found this one in the same tree and a robin flew from it:
What's interesting is that when we were first looking at nests, we didn't have our camera with us, but I had my cell phone so I took a picture with it. She had only laid 2 of the eggs. She laid the third egg in the time it took us to walk back to the house to get the camera.

This last nest, we're not positive what kind of bird it is because we didn't actually see the mother sitting on it, but I did see a female house finch fly from the tree to a nearby bush.

Easter in Nature study

I purchased a Nature Study from NaturExplorers (here). I thought since Easter was later in the spring this year, it would be perfect to study nature along with our celebration of Jesus' death and resurrection. We will continue this into next week, depending on the weather, but I wanted to share with you what we've done already and the plan for next week.

Fragrance Walk - We talked about the story of Mary who poured expensive perfumes on Jesus' feet days before he was to die. We wrote down some descriptive words on a piece of paper like: sweet, bitter, woodsy, fresh... The boys then walked around our yard and the wooded area beside us looking for smells that matched these descriptions. It was a beautiful day for a walk!

Passover/Egg Walk - The Passover meal is a celebration by the Jews to remember how God delivered the Israelites from the Egyptions. The nature study listed items that are eaten as a symbolic Passover meal. One of these items is eggs - a symbol of life. We then talked about the reason we use eggs at Easter time - when we celebrate Jesus' life and the new life He gives us. We went on a "real" egg hunt - looking for birds' nests and eggs. We found some nests, but most of them looked like old ones that will not be used this year. The boys then found one new nest, but no eggs yet. We will keep a watch on this one.

Golgotha - The boys' grandparents (also our neighbors) had a large tree taken down this week. We have taken much time this week to watch them take it down. (A very interesting process.) One day was spent moving that wood from the yard to the barn for next year's heating fuel. After reading how Simon of Cyrene was asked to carry Jesus' cross, we talked about how heavy that cross would've been. Of course, some of the pieces of wood we saw them cut, we can't budge without tools. The size of cross needed to crucify a grown man would've been quite large, therefore, also heavy.

Lilies are another symbol of Easter. The Easter Lily is white, which represents Jesus' purity and how His blood cleanses us. I bought an Easter Lily plant this week so that we could study the flower. We also chose a cousin of the lily - a tulip - so each boy could dissect their own flower. They each drew a picture of the flower and all the different parts - pistil, stamen, stigma, ovary, pollen, petals, etc. Very good nature lesson on a day that we couldn't go outside into nature.

The plan for the rest of our study:
Black Friday - Jesus died on the cross, paying the price for our sins. This day was both good and bad, happy and sad. On a nature walk, (or if it's not a nice day, we can just look outside), look for things that give us happy feelings and things that give us sad feelings, or remind us of tears.

Jellybean Prayer Scavenger Hunt:
Red is for the blood He gave.
Green is for the grass He made.
Yellow is for the sun so bright.
Orange is for the edge of night.
Black is for the sins we made.
White is for the grace He gave.
I purchased a bag of jellybeans to have when we read the poem. Then we will head outside to look for things in nature that represent all these colors of the poem.

Burial- Jesus was placed in a tomb, or a hole carved out of rock, so we will look at rocks. We will look for similarities and differences in the rocks we find. We might even try to break a rock, so show how difficult it would be to break or carve a rock.

Coloring Eggs - Of course, we will have to take time out next week to color eggs for Easter. We might even try to paint them, instead of just using dyes. As we color and/or paint, we will think of all the colors and what they represent in the Easter story.

If we get another nice day before Easter, we might just take a walk in a local park to look at the flowers that might be blooming - planted or wild. Purple should remind us of royalty and that Jesus is the King! White should remind us how Jesus' death washed our sins and made us white as snow.

What is Snow? unit study

We've been trying to study snow all week. The beginning of the week, I wondered if that was such a good idea since there was no snow on the ground, but we plowed through anyway. Wednesday morning, I woke up to frost, but knew by the time we got to that point in our school day, it would be gone. So I searched outside for something that I could bring in that had frost on it. Luckily, the boys had left a small football outside that had frost on it, so I brought it in and put it into the deep freeze before the boys got up. When we got to our snow study that day, I got out the football and a couple magnifying glasses. We got to look at it for about 5 minutes before the frost melted. However, the boys - being the boys that they are - discovered the art of using a magnifying glass to burn things. Here are a couple of pictures from that experiment (which had nothing to do with snow, but fun for them none the less.)



And here is an unfortunate plastic frog that now has a hole in his body.



Today we had a small amount of snow fall. We used a cold piece of paper to collect some snow and bring it to the freezer. We tried to take a look under the microscope with a cold slide, but our house is too warm, or we are not fast enough. The snowflakes melted before we got a look. We will most likely have to take the microscope outside to have a good look.

We talked about the volume of snow compared to the volume of rain (water.) We were able to fill a jelly jar with snow and let it melt. It was amazing how little water that left us!

We made paper snowflakes and 3-d snowflakes, so our house looks more like winter now. Unfortunately, it stopped snowing and we only ended up with about 1/2 inch, more or less. We'll finish up our study tomorrow with the "life cycle" of a snowflake.


(These snowflakes were made yesterday, before today's snow.)


Alex's 3-D snowflake.


It's hard to see the colors on Nicolas's because of the light behind it, but it's blue and purple.