We did our green hour challenge last week, but I didn’t get a chance to post about it, so I thought I would combine the two today, before I got too far behind. Last weeks challenge was “up close and personal”. We were supposed to use a magnifying lens to examine things up close, but try as I might, I could not find ours. As an alternative, we decided to go out to our back yard and try to observe the birds who have been feeding in our feeders, and nesting in our nest box a little closer if possible. So far, we have only seen them in action from the windows of our house. The kids and I “hid” under the trampoline and tried not to talk louder than a whisper to see if any would come for a visit while we were outside. The kids waited and watched patiently. We had some visitors in our neighbors trees, and had fun listening to their calls, but none would come to the feeders.
It took quite a while, but as we were about to give up, we were rewarded by a visit from another finch. We thought we were sure these were House Finches visiting us, but I have been learning that there are several varieties that are fairly similar, so I am not 100% sure. We will keep observing, and hopefully we will know for certain soon.
For today’s nature study, we went in the back yard again, this time to see what we could discover in the ground. Each child was given a one foot square to observe, and dig in, and see what he could find. We used one of the square foot gardens that we still haven’t finished weeding yet. It was getting chilly outside, but the kids had fun digging.
They were hoping to find some really interesting bugs, but all they found were “potato bugs” and an earthworm.
The thing that I was impressed with was their increased powers of observation. Even though they have seen tons of potato bugs before, they sat looking at them and pointing out interesting things that they were noticing about them for quite a while. Another breakthrough! Barb was so inspired when she came up with these Green Hour Challenges! They have been just what we needed to jump start our nature study.
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