Friday, May 1, 2009

The outdoor hour


I have found a fantastic blog; The handbook of nature study.
handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com

It offers laods of inspiring and simple activities/challenges to get you and your kids out and about noticing the outdoors. It only requires 15 minutes outside for each activity, and this can be in your back yard, the street...wherever.

I will feature a
number of the challenges as we do them.

Our first outdoor challenge is #16 - Growing sunflowers.

This week we planted our sunflowers..alll 50 of them that were in the packet!

Henry got fully involved, puting the soil in the pots, puting the seeds in, covering them up, and watering them.


He got some really good practice with his listening skills, fine motor and measuring as well.





We then did our journal entry, so Henry drew what the sunflower seed looked like and then we described it.

We shall look forward to monitoring the growth of all our sunflowers, and their eventual move into the back yard!


The sunflowers this week.....day 1....not a lot to see!







A further part of this challenge was to take a walk in the neighbourhood to spot any flowers, and journal these. We found so many, its going to take a while to work through them! We found, violets, daffodils, tulips, hyacynths, blossom on the trees and azaleas. Henry and i shared the picture taking during the walk, and will document them gradually!

In the mean time, enjoy the slide show of what we saw!


Click to play this Smilebox slideshow: Spring flowers
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4 comments:

  1. Charlie - that's awesome. A new thing for me to do with Alex!! We planted sunflowers last week too.

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  2. Oh, awesome book! Thanks for sharing. We are going to order it tonight.

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  3. Welcome to the Outdoor Hour Challenges! Growing sunflowers is such a great project for nature study. We just got ours in pots as well and we look forward to watching them grow tall.

    Your journal page is fantastic too....love the printing.

    As far as your flowers, take them one at a time and enjoy them. You have a lot of years to learn about each one.

    Thanks for sharing your link and I look forward to more entries in the future.

    Barb-Harmony Art Mom

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  4. This is great! I especially love the journal page. Great job to your son (and you!)

    Rhonda
    http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/Preparation

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