Dymphna's Song

Tree Notebook Pages and More Tree Resources

Stephanie — Wed, 29 Oct 2014 10:19:49 +0000

Tree Study:

The weather here in Kansas has been amazing this last week. We did a little study on trees by just going for a nature hike at the Konza Praire with our co-op group. While there, we made a note of a few type of the trees common to the area and expanded our vocabulary of tree characteristics. Only 7% of the Konza Praire is forested, the areas along the water called the “riparian area.” The most prominent trees we observed there were bur and chinquapin oak. Doing a study on trees doesn’t have to be complicated. You can simply go outside to a park, trail or even your own back yard and just take a closer look.

Tree Vocabulary We Learned:

Learning vocabulary helped us to identify trees more easily. We used What Tree Is That?: A Guide to the More Common Trees Found in North America to help us determine the tree we were observing while in the field. It’s just a brief guide and was an inexpensive alternative that wasn’t too intricate for us.

Vocab:

alternate- staggered leaves
broadleaf- a tree with flat thin leaves that generally shed annually
compound (leaf)- a leaf with more than one blade, where leaves attach to tree there is a bud
conifer- a cone bearing tree
deciduous- shed leaves annually
evergreen-trees who’s leaves are needle like and remain alive through winter season
opposite- leaves are directly across from one another

Tree Notebook Pages

What better time to study trees than in the fall? Actually, studying trees is appropriate at any time of year but the leaves right now are brilliant! Our little study was a nice addition to our science curriculum offering an in the field science activity. I was inspired to make Tree Notebook pages to compliment my other Nature Notebook Pages. You can use the Tree Notebook Pages I have created in a variety of ways. Two possibilities are as a compliment to a unit study or text without a workbook and using them just by themselves and doing research.

Learn more about these pages or just click the images.

The Tree Notebook Pages that I created also include several blank pages that can be used with any tree activity. Additionally, there are 10 lined pages in a variety of styles.

You can use the Tree Notebook Pages with any age but they are designed for elementary through middle school. The best thing about them is that they can be used in multiple ways with multiple children over the years. So they are are a small investment that will reap rewards for years to come! There are a total of 43 pages for only $3.99.

Tree Unit Study Resources:

5 Steps to a Wildflower Nature Study

Stephanie — Mon, 25 Aug 2014 10:28:06 +0000

It’s been a busy and hot summer and I haven’t gotten to tend my garden as much as I had hoped. I left for just one week in early July; It was very hot and no one was able to water for me. On my return most everything had died except my tomatoes. Only the strong survived! But even as dry as Kansas can be I noticed there was still beautiful color around me; in the wildflowers. The strength, resilience and resourcefulness of these flowers inspired me. They are so beautiful with only the simplicity of the dry Kansas prairie to sustain them. So we found a little time to study them.

5 Steps to a Wonderful Wildflower Nature Study:

Don’t have a clue how to do nature study? You can make your nature study a success just by following these 5 simple steps. You really don’t need to buy expensive programs. Just keep it simple and enjoy real learning. These 5 steps can be applied to any nature study. But I will give you specific resources and tips as I go specifically for wildflowers.

1. Read a living book about Wildflowers.

You can do this before or after the previous steps. The perfect starting point really is reading a great living book on wildflowers to inspire and get your child interested. I had to dig a bit to find some of these, some we have read and some we have not. Many are older books that have wonderful living book qualities. If I haven’t read them, I previewed them quite a bit and they all look so wonderful that I can recommend each and every one of these books to compliment a wildflower nature study:

Two field guides I have used and can recommend are Flower Finder(Nature Study Guides) and Wildflowers (Golden Guide). And for those of you who very serious about nature study Handbook of Nature Studyby Anna Botsford Comstock is an excellent resource. It will to guide you through complete nature studies on numerous topics. She includes chapters on wildflowers such as milkweed and violets.

2. Explore

Find a good spot where wildflowers are growing. We took frequent hikes on the Konza Prairie which is an excellent location to study wildflowers as well as many other plants and animals. Finding a spot to visit regularly that is near by is the best strategy. The closer to home the better so that it will be a convenient place to visit anytime. Visiting the same place on a regular basis is best because you can:

Observe changes in plants and animals from season to season.
Get to know your own area and it’s ecology.
Study specimens in more depth becoming experts on the species in your area.
Learn over time the effects weather conditions and environmental changes has on a species.

3. Observe

Wildflowers are easier to identify if you know what you are looking for. Most of the time the up close parts of a flower can clue you into what you are discovering while from far off it would be very easy to mix them up because there are so many different species- sometimes even of the same common name. For example there are about 60-70 species of columbine alone and 60 species of sunflowers! Even when you can’t be exact about the flower you are trying to identify answering these simple questions will get you on the right track and narrow it down to a few species in a specific family or genus. Be purposeful in your mental notes and observation while out in the field and ask yourself:

What color is it?
What general shape?
How many petals does it have and what type?
What type of stem, leaf arrangement, leaf type and shape does it have?
What is it’s location?

4. Record/Sketch

Jot down your observations while in the field. If you are skilled enough make a sketch. You and your child can do this in notebooks, wildflower notebooking pages or a journal. Be specific. Make sure to include the answers to the questions above, the date, temperature or an other helpful information. What butterflies or other wildlife are attracted? I also find that taking photographs is especially helpful in capturing what you see. If it can’t be identified in the field you can identify it later during the research phase!

5. Research & Report

There are a few ways to have your child report his/her findings. My older children were exceptionally good at both drawing and writing. It was their gift and not a struggle, so we would journal everything and do sketches. It was a wonderful method for hands on learning for them and it made a wonderful record of our homeschooling.

But my youngest child has other strengths and it’s easier for him to fill in a notebook page rather than write or draw everything all the time. It was he who got me into creating wonderful nature printables for homeschoolers. So for wildflowers I created some pages also. I learned a lot myself while creating them.

You can buy them now on my store website for just $2.99! They include pages for the following by common name:

These are only a few of the many wildflowers you may find in your location. But you can use them for similar flowers in the same families and it’s a great way for your child to understand the classifications and that they are related. In addition, there are 9 blank pages included in the pack.

Check out all the nature pages available.

And coming this fall watch for:

Also Related:

Download my 4 Page Sunflower Notebooking Pages for Free:

10 Reasons to Keep a Nature Notebook

Color on the Kansas Prairie– Wildflower Blog Series

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Color on the Kansas Prairie: Beardtongue Pink

Stephanie — Fri, 25 Jul 2014 11:00:00 +0000

Beardtongue Pink Color Palettes

Earlier this season, I ran into lots of COBAEA PENSTEMON also known as beardtongue. This flower, like many other wildflowers, is so pretty up close but can be taken for granted from a distance. I think I love nature so much because it gets me away from the busyness of life and back into God’s cathedral. The photo above doesn’t show the inside of this flower. But the one below does.

You may not appreciate from the photo why this flower is even called beardtongue. I mean, what kind of name is that anyway? ( I’m smiling over here.) But in better images you can really see in the stamen of the flower a face that looks as if having a beard. A good image of an up close beard tongue would be perfect inspiration for this Georgia O’Keeffe Art Lesson.

Last flower in the Color on the Kansas Prairie Series…

Pink/Pale Poppy Mallow and Purple Poppy Mallows. What notebook page does one use for a Poppy Mallow? A Poppy page or a Mallow page? Mallow page of course. The key is to look at the flower family and when possible the scientific names.Free Mallow Wildflower Notebook Page

When you don’t have the names of the wildflowers your are viewing, use these few things to lead you when identifying:

color
# of petals
leaf shape

I’ve learned so much about wildflowers myself, and I plan to lead a field trip for my homeschool group in October. Though by then, the study may move from wildflowers to trees. In the meantime look out for Wildflower Notebook Pages Vol 1 & 2 and Trees in fall!

Colors on the Kansas Prairie in this series:

Resources:

Kansas Wildflowers by Color | Great Palins Nature Center | Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center |Nature Gate

Linked up with other wonderful summer series on iHomeschool Network Summer Hopscotch!

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