Chickadees in Chalk Pastels

We took the time this week to work on a new art project. Besides the need to get some new art time in, our powder room needed a new round of art to adorn its walls!

Our family always enjoys working with Hodgepodge Mom's pastel art tutorials and this time I pulled out her new ebook- A Simple Start in Chalk Pastels. It's pretty easy to have everyone at the table with our supplies out, including my laptop, to learn a new project.

We're off to a great start!

We consulted our field guide for some details and our feeder has been fairly busy with chickadees recently. You can almost always catch them at the feeder when you walk by our french doors. I love to combine art with nature study- what better way for our Creator to speak to us than through His creation. Make the time! It always brings a measure of peace to our day.

Not bad E14!

Art is so effortful for E14...yet I always love his work in chalks.

A nice plump chickadee drawn by I10!

This is the sweetest bird by J7! I love his lines. And look at that painterly effect!

Isn't it lovely? R12 loves to chalk and made several more besides this one- she always chalks on long after the lesson is finished!

R12's finished chickadee on display in funky bathroom lighting...

A gift which will be sent along to its destination shortly

All four are displayed in our powder room where guests can enjoy them too!

The best part about chalk pastels is their forgiving nature. They can a little messy, but it doesn't last long and the results are always worth the effort.

My new favorite way to enjoy our children's artwork is to put it up around our home. Seeing their finished, framed work on our walls always brings a smile to my face. These four framed pieces are on the wall in our powder room which is delightful even to guests when they see it. I like to keep spare dollar store frames handy for gift giving and to rotate out and around the artwork. Thank you to Tricia and Nana for sharing this medium and all the lessons with us!



A Simple Start in Chalk Pastels
A full school year of chalk pastel art lessons. Lucia Hames, Nana to the Hodgepodge family, teaches forty-five lessons. Her simple instructions will have you creating masterpiece drawings in no time.

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Nature Study: Copperhead Snakes

Isn't it great when a study of nature just lands right in your lap? On Wednesday R12 and the younger boys were out behind the house in the woods exploring the various trails and getting to know our yard some more. I was upstairs folding laundry- have I mentioned the washer and dryer is in the hallway outside the bedrooms? Yeah...it's pretty cool.

Anyway, as I was folding R12 came running up the stairs to tell me she'd seen a snake. I asked what kind and she didn't know so I asked her what color it was. I was expecting to hear "black", but instead she answered, "tan with diamonds". I put down the laundry and we went immediately to the laptop for a little snake identification. Because where I come from, "tan with diamonds" is not really a snake to mess with. Whatsoever. 

I showed her pictures of the Copperhead and of the Timber Rattler and thankfully she decided it wasn't either of those. She settled on a garter snake- I guess the diamond pattern was small not big.

Photo of the Copperhead from Public-Domain-Image

However, we did have a look at lots of Copperhead facts because they are found around here and we do have a wood pile. We enjoyed copperhead-snake.com which had all sorts of facts about copperheads. For example, did you know that copperheads give birth to live young?

We have not taken the time to do a drawing yet, but I think we will. Living among boxes does not lend well to activities like drawing, but I happen to know where our nature box is and I think we can find the chalk pastels. There were some things I kept out and didn't pack. These items are among the chosen few!

Every time the kids run out to the woods I tell them to come back and tell me something new they saw. This time it provided a great lesson on snakes and snake safety!

Cornell Lab of O & a Special Visitor!

Yesterday we had a chance to visit the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for the second time in a few days. This time it was to host a special blogging friend and her family.

The under story in Sapsucker Woods is particularly green right now. We had a great walk.

We saw some trillium and R11 and our Special Guest had a lot of conversation over wildflowers.

Heather and Barb (and J6)!

I have to tell all of you how delightful it was to meet Barb along with her husband and two boys. We had a fabulous time walking through Sapsucker Woods and identifying bunches of birds and would you believe that as we were watching a chipmunk and a small toad, the chipmunk ate the toad? Just jumped out of a tree hole and grabbed it!

Barb had not been to a forest in our area so she learned some new things on Monday. I'm so excited she took the time to contact me and it was a privilege to have a chance to go on a nature walk with Barb!

Barb it was fantastic! Let's sit over lunch again sometime! This time I want to see some sequoias!

Connecting Kids through Birds: Bird Migration

I've mentioned before that we are participating in a pilot program through the Cornell Lab of Ornithology this year. The program is called Connecting Kids through Birds and involves Wiki pages and reporting the actions we take as we go through the program. I'm not entirely sure what the plan is for this curriculum once the pilot is complete. This year is actually the second year of the pilot involving more educators than the first effort. We are all over the country and there is a coordinator local to each region who helps with interaction with the Lab of O.

I decided to try it out and see if a homeschooler could join the group. Success! Now I'm reviewing the curriculum from the eyes of a homeschooler. I think it is a great program and we'll see how it becomes available to the public in the future. Currently, some of you may be familiar with programs like BirdSleuth. Since there is a connection with other classrooms piece to this, I'm not sure how that will look for availability for homeschoolers. I'll be sure to let you know the final result.

In the meantime, we've been doing lessons in the categories of migration, conservation, science collaboration, and citizen science.

We played a little game showing why birds migrate- for resources!

J6 reads to us about the robin- afterward we talked about why a robin migrates. His food source goes dormant for the winter- of course.

We've really enjoyed the video links we've been given to view as part of our lessons. The other day we did a lesson on shared habitats and how we can conserve bird habitats. Next up is some bird watching and we'll be planting some bird friendly sunflowers and taking a field trip. Once the we finish the lessons, I will turn in my evaluation and we get some new binoculars and a new field guide. We're pretty excited for both!

First Day of Spring!

We spent the first day of spring having a lovely walk at the arboretum at the Cornell Plantations. We needed to be out for a realtor open house (remember our house is on the market) and most of the kids wanted an outdoor outing. After all, it was the first day of spring and it was unprecedentedly warm! In fact, the arboretum doesn't normally open for vehicle traffic until the end of April. Golf resorts and other outdoor destinations can't argue with the freakishly warm March weather so they just opened up and started the season.

Honestly...this is color is about a month ahead of schedule. Even forsythia aren't out until mid-April normally.

We wound around all over the place- there are lots of paved pathways for good walking.

What a surprising find on this college campus walk...

Those trees make it look like a normal March around here!

Our navigators always prefer to have a map in hand. There will be great plans on our next visit.

We had a nice two mile walk, but I did eventually head back to the car. Next time we go, we'll do some more exploring. There were people walking everywhere. Who can resist?

My plan is to return once a week over the next month or so to see the changes in the plants leafing out and blooming. I'll be sure to take some of these same shots.

Happy Spring!

Spring for a Day!

If you live anywhere on the east coast of the US, then you know that yesterday was a pretty nice day! Even here in NY it was 62 degrees on March 7th which is pretty cool. I decided it was time to get out for the day and have some fun- especially given we've been hard at work on our house (we listed on Monday!).

We spent the afternoon at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Here's a peek at our fun time! (pardon the cell phone pictures- I broke the memory card for our Canon)

Lots of birds are back in town. It was fun to hear all the chatter there yesterday. Check out this terrible picture of a great blue heron its nest. Yes, that's him there standing on the nest.

After we had walked a while we sat for some reading- R11 pulled out her sketch easel (home made) and made some drawings.

This is one of five books we have going right now for read alouds- We started Swallows and Amazons yesterday. We are looking forward to some really fun summer adventure with this one! We stopped and read this for a bit while out and about on the trail.

Then it was back to walking...I9 was our navigator and chose a new route.

J6 loved seeing the changes in the wetlands- still some ice down there, but it is fast fading already. For the moment. I keep thinking winter is going to come in earnest at some point. I guess maybe not this year.

Hi friend! We must have seen 20-30 red winged blackbirds in the trees on an island near the observatory. This is my very favorite bird call- what says spring and summer more than the red-winged black bird call? Go ahead and hit that link to have a listen.

At home we followed with a game of Equate- great math game.

All in all, it was a great homeschooling day! Over the next 24 hours we'll be back to weather reality for a NY March, but it was a fun day of spring for us.

I'm going to spend the next long while focusing on our school and having a good time with the kids. It's long over due after a month of preparing our house to sell.  I'll be able to step up the blogging along with that. I already have some posts to share!

Bird Habitat on the Homefront

I've mentioned before that we are part of the Connecting Kids through Birds program sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. It's an 11 lesson program all about birds using Wiki Pages to get information and share information with other classrooms using the program. The social aspect is somewhat appealing, but not as fun for us as just doing the lessons and learning about the lives of birds. We need to update our Wiki Page with pictures of our habitat and possibly these maps. In order to complete the program, I need to complete five more of the 11 lessons. We are making steady progress.

R11 added some nice detail- including naming all the different plants we have. I love the extra room she gave our deck- if only!

J6 working on his habitat map

I9's map

Not bad for a first grader's map!

I usually leave time for Nature Study on Fridays and I hope to explore another lesson tomorrow. Our topic will be Obstacles to Migration. We're going to play a fun game to illustrate just how hard it is for birds to have a safe and successful migration. I'm also hoping to combine some bird migration maps with Google Earth and do some calculating of percentages of birds who are successful each year.

In case you haven't seen some of the resources supported by the Lab of Ornithology, here are a few to enjoy:

All About Birds

Bird Sleuth- some resources and curriculum for homeschoolers to purchase

What Bird.com

eBird- let's you record bird sitings year round

Birds are pretty easy to observe and track year round. As part of our Bird Habitat study, I think I will encourage the kids to grow some plants next spring which will attract some species of birds. The study we are a part of suggests it and I was reading a lovely magazine today called Birds and Blooms. It gave me some great ideas on where to start and gave me a clue as to why the birds love our Blue Spruce tree in the front yard.

How many of you are birders?

Thistle Day!

Friday, November 4th was the official Thistle Day celebration at our house! Thistle Day was born out of our milkweed study...mainly when E13 thought that maybe thistles were not the most interesting thing to study and this mama yelled, "What are you talking about? Thistle Day is going to be GREAT!" And his siblings started chanting, "Thistle Day! Thistle Day!" I started spreading the news about our forthcoming celebration and Thistle Day was born.

It's a thing.

On my walk I thought sure I'd seen some thistles and all we had to do was go and check them out. Then we could maybe have an artichoke (they're just giant thistles you know) and do some sketches.

Only what I thought was a thistle was really something else... the plot thickened.

Ok...these are actually teasels, but it was fun to discover this when we returned home. We did find Canadian Thistle further down in a field opposite this one, but it's hunting season so we opted to point to it instead!

Still checking off items from Barb's newsletter grid (check out her newsletter at the Handbook of Nature Study blog- I think you need to sign up)

For some reason, unknown to me at the moment, we needed to know something (in a fervent manner) about a NY state flower....

An egg-shaped pin cushion...yup that is definitely what we saw up there in that first picture!

More notebook pages!

We watched the video about the Canada Thistle . In reading about thistles in the Handbook of Nature Study, I learned that these plants are pretty well a nasty to have around. Since then, my children have been on a crusade to tell everyone they know about it. Recently, they discovered some in our church's prayer garden. The prayer garden! Woe to the garden if it is allowed to stay. So, we found the garden caretaker and let her know...starving them out is the best way to get the job done. Whatever you do, DON'T cut them! Bad things will happen and many plants will grow. Wow. If you don't believe me, check out that video link.

At our recent 4H craft day, R11 and I9 made critter ornaments with Teasel. In colonial times it was a very popular ornament for trees.

That afternoon at 4H we met a woman whose masters thesis was on teasels. Did you know there used to be many teasel farms. They were grown and used to felt wool for soldier's uniforms, etc. Whole farms dedicated to egg shaped pin cushion plants. I imagine that critter up there would be a great wool felter.

Thistle Day was a HUGE success! Have you been doing some nature study this season?

The Nesting Cycle

This year we are part of a pilot program for teachers created by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Teachers all over the country are participating and when I learned about it from our local science center I decided to see of homeschoolers could give it a whirl. Sure enough we were accepted and I attended a day long seminar to get to know the curriculum and learn how it is designed to work. It is designed to get kids connected through Wiki pages by sharing what they learn about birds through this curriculum. I have to do 7 of the 11 lessons to complete the program and we'll get some birding goodies for trying it out. We are slowly working on them and this particular day we were learning about the nesting cycle.

We've had an extraordinary fall (after September ended) and we've had some really gorgeous days to enjoy. Such a treat! To do the nesting cycle lesson I thought it would be a terrific idea to take a walk at the Lab of Ornithology and play the game. So, we packed up and hit the trail. At one point we stopped to play the game which is sort of a "Red Light, Green Light" game where there are four birds and various things happen to them each round. By the end, not so many birds are left. It was a great way to learn all the challenges birds face as they return from migration in the spring.

First, we stopped for the kids to fill out a pretest to see what they already knew.

It's exciting to see J6 read things on his own!

I'm a bird and I'm reading the game cards! We had lots of passers by while playing- it was nearly 70 degrees on this early November day!

We have been enjoying this program a lot and I'm hopeful that once the pilot is over, they will share details about the curriculum on their website so that others can participate. Perhaps it will become part of their Teacher section. Either way, it's fun to visit the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website and use it as a resource.

Fall Nature Study: Milkweed

We have been doing plenty of nature study this fall with Barb's More Fall Study from the Handbook of Nature Study blog. I love her notebooking pages and the easy directions she provides.

On my daily walk, I noticed the perfect stretch of road with milkweed growing. I determined to take the kids on an adventure to find it. We picked a late afternoon just before it was time to be at lego robot practice which happened to be during the school dismissal which proved to be equally unwise! We walked amid many buses until things cleared out. We didn't have much time, but it was worth the effort. Do you all make time for nature discoveries?

Fluffy stuff...

The seed pod...

These are along my walking route and just a few days earlier I had broken a stem and seen the white liquid inside...how quickly things moved on because we didn't find any on our walk. Disappointing because I wanted to try and see how rubbery it is.

For autumn in central NY, we've had some extraordinary days...which has been lovely considering how wet September was. Love these sunny pleasant days in November!

J6 has took a One Small Square nature class at co-op this semester and was able to share his expertise on the seeds of the milkweed. See how they are all together in a pine cone shape?

With me holding the pod, he reached right in and grabbed some out.

These little petri dishes are perfect for sticking in your pocket during nature walks and pulling them out to hold a treasure that can be pressed later or observed under our microscope.

Back at home the next day, we worked on our notebook page for our nature journals. I'm keeping one too so we all participate.

I had the kids check off the things we did back in October.

Soon after this lesson was completed, we had Thistle Day at our house. Stay tuned for details on Thistle Day and our Nesting Cycle lessons at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. October and November have been rich with nature study and I'm excited to share our fun with you all.