Wintery Fun

We've been missing in action here on the blog because we have been so busy doing this....

Snow Day!

Salt Art - Here Comes Jack Frost

Today Holly read the book Here Comes Jack Frost by Kazuno Kohara. This book is beautifully illustrated, the artwork is vivid and really brings a winter feeling to the story. The artwork is a relief in rich blues and white.

After doing some salted paintings late last year I thought we could easily mimic this style of winter artwork from Here Comes Jack Frost. Holly and I had a small discussion on relief work, noting the relief portion is the picture created. On thick paper Holly created her design with blue painters tape. Once she was happy with her design she then painted the entire paper in a rich blue liquid water color and then sprinkled the painting in salt. After the painting dried she scraped the salt off and removed the blue tape to reveal her winter design. It turned out beautiful and she enjoyed comparing her art design to those in the book.

Nature Club ~ Wintering Birds

For the next several weeks we'll be taking a look at wintering birds with our Nature Club friends and on our own. Today Holly & I hosted an activity in a neighboring community to do a nature walk and search for birds - wintering or migrating. The weather was pretty chilly and drizzly but we managed just fine and really enjoyed the fall season colors, seeds, mushrooms and fungi. It was rather beautiful out!

While we saw and heard very little from our feathered friends we still discussed how birds keep themselves warm enough during the wintering months. Holly learned that birds can grow extra feathers as part of a late fall molt to have a thicker protection, their legs and feet are covered with specialized scales that help keep the warmth in and they can fill up on extra fat preserves. As well, they fluff their feathers to create air pockets and tuck their bills, heads and feet. On sunny days they sun to warm their backs, fluffing their feathers to let the heat get to their skin. They can shiver to raise their metabolism and they roost to take advantage of group heat. As well, they enter tarpor where they reduce their metabolism when it is cooler requiring less food because they are burning fewer calories. Birds are amazing creatures!!!

We also talked about how we can help wintering birds by offering good habitats in our yards with bushes, trees, shrubs and brush piles. A food source that is consistent, water and salt crystals (let salt dissolve in water and evaporate to create salt crystals). We then talked about types of food -- seed, black oil sunflower seeds, thistle, fruits, peanuts, peanut butter, etc.. When we were all done the kids created a couple of small bird feeders to take home and add to their yard. They had a lot of fun with this activity and hopefully they will find them easy enough to create more later and keep their yards stocked well!

Holly is looking forward to more on birds this month and an upcoming field trip to the Nisqually Delta - it has been a while since we've been there, it's about time we visit once again!

Nature Walk - Signs of Spring

Spring is just around the corner... we are much, much too excited! Excited to get back outside comfortably, excited to do more outdoor nature studies again, excited to get our garden seedlings started, excited to spruce up Holly's exploration garden and playhouse area and excited to hit the park a ton. In the mean time we braved the cool, windy and wet weather of our final days of winter in search of signs of Spring. Guess what? We found some!

As we were walking Holly noticed the lively song of several frogs in the background - they were very busy calling out to each other. The trees were a flutter with several different kinds of birds tweeting about. Buds were popping out on several trees along the way. And, we even found a couple of little flowering plants... all great signs that Spring is just a matter of days away.

Weather Chart

For the month of January Holly did a lot of work with weather and the winter season. One project she did was a month long graph of the weather. I had her only fill the graph in on days we were doing school work, so about 20 days she did the graph. Then she had to answer some various questions about her graph.

What month did you watch/graph the weather?

How many school days total did you track it?

How many days were rainy?

How many days were sunny?

How many days were cloudy?

Tell me which weather had the most blocks filled in? How many were filled?

Tell me which weather had the least blocks filled in? How many were filled?

This great weather chart can be found from a wonderful site: http://confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com/