Outdoor Hour: Fungi & Printable Note Book Pages

The Outdoor Hour challenge this month was Lichen, Moss & Fungi. With all of the rain we've had here this year we didn't even need to leave our yard to hunt down and discover an array of fungi.

Once we started looking I couldn't believe my eyes with all of the different varieties right here in our own back yard. The kids were pretty excited running here, there and everywhere looking for fungi. I could here shouts, "I've found a different one over here!"

I wanted a record of our time spent looking more closely at the fungi but didn't want to turn this into a chore, so I put together a very simple notebooking page for the kids to illustrate the fungi of their choice.

Everyone agreed on water colours for this exercise. Lego Lover (11) chose a single stand alone specimen.

From the Fairy Princess, 8.

Little Surfer Dude, 4.

We also completed a second page with the all of the photographs taken during the backyard fungi hunt.

After Fungi we were on a bit of a roll and notebooked some of our backyard flowers and birds. I'm sharing these simple notebook pages over at my box storage.

Download the note book pages by clicking here.

I'm linking this post up to the Outdoor hour Challenge over at Handbook of Nature Study.

Volcano's from Tissue Paper

During our unit learning about Volcanoes we made Tissue Paper Volcanoes. This gives a wonderful rough 2D finish to the art. Very simple to complete, but does need to be done over a couple of days due to drying time.

Materials are generally things you will already have on hand.

• A3 Art Paper (need some of a decent quality)
• Tissue/Toilet Paper
• PVA Glue (mixed with water)
• Paints
• Coloured Tissue Paper
• Cellophane

Firstly we drew a rough outline of the volcano. Then set about building the base of the volcano, dipping the tissue paper into the glue/water mixture, scrunching and adhering it to the paper. This part can take up a fair amount of time, paper and glue, especially if the kids are heavy handed. Ours needed a good couple of days to dry properly before we moved on.

From there we painted the base, allowing it dry and then the sky in the background.

Adding the lava effects with red, orange and yellow paint was definitely the most fun. Seeing them spring to life with each stroke of the brush!

For an added effect I gave the kids tissue paper and cellophane to really make the lave stand out.

It's really difficult to show the effect in a photograph, this angle should give you some idea. These look fabulous hanging, my only concern is trying to fit them into our Art Display Folders as they are pretty thick and heavy.

M is for Monkey - Printable Notebooking Pages

I display our monkey related items on a shelf for easy access.

With our recent time spent on the story Caps For Sale I took the opportunity to extend the learning a little. Lego Lover 11, was far too old for the activities that went along with Caps For Sale. So he did some monkey research instead.

Animal Note Booking Page

Some time back I created Animal Notebooking pages, Lego Lover chose Gorillas to do some further research on. He used the books we had here on hand and then headed over to wikipedia and this great site was perfect.

Junior Animal Note Booking Page

When I first put these together last year some time I was concerned that the younger members of the household would be overwhelmed with some of the information and the level of writing required. So I put together a Junior version of the Animal Note Booking page.

This will be added to their Animal Kingdom notebooks, a classification project I've been working on for them.

The link to download these note booking pages is at the end of the post.

We collaged a colouring page found online.

Little Surfer Dude collaged a colouring page I found online. He wasn't as in to this as I thought he would've been though. I saw the idea over here.

We made an M is for Monkey.

He really enjoyed putting together this M is for Monkey though, he giggled his way through it and made certain he had plenty of hair!! The idea for this little guy came from over here.

Our Caps For Sale Row

To see what other monkey related goodies we got up to check out our Caps For Sale fun.

The blank note booking pages.

Download the Animal Note Booking Pages here.