Year Long Pond Study: Week 1

I've mentioned a few times now my desire to build more nature study into our time. Getting outside isn't a problem, it never has been, but when it comes to actually taking the time to stop and observe nature, that is what I'm talking about.

I had begun to plan a series of nature study trips when I stumbled across Angelic Scalliwags, who have recently begun a year long study of their local pond.

Bingo!!! Brilliant idea. That, my friends is absolutely perfect for our nature study time too. We jumped on it and chose the closest pond (that I knew had a fair amount of wildlife) near us. It's a rather large pond and may even come close to being a lake but this is where we will be spending a considerable amount of our time over the year to come.

Angelic Scallywags are visiting their pond weekly, however I knew this would be a challenge for us. We have to drive a good 10 minutes to our pond, which I know isn't far but in amongst our already busy schedules I was concerned that weekly would simply become overwhelming. I opted for roughly fortnightly visits, knowing that monthly (just 12 visits in a year) was no where near enough.

I will also put to use some of the ideas shared over at Angelic Scallywags and I have found a few really nice guides to help us navigate our way around our pond.

And so we begin our "Year Long Pond Study" friends.

Finding a visual marker that we could use to watch the water level was tricky indeed. It took us quite awhile and some discussion until we settled on this concrete.....not even sure what it is. I guess it has a purpose, we will have to investigate.

I know that we will never be short on wildlife around this pond. Taking a closer look at the reeds and the far bank may be a challenge though, again another spot of investigating on a future visit.

For our first trip to the pond, it was simply a time of getting acquainted with the area, the wildlife both on and around the pond and the vegetation growing nearby.

 

We have taken note of several areas of interest where we can focus our study time across the visits we will make during the year. Various fungi species can be found along the banks of the pond.

I asked the children to choose a tree, one tree that would be our focus for the year. We will look more closely at all of the vegetation in the area, but this tree in particular will have more of a focus. They all easily agreed on this. It was so easy to identify also, the fruit growing on it gave it away very quickly. A Mulberry tree! I'm thinking silkworms here.......

Moss covers areas of the bank near the waters edge. The children think these are animal tracks of some description....I'm not so sure ;-)

Whilst quite hard to see in this image, one area of the bank is covered in tiny little red growth of some description. Very fascinating and we will take a closer look at this down the track.

No doubt a weed, but very pretty purple flowers regardless.

Plenty more moss here.

I'm guessing another weed, we will attempt to identify all of these as we go along.

The berries from this large tree covered the ground underneath.

Looking back across the pond.

Ducks in a row, sunning themselves before they jumped back in.

I have a feeling these are Magpie Geese, but need to get a closer look with our field guide in hand.


After spending time getting to know the pond area we settled at a picnic table to draw and paint images of the pond.

Just as we were getting ready to pack up an enormous flock of cockatoo's came screeching across overhead.

Back and forth, back and forth they flew, a noisy but impressive sight that's for sure.

This simple guide to Australian Pond Life will get a great deal of use I'm sure.

I love the Wildlife Guide to Greater Brisbane, contains most everything a local nature observer needs.

My dear friend was lucky enough to spot this fabulous bird field guide at our recent Lifeline Bookfest. We've already put it to good use.

 

If you haven't visited the Gould League website yet, be sure to take a look. They have some treasures for us Aussies. Ponding, is full of activities and ideas to use to explore your local pond.

Whilst I want our time at the pond to be fun, relaxed and enjoyable I do also have some plans and so to keep us on track I put together this simple one page idea list for our first pond visit, which as you saw from the images above was all about getting acquainted with our pond.

I will share a pdf version of this shortly, for now though this is jpeg and you should be able to click on it to see a larger image.

I hope to continue sharing our visits to the pond!

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My Australia Notebook

I've started pulling together an Australian Notebook for the kids to create in, add to and build on whenever we do something relating to this country of ours!

So basically along the same lines as their Animal Notebooks, these will be added to on a continual basis, and will grow into a notebook full of memories all about Australia.

For now I simply have the cover sheet and divider pages for our states. Various notebooking pages to go inside will hopefully happen some time soon. But I also know that we can begin on this today and so can you, just download, print and enjoy!

>>>> Download My Australia Notebook page dividers here.

>>>> Check my Australian Themed board over at Pinterest

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O is for Owl

We recently spent time learning and having loads of fun with Owls. The kids really got into this topic, considering that seeing an owl in the wild for us here is pretty rare, they were really very engaged.

We read the delightful story of Owl Moon on several occasions. Heading out into the moonlight on a snowy winters night is not something that my kids will get to experience any time soon, so this was quite a magical way for us to experience this through the story.

We completed some of the lapbooking activities found over at Homeschool Share. I hope to post on that one soon.

I found these super cute Paper Plate Owls online and knew we had to make some. They look great hanging from the ceiling and would have to be one of the simplest crafts we've done.

Owl Babies by Martin Wardell, this is a truly delightful story and whilst aimed at the younger crowd I'm fortunate enough to have an 11 year old that can still see the beauty in such a story.

This fabulous little guy is thanks to my delightful friend that played with us as we learned about owls. Once again a simple craft, found via google, but very effective. Although the help of a glue gun for this one is quite useful!

They each researched an owl of choice using the internet. Generally after a little looking around we tend to always come back to our favourite sites for animal research, Wikipedia and Animals A-Z.

I have been very pleasantly surprised as to the level of enthusiasm the kids have with these research documents. It's wonderful too watch.

We read Owls by Gail Gibbons. Yet another informative and interesting book by Gail. A couple of the pages focus mainly on American Owls, which is expected, but thought I should mention for any Australian readers. This book is full of facts and information presented with great illustrations.

Each of the kids water coloured an owl page and gave a brief narration on some of what they learned about owls. We still have some work to do on narrations, but they are improving and making progress in this area.

I purchased an Owl Puke kit for each of them to dissect. This was a little bit gross, but a whole lot of fun too! I would have to put it up there as something every child should do. The oohs and ahhs were running hot during the dissecting.

Whilst we have completed the dissection and found what creatures were devoured by our owls, I would love to reconstruct the skeletons. It's a big job as the pieces are so tiny and fine. Will see how we go.

Finally we rounded it all out with some art, as we always try to do with our units.

Fairy Princess 8 was very proud of this piece and so am I. Not necessarily for the finished product, but for her stamina and perseverance. She spent a great deal of time working on this, made a huge effort when it came to filling the entire page and finished with a smile. Often her art attempts end up in tears as what she has in her head isn't replicated on her paper. We've been spending a great deal of time talking about this and I think those discussions are starting to pay off.

Owls are such interesting creatures, we all learned so much from our time spent exploring them.

>>> Check out my Owl Themed Pinterest board for lots of ideas and links.

>>> Download the Animal Notebooking pages by clicking here.


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