Nature Study Outing :: Fall in the Foothills

Want to come along on some of our recent fall nature study outings?

One of our favorite spots is a ranch-turned-nature-preserve. We visited on a cool day with moody skies, my favorite time to be outdoors.  Take a look at these two shots of the same hill, first looking west and then looking east, just five minutes apart -- no editing!

This was a day for rock digging and hay-bale climbing. And running far, far away from parents. ;)

But we did get some journaling in too.  My girlies settled themselves into their drawing spots of choice.

Another of our favorite spots is due west, nestled in the hills.  When we visited a few weeks ago, it was sunny, with just the smallest hint of fall in the air.

doveweed in christmas colors!

Check out the odd acorn at the bottom!  We actually found quite a few of them. My kids call them "elf shoe acorns." :)

The next time we visited was cool and muggy. It had just rained the day before, and the lichen had plumped up and new mushrooms were growing. We hunted around for a bunch of specimens and spent some time journaling at the table.

all from the same oak -- i had to do a bit of investigation work to narrow it down!

see the tiny mushroom gills peeking out?

miniatures!

this one was completely hollow

And last, we took a walk around the block looking for fall, since we were all busy with Thanksgiving.  It is bright and sunny again -- but very cold. So many temperature shifts this time of year. The theme of this outing was leaves, berries, and stunning cloud formations.

It is not often that we go out by ourselves, so I rarely get a photo or just my crew. But this is them -- in mud clothes, with silly smiles, at the park on our way back home.

Looks like everyone loves this time of year!

Picture Books We Love :: Five Favorites for Fall

I finally got around to pulling out our fall picture books this week.  Admittedly, it has not been very autumnal here (in fact, it's supposed to be in the 80s pretty much all week), but we welcomed November with a wet Halloween and the seasonal wardrobe switch-out over the weekend, so I thought it was time.  I'm still waiting for the crisp afternoons and crunch of leaves underfoot, but I suppose fall picture books will have to do.

Sharing a few of my favorites younger crew this morning...

Elisa Kleven's Snowsong Whistling - I've raved about this one before--my personal favorite fall book.

Cynthia Rylant's In November, illustrated by Jill Kastner - Soothing prose accompanies soft illustrations depicting the quieting of the natural world and the celebration of families.

Over the River and Through the Wood, illustrated by Christopher Manson - I've mentioned this one before too, and I've also gone on and on about our love for sing-along books.  Woodcut-style illustrations set to a folk song?  Couldn't get much better.

Cynthia Rylant's Scarecrow, illustrated by Lauren Stringer - Another by Cynthia Rylant.  Here she gets at the heart of fall's beauty from the perspective of the scarecrow, watching the changes of the seasons from his perch with stillness and quiet confidence.

Lois Lenski's Now It's Fall - Lenski has a set of four miniature seasonal books and each one is charming (and sadly out of print).  A very nice introduction to the customs of the season for little ones, and her illustrations are, as usual, delightful.  (FYI: One of the little girls dresses as a "funny witch" for Halloween in this book, so if that bothers you, you may want to skip this title.  I do like that both Now It's Fall and I Love Winter include religious scenes.)

Any fall books special to your family that we are missing?  I'd love to know.

Nature Study Outing - Wading in Fall

Another trek to the creek this week, as the kids were super excited to wear their rain boots this time and explore the water's edge.  The kids wear their boots to play outside in the backyard year-round, but for some reason, I haven't had them wear their boots on our nature study outings.  I suppose because we do a lot of walking and climbing?  Anyway, my friend's son brought his last week and spent a good hour wading through the shallows, so I promised mine they could wear theirs too this week.  And my friend and her children agreed to meet us there for round two.

It was chilly--not exactly the perfect conditions for wading--but by some kind of miracle, no one fell in!  They had muddy socks and soggy boots when we got home, but according to them, that bit of discomfort was definitely worth all the fun they had.

My toddler kept a close eye on us from the upper banks...

Bridget with Binoculars :)

... until big sister brought her down to join us.

And though most of their time was spent in the muck and water, they also managed to have some fun with trees...

 ...and the leaves below.  Can you see the TWO boys here?

Here he is a bit closer--happy, happy, happy!

We may not get snow here, but we can still make "leaf angels." ;)

We came home with some special finds by little hands, as always:

:: a cattail

:: a sycamore leaf and a walnut leaf

:: a long acorn

:: a wisteria pod

:: two laurel leaves: one covered in white mold and one without

:: bits of moss and lichen

This was our third week in a row at this park (and I'm sure we have been there over twenty times now in the last year or so) and we always see something new.  Today: a coot swimming along with the mallards.  We've seen plenty of coots in other places, but never one here.  The kids waded as far as they could into the pond to watch him as he headed behind the trees and over to the rest of the flock--which were all mallards too.  They decided he must have gotten lost on his way somewhere.  And I have a feeling our rain boots will be going with us from now on!

Cooking Up a Thanksgiving "Feast"

I want to share with you a very simple plan for an intentional, Charlotte Mason-friendly, and delightful Thanksgiving week.  This is by no means an exhaustive list; it's just a small sampling of some favorite resources.  These are the Thanksgiving activities I'll be doing with my own children over the course of the next week.

Plan one special afternoon teatime, save them for the long weekend to enjoy as a family, or take the week off school and spread them out over the days leading up to Thanksgiving like we are.

Some holiday reading

For the littles - Over the River and Through the Woods, with illustrations by Christopher Manson

For the little-bit-biggers - The Thanksgiving Story by Alice Dagliesh

For the biggers - "The First Thanksgiving" from Stories of the Pilgrims by Margaret B. Pumphrey

For the adults, or as a family read-aloud - Louisa May Alcott's An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving

A fall walk 

...in the crisp air--just around the block even--to gather all the colored leaves you can.  The more variety the better.  When you get home, spread them all out on the dining table.  Little ones can make leaf men; big kids (and mommies) can identify and chart in their nature journals.

A simple art project

Then collect all the leaves back up again and get out the oil pastels to make a lovely set of placecards for the feast table.  (Or do it in watercolors--I think that's the method we'll be using this year!)

Some suitable music

While you're working, a few favorite songs:

"Over the River and Through the Woods"

"Faith of our Fathers"

"Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow"

"Now Thank We All Our God"

Beautiful artwork

Take a few moments to look at a picture or two together, or just post them on the wall during these cozy fall days:

"The Angelus"  by Jean-Francois Millet

"Freedom from Want" by Normal Rockwell

"Catching the Turkey" by Grandma Moses

A few holiday poems

Here's a whole compilation if you are poetry lovers like we are!  But my children have been working on this one for the past couple weeks:  

We Thank Thee by Ralph Waldo Emerson

For flowers that bloom about our feet;

For tender grass, so fresh, so sweet;

For song of bird, and hum of bee;

For all things fair we hear or see,

Father in heaven, we thank Thee.

For blue of stream and blue of sky;

For pleasant shade of branches high;

For fragrant air and cooling breeze;

For beauty of the blooming trees,

Father in heaven, we thank Thee.

And end with a prayer

We'll be using the "Te Deum," a traditional prayer of praise and thanksgiving dating back to the 4th century.  (You can hear it chanted here.)  I have included it in English below.  It would be a lovely addition to your Thanksgiving table blessing!

O God, we praise Thee, and acknowledge Thee to be the supreme Lord.

Everlasting Father, all the earth worships Thee.

All the Angels, the heavens and all angelic powers,

All the Cherubim and Seraphim, continuously cry to Thee:

Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts!

Heaven and earth are full of the Majesty of Thy glory.

The glorious choir of the Apostles,

The wonderful company of Prophets,

The white-robed army of Martyrs, praise Thee.

Holy Church throughout the world acknowledges Thee:

The Father of infinite Majesty;

Thy adorable, true and only Son;

Also the Holy Spirit, the Comforter.

O Christ, Thou art the King of glory!

Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father.

When Thou tookest it upon Thyself to deliver man,

Thou didst not disdain the Virgin's womb.

Having overcome the sting of death, Thou opened the Kingdom of Heaven to all 

believers.

Thou sitest at the right hand of God in the glory of the Father.

We believe that Thou willst come to be our Judge.

We, therefore, beg Thee to help Thy servants whom Thou hast redeemed with Thy 

Precious Blood.

Let them be numbered with Thy Saints in everlasting glory.

V.  Save Thy people, O Lord, and bless Thy inheritance!

R.  Govern them, and raise them up forever.

V.  Every day we thank Thee.

R.  And we praise Thy Name forever, yes, forever and ever.

V.  O Lord, deign to keep us from sin this day.

R.  Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us.

V.  Let Thy mercy, O Lord, be upon us, for we have hoped in Thee.

R.  O Lord, in Thee I have put my trust; let me never be put to shame.  Amen.

Nature Study "Outing" - Colds, Fall, and Nature Study in the Backyard

We have been sick for the past few weeks and have sorely missed our weekly nature study outings.  Such a disappointment, particularly because this is my favorite time of year to be outdoors.  

I wrote about the first signs of fall in our area way back in August. But here in CA, our fall is always late and slow to come.  It wouldn't say it has been an Indian summer this year, but still--when other parts of the country are at their peak, we are usually just getting started.  

But there's a bit more color in the trees each week.  A few notes from our Calendar of Firsts lately:

:: bradford pear and sweetgum trees are starting to turn

:: walnut trees and sycamores are more yellow-brown than green and have lost half their leaves

:: honey locusts are entirely yellow and almost fallen

:: pistache trees are now a lovely red-orange

:: dove weed and black-eyed susans drying up

And there's even a bit of fall in our own backyard.  The kids happily spent a whole morning last week harvesting samaras and climbing our little maple tree to compare leaves.

(As you can see, we are wimps when it comes to the cold.  All the kids were in coats, hats, and gloves and it was in the high 50s--not exactly frosty!)

And yes, dead flowers are part of fall too.  The agapanthus in our front yard, after being at least partly in bloom since April, has finally given up the last of its heads.  The crepe myrtles are finally gone now also.  And I did (what I assume will be) a final harvest of my little basil plants.  Pesto chicken this week!

I am thankful that even when we're all sick, the kids can get in some "nature study"--even if it's just in our own backyard.

And they have been faithful with their nature journaling as well.  Last week and the week before, in the midst of colds, they continued the pages in our nature journals from our beach vacation.  One week, I pulled out the seashells we collected and the watercolors, and the kids spent a happy hour mimicking the fine colors and shapes with their pencils and brushes.  The week after, we tried to identify all the different kinds of seaweed we found (from that little photo index I included in my last post) and the kids happily drew the common waterbirds of the area from their field guides.  It's not ideal, but it keeps us progressing in our studies.

As for my nature journal...well, I haven't been quite so faithful.  I spent the last six weeks dealing morning all-day sickness, when I was able to do little that couldn't be done while lying on the sofa.  I started a few pages while we were on vacation, but the illness took over, so I didn't get much past a few outlines of birds and the titles for a few pages.  But I'm finally emerging from that haze (thank you, Lord!) and am starting to feel ready to dig back in.  And we have a shipment of art supplies arriving this week (including a new stock of my very favorite illustration pens)--perfect timing.  My goal is to catch up on our beach adventures and then re-start my assignment of one journal page a week along with the children.

So, here's the before: a couple just-begun watercolors and a half-page of notes.

Provided that my body cooperates, I hope to be back with an "after" sometime soon!

Nature Study at the Beach - A Fall Visit

We made an early-fall beach trip a few weeks ago that I'm finally getting around to sharing here.  It was a great example of noticing the little things that change seasonally in a forever-mild place like this and how those changes really do matter to little learners that are used to noticing, watching, observing, and journaling. 

This was our first longish vacation to the Santa Cruz coast in the fall.  We went to most of these same beaches last May and the May before, and we were just south of here last July, but the fall months were new to us.  I didn't expect for there to be much of a difference; even though the on-season rates run Memorial Day to Labor Day, the weeks before and after our official summer look pretty summery around here!

But there actually were quite a few differences that we noticed right away compared to our springtime visit.  I want to highlight those here, as well as some new places we discovered.

:: More seaweed on the beaches.  Most tourists would consider this a nuisance, probably, and if you have been near huge clumps of seaweed, you know that oftentimes, well, it smells.  It also attracts flies, which aren't what most people would consider beachy fun.  

still pretty photogenic, though, no? :)

BUT the reason that it smells and attracts flies is because there are live and dead sea creatures living in that seaweed.  And for nature-lovers like my kids, that's a plus!  All that extra seaweed afforded us lots of opportunities for observation.  At Capitola and Natural Bridges, we watched the large flocks of birds peck their way through the seaweed, angling for mussels, shrimp, and even these huge oval-hockey-puck-ish animals.  Anyone know what they are?  They were about 10-12 inches long and, though they were shaped like abalone, the "shells" were actually soft and fleshy.

They were a particular favorite of the gulls--and of my son, who happily found a huge blue one and carried it over to our umbrella with his shovel.  It smelled absolutely terrible, so we took it away and set it up on a log to look at and take pictures of.

We saw a handful more wash onto the sand with the tide, some brown and some pink.  As soon as each was spotted, one of the gulls would claim it and start eating...and flap his wings at any others trying to sneak a bite.  I've never seen them be so possessive!

We also had a great time finding different kinds of seaweed and trying to document and identify them.

:: More birds.  We didn't see more varieties of birds this time--in fact, I think we saw fewer.  But as for the total number of birds, there were definitely more this time around.  I have literally never seen so many birds in one place in my life!  The children stood and stared for a long while.

The pictures do not even begin to do justice to the huge flocks of cormorants, pelicans, and gulls that were so thick they created a haze along the horizon.  They were everywhere!

:: Different birds.  Despite the huge number of birds, there were a few we missed this time around: particularly, the curlews.  In visits past we have seen large flocks of them skirting the waves of the local beaches daily.  They are so fun to watch with their long stick legs and thin beaks.  This time: not one.  Thank goodness we had the turnstones to keep us occupied!  

We also saw so many different kinds of gulls--a Santa Cruz perennial, so not exactly new for us.  Gulls are one of the species of birds that take years to develop their full adult plumage; along the way, they go through partial and full moltings a couple times a year.  This makes it hard for novices like us to distinguish between the subtle differences of different gulls and all the possible stages they could be in.  But it's fun to try anyway!

:: The lagoons.  Along the Santa Cruz coast, there are lots of little lagoons, or inlets of water created partly by a flow of fresh water from a creek or river and partly from the ocean water flowing in during certain tides or seasons.  Some of them are lagoons proper, meaning that saltwater still flows in and out.  Some are now technically "lakes," since dams and then roads have been built separating the flow of water and turning the lagoons into freshwater lakes.  We visited Schwan Lake (formerly Schwan Lagoon) this time around, as all the cormorants we see along the beach seem to fly in and out of that area and I was curious whether we might see some nesting spots.  We didn't, though plenty of cormorants flew over us.  It was a lovely place anyway, a good spot for a short morning walk.

It's a very different place from the beach even though the sand is literally in walking distance.  I was hoping we would be able to get down to the lake's edge, but there was no safe path for doing so.  The water was covered in marsh pennywort, which was a surprise because we didn't notice the overgrowth last time we were there.  But apparently it's a recurring problem for the local wildlife and a constant battle for those monitoring the natural reserve.  Thankfully, the water birds didn't seem to mind--we saw mallards and coots making their way across and around the lake the whole morning.  Their tracks along the water as they swam through looked like jet contrails in the sky.

:: The ranch.  We visited another new park this time as well: Wilder Ranch, just north on Highway 1 past Natural Bridges.  We spent a quiet morning there, running in and out of the old buildings, visiting with the few farm animals, walking through the apple orchard and vegetable garden...

...and climbing in what seemed to be an enchanted tree!

Seriously--doesn't it!?

There were quite a few other amazing plants there too:

biggest gingko I have ever seen!

lovely "fall foliage" :)

 And these fantastic spiky bushes had little pathways carved into them--delightful.

This would be a charming place for an afternoon picnic.  Lots of shade and hidden nooks to explore, and very low-key for small ones.

I also saw quite a few wildflowers there that had already come and gone in our hometown.  Interesting how an hour's drive can mean an entirely different climate and nature calendar!  That's one of the things I love about our part of the country.

:: Sea lion.  I doubt this was seasonal, but we also spotted a sea lion swimming in the waves for the first time.  We have seen plenty of them lounging on rocks and cavorting along the piers a bit farther south in the Monterey area and north by San Francisco, but this one spent a couple hours swimming up and down Twin Lakes beach about 50 yards off the shoreline.  He was in the break of the waves, so we could see his outline clearly in the vertical feet of water formed by each big wave as it passed him.  And he was feasting, because we could also see (ahem) a ribbon of red now and then. ;)  The gulls followed him the whole way, trying to land on his back whenever he popped up and pecking non-stop at his leftovers.  He was undeterred.

:: Dried up creeks.  When we went to Natural Bridges in the spring, we had a wonderful time watching a family of mallards in the pond, which is filled with water and runs from the meadows down toward the coastline and, at certain times of year, extends onto the beach and into the ocean itself.  This time, the entire creek and pond area was dried up.  The children were a bit sad at first--the pond and ocean side-by-side made such a scenic view.  But then we climbed down into the creek bed, which was still soggy.  It was such fun to poke around.

And I think it was pretty scenic anyway, don't you agree?