Our friend’s 9 year old daughter noticed this holdfast at the beach today. She also found the handy big red bucket floating in the ocean 🙂 Looking closer at the holdfast, we found some pretty amazing things… Brittle Stars Lots of brittle stars 🙂 Can you tell what this is? Here’s a video of it. […]
Nature Observations June 13, 2013 Read More »
A quick post on my observations this week. I have no idea what this plant is… But look at the beautiful way it seeds – suspended between two wings while the holding frames move further and further apart. I’ve never seen a plant that seeds this way; such a beautifully imagined process and the orderliness
Nature Observations June 6, 2013 Read More »
Here are some pictures taken at O’Neill Regional Park on March 30th to give you an idea of what’s blooming this Spring. Some of the pictures are blurry, but I had to keep up with my family who knows I’d spend far too long taking pictures if they waited for me 🙂 California buttercup (Ranunculus
Spring 2013 Wildflowers & Views Read More »
I have a backlog of photos from this month’s nature days so this will be more of a photolog than a blog post. Lots of interesting things to see! This is a firewheel flower my son found that had an unusual extra flower growing out of the side of it. This set of pictures is
Nature Study Co-op Photolog February 2013 Read More »
How contrary to popular educational methods would be the idea of leaving a child’s question unanswered; worse yet, leaving them to form wrong opinions? Well it seems that it was no less absurd 115 years ago based on a Parent’s Review article titled Elementary Science-Teaching by one Mary Everest Boole. But it is, in fact,
How *not* to be “a mere crammer” in science/nature study Read More »
While it may not seem like much… to this doting mother it is clearly the first sign of poetic expression! An unprompted journal entry – sweet rewards for this mama who is stepping out in faith that this way of educating our children does in fact produce fruit. (And yes, I did get permission to
Rainy Day Journal Read More »
We recently headed back to a local creek for nature study. There’s so much here that we’ve discovered over the years. Giant water bugs are smaller this time of year. Early last year we wondered what they ate in this creek since there didn’t seem to be anything else of significant size. Then we found
Nature Knowledge Gained Without Lessons Read More »
If you live in Southern California, you are familiar with the “marine layer” which sometimes hampers a perfectly sunny day at the beach. A few miles inland it’s a hot, sunny beautiful day so you rally the troops and head to the beach only to find that the coast is completely overcast. Sometimes you pack
I’m catching up on some pictures of our nature findings from this past month. This is our sunflower plant out front; it grew slouched over from lack of watering and as a result, only part of the flower received sunlight. Interestingly, the side that didn’t receive light grew much slower. I always thought they bloomed
Nature Study – 09/23/12 Read More »
I am coming rather late to this treasure of a Parent’s Review article – Imagination as a Powerful Factor in a Well-balanced Mind by E.A. Parish – 98 years late to be exact! More recently, within CM circles it seems to have made its rounds with Nancy Kelly of Sage Parnassus leading a session by
The Great Need of Imagination Read More »