Green Hour Challenge #6

“It’s a good thing to learn more about nature in order to share this knowledge with children; it’s even better if the adult and child learn about nature together. And it’s a lot more fun.” Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv

I love this quote that Barb over at The Heart of Harmony included with the Challenge for the week. I totally feel like I am learning so much about the flowers and things that we are taking a close look at during our walks. I notice so much more about the flowers but also really enjoy watching the trees around me all pushing out their spring leaves after being bare all winter.
The Challenge for the week was about starting a collection. To be honest we didn't collect anything. My little guys are always bringing home rocks and sticks but our rule is always that they stay outside on the step. I hate to break that rule and bring them inside so our collections will have to be enjoyed out on the step as usual.

But for our study we read about Tulips. Sophie actually sat and read through the Handbook of Nature Study with me about these flowers and we looked through the different things it lists to look for and picked a few of those to remember. Then we went out to find some tulips. I knew of a patch of them that are just around the block and not in someone elses yard. We pass by it all the time as we drive about. So we headed that direction.

The Tulips are mixed in with a bunch of other flowers but we got really lucky and saw some tulips in different stages of blooming.

Here is one that is already starting to change color and grow its long stem.

Here is one just still green

And of course we looked inside some already big and beautiful ones to see the star shaped centers.
And took a good look at all the different parts of the flower. We also talked about why people plant these from bulbs rather than seeds. 5 to 7 years is long time to wait for a seed to finally grow a flower. We also talked about other flowers that are also grown from bulbs. Our Amaryllis at home is still going strong.

As we continued our walk we spotted a few in different peoples yards. We ventured into one front yard because the tulip border was just so lovely and we wouldn't disturb anything if we just went up to take a closer look.
We of course had to look for the star shapes in these and look at all the different colored tulips.
As we continued our walk around the block we couldn't help but look at all the different beautiful flowers that are all out right now.

Sophie and the boys of course had to pick a lot of dandelions. So we also took a moment to talk about why they are called dandelions and looked closely at the leaves and the puffballs of seeds with parachutes. And of course we had to do our part to spread those seeds around.

Here are a few other flowers we saw on our walk. We are going to have to study some of them next time.

Violets

Iris
Bottlebrush
Peach blossoms

Rose
Later in the day we went on our hike with some friends and guess what we saw again.These kids are getting really good at spotting Salamanders.

Sophie didn't do a drawing this time. I don't know exactly what happened but it just didn't happen when we got home. We were a bit busy and the boys were a bit cranky. Maybe that has something to do with it.

But is was a great outing and we are really enjoying our walks around the block to see what we can see and really enjoy our weekly hikes with friends.