Impromptu Nature Study - Outdoor Hour on Moss

On Friday we went on a bike/scooter ride to a park near our house. Yes the kids aren't wearing jackets and Sophie is even in shorts. We love living in California!The kids needed to get outside for a bit and it was supposed to rain the rest of the weekend so I figured we needed to get out now before it started tomorrow.
The kids played at the park for awhile. This is a very small neighborhood park so there weren't any other kids there today. But my kids had fun climbing and swinging for a long time. While taking a break from giving "underdogs" to boys on the swings I noticed something that I thought would be interesting.

There was a patch of sidewalk with grooves cut into it and at that moment it was half wet and there was lovely green moss growing only on the wet half. I pointed it out to Sophie to look at and I asked her why she thought it was only growing on half of the grooved sidewalk.
After thinking about it for awhile and examining the area she decided that that half was wet and must get wet every time the sprinklers watered the grass. I also pointed out the large tree in the grassy area that cast shade on the sidewalk so the water wouldn't dry very quickly.
We of course had to dig some of it out of the groove to look at more closely. We talked about how moss doesn't need much by way of dirt to grow in.

Sophie and I left the boys with sticks as they continued to dig out more of the moss from that bit of sidewalk. Sophie and I went around the little park looking for other places we could see moss. We found some growing under a park bench but it was just speckled on the ground.
We found some growing along borders that divided dirt areas from grass areas. Most of it was just small and flat.
There were some places where it grew much more thickly.

Our study of moss at the park lasted only about 10-15 minutes. I thought that was great considering we didn't even go there with anything else in mind except to burn off some energy. I hate to call this an outdoor hour challenge since we didn't read the Handbook of Nature study on the subject but at least we got out and noticed something on our outing we normally would have just overlooked.
Now I need to start keeping my eyes peeled for mushrooms, ferns and all the other things that have been on the challenges the last few weeks. We just haven't, or I should just say, I just haven't had the focus lately on Nature Study. We still go on our almost daily rides or walks around the neighborhood. We have even been to our neighbor's house to pick oranges and apples recently. But I just haven't been preparing for the challenges so they slip by without us doing them. I keep thinking this week we will do better but .... well... we did it this week:) Hurray.