Outdoor hour #16 - We didn't follow the assignment

This week our assignment was to plant Sunflowers. I know my kids would love to grow sunflowers but since we don't have any land to plant anything in and every seed we have planted in pots seems to end up dinner for a squirrel. One of the many that invade our space each day. I guess we could plant some and keep it inside for awhile... maybe we will see about doing that but this week we did a little study of a tree that has lately bloomed in our neighborhood. We have been seeing it pop up as we drive down the street. It is also often used in the shopping centers and we saw a whole bunch in the garden around the children's Museum we went to yesterday. So we took a few minutes to really look at this beautiful tree and I did a little research online and figured out what kind of tree it is.

Let me introduce you to the Jacaranda Tree

These lovely purple flowered trees are all in bloom at the moment and stand out while we drive around.
I didn't know anything about this tree last week. I just know I have always loved the purple when it shows up each year. I asked a friend of mine if she knew the name of the tree and she couldn't tell me but she said I think it starts with a "J".
At first I thought it was purple leaves or something but when you get up close you can see there are green fern like leaves on the tree along with the purple blossoms. We of course picked a few of the purple flowers so we could smell them. They do smell very nice.


Here is Sophie and Ian sitting under a few of these beautiful purple trees.

When getting a good look at the trees we noticed some of them had this dried leaf like things dangling from them.

We pulled one off to examine it and it wasn't like any leaf we had felt. It was hard like a nut or cone.
Each one looked like two leaves and we tried to open up one but couldn't do it. It was really hard and stiff. Nothing that was going to easily break open.

Here is Sophie showing me how far open she could get it open
We finally found a few on the ground that had been opened. Maybe an animal broke them open to eat what was inside. I don't know. But when looking on the ground around these trees and seeing all the flowers that had fallen off and all the seed pods on the ground I thought this wouldn't be a fun tree to have to clean up after.
When online looking up information on these trees I came across this picture. It shows the leaves, flowers, and the seeds. In the description on the page it called them papery, winged seeds that flutter and spin as they are carried by the wind.Evidently this tree flowers in the Summer and looses its leaves in the Winter so it is always sort of one season behind. I don't mind at all. It is nice to see so much color when everything is starting to heat up and dry up.

Green Hour #15 - Drawing Geraniums

Before we went for one of our walks around the block this week I printed out the "How to draw flowers" directions for the geranium that we listed on the link Barb included with the challenge for the week. Sophie and I brought along our sketch books and some colored pencils. The boys just grabbed their scooters.
There are many different geranium bushes around our neighborhood. Most of them are pink but there are a few bright red geraniums too.

Sophie sat right down and picked one of the leaves off the bush and started to make a rubbing of it. The leaves of the geranium and thick and furry so didn't rub all that well. She got a sort of outline but not much else.

Stopped in a neighbor's yard who we knew wouldn't mind if we sat on their lawn to draw her flowers. We got out the instructions about how to draw the geranium and Sophie and I started to draw.

We took some time to really look at the shape of the leaves and to count the petals on each of the flowers. Ian was happy to find that each flower had 5 petals, 3 big ones and 2 little ones.

While we sketched the boys roamed about the yard and Henry found a tall mushroom. He picked it to bring to me. He had already pulled the top off and there was an orange powder all over him.

I think I am going to have to read up on mushrooms so I can be better prepared for them when they pop up.
I wanted to stay and add some color to my drawing but Sophie and the boys were ready to move along. So we picked up our stuff and headed down the sidewalk. We saw some beautiful Hibiscus flowers on a bush in one yard. We all had to go and get a close look at those.

We always enjoy our walks and I can't believe how many different things we see each time we go. Things pop up that weren't there the last time and sometimes I know I just didn't see it the last time.


I just thought I would include the pictures from a little nature time we spent at the park today.
Every time we come to this park the kids run straight for the creek to throw rocks into it.


As we walked along the creek we noticed a bunch of these thistle like plants. When growing up we called them milk weeds but when I looked up milk weed it didn't look like this.

It was fun to take apart the more mature ones and see the fluffy feather like wings that help scatter the seeds. We helped scatter quite a few while avoiding the spiky thorns.

Sophie enjoyed finding acorn tops along the creek to use as fingernails.
My kids sure enjoy being outside and we are having such great weather we are trying to take advantage of it before it gets too hot.

Green Hour Challenge #14 - Pressing Flowers

For our Nature Walk today we actually decided to take to take a different route. This morning we went down a street in our neighborhood we haven't ever been down before. At first the flowers seemed all about the same as what we usually see. But a few houses had some new flowers to look closely at. We found one house with Wisteria hanging about the doorway. Another house had a bunch of different cactus plants in the yard and some big white flowers interspersed among them. Some thing to look up! The kids loved finding the faces in the pansies too.

I brought along a little notebook to collect flowers to press. Pressing flowers was the challenge for the week. I usually don't let my kids pick the flowers that are in people's yards. They sometimes get away with flowers in the sections between the sidewalk and the street. But most of the flowers we look at are in our neighbor's yards so don't belong to us. But today I let them pick a few that I thought we could get away with. We brought them home to press.

First I showed the kids some flowers I had collected last week (Shortly after reading what our challenge would be) and had pressed in a phone book for a while.

We compared what the flowers looked like before pressing and after.

These composite flowers don't press really well. I really don't know much about how to arrange them.
Here is what we brought home from this trip. We will look at them again in a week or two and see how they all turned out.

Sophie didn't want to draw this time. She said the challenge was to press flowers not draw so she didn't take her sketch book with her and wasn't interested in it after our walk. I think lunch was on all of our minds when we got home.

Green Hour Challenge #13 - Flower Parts and a Scavenger Hunt

Today's temperatures were much more moderate so we decided it was high time to get outside for a nature walk. Before we headed outside Sophie and I filled out the flower parts work sheet that Barb included with the challenge. Sophie actually did remember quite a few of the parts from when we have gone over them before. I was surprised that Ian even remembered a few of them too.
For a little more fun on our walk I also printed out the Spring Nature Walk Worksheet from Hearts and Trees.

Right across the street from our house we saw a bush covered with white iris'. We went over there to take a good look at them.

They were very beautiful but a little difficult to figure out all the different parts.
After looking at these flowers a while we stopped to look at our scavenger hunt list to see what else we were supposed to look for. One of the items was a tree in blossom. I didn't think we would find one because so many of the trees had already blossomed. But then I spotted one of the many magnolia trees in the neighborhood and saw a few nice big blossoms on it.

There are a lot of buds on the tree so within the next few days the trees should really be beautiful with all the big white flowers all over them.

Since we saw so many blossoms a few months ago we took a good look at some of those trees and found some heavy with growing fruit.




As we were walking down the sidewalk, the same sidewalk we walk along all the time I suddenly noticed this orange in the tree ahead. Below it is the Bottle brush bush that we looked at closely last week so I know this tree wasn't orange last week.

When we got up closer I looked at what was making the orange and it really surprised me. I am going to have to find out what kind of tree this is. I haven't seen any others in the neighborhood.

Since this was a scavenger hunt for the senses we also had to touch a lot of different things. We were all surprised by how many leaves are soft and fuzzy. Here is the leaves of a Geranium that were very furry.

The birds were out this morning too. We saw them everywhere and they were loud today too. They are hard to get good pictures of so bear with my meager attempts.

I don't know what kind of bird the one above is. It is hard to identify birds when you only see them from below. But when this one flies it has black wings with white patches on them. Any ideas? Here it is again later on our walk.

This loud crow kept cawing and cawing during our whole walk.

We watched this little gold finch for awhile. Sophie was sure it had a worm in it's mouth. After looking at the picture I think it is only some grass or leaves it has in its mouth.

We didn't get a picture of the blue bird we saw or the humming birds we watched. They were a lot more difficult to catch on camera.
Here are just a few more pictures of the lovely flowers around the neighborhood. These ones were interesting how the petals radiated out like a pinwheel.

I have found it so fascinating to watch how the early spring flowers have almost all faded away and been replaced by the Summer flowers.
There is always new wonders to behold.
Now here is a great flower to look at when you want to point out the different parts. By the time we found this one we had been trying in all other flowers that we found. So the kids new all the names when we got to this one.
Henry's favorite part of the walk was this sticky tree. We examined it and had to touch it.


Sophie collected a few things along the way.

So did Ian.

Sophie came home and colored this picture on the back of the scavenger hunt paper. The drawing on the right is a magnifying glass looking closely at the inside of the flower. I love the butterfly with the little flag that says pollen on it.
She also drew the california poppies on the front of the scavenger hunt paper (you can see the front up at the top of this post). There are still some poppies about. My kids love them!

So that was a lengthy, photo rich description of our walk around the block this morning. I am very grateful to have Spring like weather back for a bit. I am not ready for those high 90 degree days yet.