Meet the Monarchs

We went to one of our favorite places this weekend. It is a old farm from the days when there were actually farms here in Silicon Valley. We purposely went at this time of year to see the Monarchs that winter in the trees at this farm. Evidently there are usually thousands of butterflies that come down from Canada to winter in a small grove of Eucalyptus trees that were planted here on this farm. The last few years there have only been a few hundred. This year they estimate that there are about 500 monarch butterflies. It was pretty impressive to see there clustered in bunches in the trees. It is hard to see them in these pictures. They are up high and also when they are closed up the underside isn't as bright and tends to blend in. We picked a great day to come because a storm was coming so it was slightly warm and the butterflies were a bit more fluttery. We saw many of them flitting about in the small grove. It was really amazing to see that many butterflies at once. I can only image what it is like when there are thousands flapping around above you.

In the green house they had a few milkweed plants with caterpillars and a few chrystalis for us to look at.

We had a great time just wondering around the farm and looking at all the different animals and trees that they have there.
We happened to catch the Peacock while he was all puffed up and trying to impress the hens.
This peacock just couldn't quite compete.


On the drive home we watched the storm clouds roll in. Sophie made the observation that the clouds looked like a Georgia O'Keefe painting. It think she was right! I had to grin thinking how long ago we studied O'Keefe in our art studies but she still remembers her work well.

It was a lovely afternoon out in nature. It is a good thing too since we are stuck inside for the next few days because evidently it isn't just one storm that was expected but we are going to be wet all week as storm after storm rolls in.

Outdoor Hour - Stop at the Oak

We take a lot of "walks" around the block. My kids don't usually like to actually walk. They always want to take their scooters or ride their bikes. They still stop along the way to look at, watch, pick, or examine different things. Lately I have been pushing the baby in a stroller and I find myself saying things like "don't go too far ahead" or "stay where I can see you". I realized today I can give much more specific instructions and my kids know exactly what I mean. Today I used phrases like "Stop at the skipper butterfly garden" , "don't go past the Morning Glories" or "stop at the big oak tree". We have become so acquainted with our neighborhood that the kids know exactly where these phrases are describing.

So today while the kids waited for me to catch up to them at the oak tree. I snapped this photo.

The boys were looking at a tree stump that is being pulled out while Sophie is gathering acorns which are all over the ground around this tree. When I finally reached them the boys were excited to tell me about the stump with all the roots showing. Sophie told me about the squirrels that must have munched some of these acorns.

We took a moment to look at the leaves of the oak tree which were very spikey. These should help us identify which kind of oak tree this is. (When I got home I looked it up and it is a Coastal Live Oak, I think).

As we continued on our walk the kids also pointed out a few other things they found of interest. They noticed the citrus trees and the changing color of the fruit. The lemons, grapefruit and oranges all turning from green to their usual looking colors. They are headed toward ripeness.

Henry pointed these mushrooms out to me. They are quite large and he wanted to kick them and break them up. But I kept him from doing this so we could touch them and examine them a little closer. Sophie didn't want anything to do with them. I guess I have somehow instilled a real fear of touching mushrooms into her. She thinks any wild mushroom we see is poison.
I tried to tell her as long as we wash our hands after touching them we should be alright.

So we had a nice walk and I now have a better way to keep my kids from riding too far ahead of me as we go around the block. I just need to use the "landmarks" that they know and have learned on our many trips around the block. Why didn't I think of this sooner!

Outdoor Hour - Fall Tree Study - Boxelder

I took the kids out last week to pick a tree to study for our Year long Tree Study. I pointed out the ginko tree in the front of our neighbor's house, or there are several sweet gum trees growing in our neighborhood. But the kids wanted to do the boxelder trees. There are two of them in our neighborhood and the kids love these trees because of the seeds that they get to throw in the air and watch spiral as they fall. So we got on our bikes and scooters and rode over to these trees for our up close study. Henry of course wasted no time before climbing up into one. Ian and Sophie took a few minutes to look at the leaves and the seeds and the bark of the tree. The leaves are in the process of drying out. They don't really change color as much as just dry up. They do yellow but not a beautiful crisp yellow like some of the other trees around us. This one just sort of dries up and drops its leaves.

The seeds aren't dry enough yet for throwing. They are still rather green so the kids were happy to sit and do some drawings and rubbings of the leaves.

But only for a few minutes. They really wanted to continue their bike ride.
So our tree study was only about 10 minutes long but we will revisit this tree often as we ride around the block and for a few more tree studies as the seasons change.

Trying to get back into the Great Outdoors.

I have been very lax about doing any formal nature studies. We play outdoors quite often but it is usually at the park or someplace where the kids can run around while I sit and take care of the baby. But Barb has started some fall outdoor hour challenges and I felt like we really needed to get back into doing these. So we started with cattails.

This is an easy one. My kids already love these. They play with them at Grandma's house. (I remember having a lot of fun with them as a kid too.) And we knew where we could find some not too far from our house.

We took a friend with us on our hunt to find cattails. This little guy hadn't had the chance to play with cattails before so my kids were happy to show him how much fun they could be.
(notice my kids in their long pants and long sleeves. It is starting to really feel like Fall here.)
The kids did take a few moments to look at the murky water that was in the ravine.
This ravine has water in it here, but further up the trail it was dry as a bone. This part always seems to have water but depending on the season the rest of the little creek will sometimes and sometimes not have water.

I wasn't long before the kids started to rip their cattails apart.

Sophie was the most vigorous. She ripped into several of them and kept trying to get the boys to do theirs also but they wanted to try to save them. (I think one made it home with us, which is amazing. Such restraint!)


Not Sophie. She loved the fluff and continued to pull the fluff and drop it all along the trail as we walked back. She said she was spreading the seeds.

On such a windy day I am sure we helped spread them around, a lot!

New Nature Study e-books giveaway

One of the many blogs I follow is In the Sparrow's Nest. I am always impressed with the great nature studies that they do on and share on their blog. She always seems to include activities, scripture, picture books along with a lot of outside time in each of her studies.

Melissa, along with her friend Cindy, who blogs at Our Journey Westward have put together a series of 12 christian nature studies available via e-books through their new company Shining Dawn Books. There are promises for more in the future. At the moment they are having a giveaway. They are each offering three of their e-books to those who comment on their announcement posts on their blogs. So that is 6 of their unit studies they are giving away. Three from Cindy's blog and three on Melissa's blog. If you would like some more direction in your nature study then go and check out their blogs and enter to win one of their new unit studies. They look wonderful!

Outdoor Hour Challenge -Bluebirds

Last week we went to the park to play. I picked a park that had ducks and geese that we could go and see along with a nice walk, around a small lake (which ended up being empty at the time, but the birds were there), that would lead us to the playground. The of course had to feed the birds even through there was a sign that said not to.

We continued our walk and the ducks and geese followed us around expecting more food, but the kids didn't have any more crackers.
While the kids played at the park I sat and enjoyed the sunshine and listened to the chirping of the birds. I knew most of the birds that we saw were house sparrows. But every once in awhile I would see a bluebird. They were not a numerous and didn't sit still very long so it took me a long time to catch one sitting long enough for me to snap a shot of it.
It may be hard to tell this is a bluebird from this angle. The breast of this bluebird is a rusty brown color. But when it was flying you could really see the blue color of its back and wings.

It actually sat still long enough for this female bluebird to come and perch near it and I was able to capture both in a picture. The female is slightly duller in color but still has a blue tinge to the feathers.
When we got home from the park I looked up the bird in our field guide and found out that it is called a Western Bluebird and that it is a relative of the robin. This information came in handy this weekend when we saw a number of these same type of bluebird up at Grandma's house while we took a walk through her neighborhood. We saw lots of new birds up where Grandma lives. The kids even saw some quail while out playing in the pasture and there were lots of hawks flying around too. We are still trying to decide what kind of woodpeckers we see in Grandpa's trees. We are leaning toward acorn woodpeckers but need a better look.

Today we got out the Burgess Bird book and read the chapter about Bluebirds and then tried to draw one in our sketch books.
Sophie got a little frustrated with her drawing skills and got discouraged. I helped her with her sketch and then she colored it in nicely. I think she was just a bit tired after a fun filled weekend at Grandma's house playing with cousins.

We are certainly becoming more aware of the different birds we see. It is funny how you don't really see them until you are actually looking for them. I never knew how many varieties of birds we have even here in the city.

Outdoor Hour Challenge - Starting our Bird Focus

We started our Focus on Birds last week. Rather than jumping right into the Handbook of Nature study or a non fiction book about birds I picked up a great story book about birds Albert. After reading Albert the kids were all excited about learning more about cardinals and I just so happened to have a book about cardinals that I had borrowed from the library. I also broke out a coloring book of all the state birds and we counted how many states have the cardinal as their state bird. We then discussed what our California state bird is. We don't see either Cardinals or Quail in our neighborhood so of course we talked about what birds we do see. Since we almost always have a bird feeder outside our front window we are well acquainted with the House sparrow and once in awhile we see a House finch.
We then went on a walk around our block to see what other birds we could see. We could see and hear a lot of Crows in the trees they often sounded like they were talking back and forth. Somehow I forgot to take a picture of them. I think we are going to have to focus on them next week since we have so many of them around. We saw a lot of pigeons too.

We could hear a lot more birds chirping away in the bushes but we couldn't see most of them.We did try to peek into the bushes to see them but they quickly scattered. We did see a few clumps of twigs wedged in the bushes that must be a nest. I think they are sparrows like we living in our carport and visiting our bird feeder. We needed a new feeder since our last one was rather weather beaten due to all the rain and wind we have had recently. (It was being held together with tape). We actually put up two new feeders. And both were filled at the beginning of the week and a few days later......
this is all there is in each of the feeders. We have had quite a few birds visiting.

Also as part of our focus on birds I decided to also learn a little about John James Audubon. I picked up a number of picture book biographies about Audubon. Today after reading one of these books Sophie decided she needed to give drawing birds a try so we broke out some field guides and other books and she set to work and I decided to join her.


Here is my drawing of a Mocking bird. One of the birds we see all the time in our neighborhood. They are hard to get a picture of however. I am glad the field guides had a good picture of one.

Here is Sophie's drawing of Humming birds. We saw some on our walk yesterday. They sure loved the bottle brush bush so she added a bottle brush to her drawing.

We are enjoying our focus on birds. We listen and look for birds all the time. Sophie spots different ones all the time. I am showing her how to look them up in the different field guides we have collected. It will be a fun few weeks as we take some time to study each of the different birds in our neighborhood.


I know we are supposed to look for Robins, Cardinals or the House Finch as our Challenge for the next few weeks. We don't usually see Robins around our neighborhood but do see them as some of the parks we visit so we are going to have to make sure we go to those parks and hope some robins are about. We don't get cardinals where we live so we will have to content ourselves with books about cardinals. We do see a House Finch every once in awhile visit our feeder so we will have to keep a close eye to see if they come around. We haven't seen them a long time.