A Field Day

Last Thursday I found myself alone with eight children (I was watching four of my friend's kids) who all wanted to do an activity. We've been learning about mountain men, pioneers, and explorers and one of my friend's kids had been studying botany sooooo.... We made field journals. I didn't have any deerskin or bark to cover them with so we used some course fabric, chipboard, and paper. Here is Krystal with her field journal.

After making the journals, I pulled out my leaf identification samples and taught the kids a little about how to identify certain plants that are indigenous to our area. Then it was off to the outdoors for some exploring. Here is Clarissa sketching one of our new cherry trees.

This is the spot where we learned about poison ivy (we have plenty of live samples in our front yard). Jared drew a very nice picture of it for future reference and hopefully the kids will remember what it is and not to touch it. We also found about 10 to 12 different kinds of trees including a sugar maple tree in our front yard.

On our hike back to the house, Clarissa found an Eastern Tent Catapillar, which of course she had to bring inside to our butterfly house.

Finally, I couldn't resist this picture of Amber's discovery of the rare and endangered (don't we wish) Dandelion.