Spring flowers

There are signs of spring in our garden already. I know for those of you it may be hard to believe. Especially after hearing the ground hog forecast calling for six more weeks of winter. Here are some spring flowers to cheer all those cold spirits to all those who read my blog.

Southern California features two distinct seasons spring and yes, summer. I just love spring but it would be wonderful to have beautiful fall trees during fall and not winter as it is here in most cases.

Today in our Nature Studies I told the kids to find something of color and sketch it. Dancer chose to sketch these beautiful flowers that are now in bloom.

Sport chose to sketch our dying red bell peppers. They did not survive our freak hail storm we had a few weeks back. What we did find interesting is tiny aphids crawling on a bell pepper leaf. Those nasty little critters. We looked them up and read about them in our Nature Handbook by Comstock. They are nasty but very interesting. The kids learned that there are two different type of female aphids. Those that have wings and those without. The ones with the wings give birth to eggs and the ones without wings give birth to live aphids. Sport wasn't too sure if they could still be called an insect but maybe they should be considered a mammal. After close examination of the legs, counting six, it is definitely an insect.

I just love the small purple blossoms on the Rosemary.

Daffodils and tulips are one of my favorite flowers. Daffodils always seem so happy. Shinning for spring and reminding me of Easter that is soon to come.

Take care my friends spring will be here Real Soon!

Our Nature Study

Yesterday we tried to implement our first Nature Study. It was very informal. Remember, baby steps..... We are using Anna Comstock's book Handbook of Nature Study as a reference book for the kids to dig deeper if they choose to.

For our first try at this all of us went outside in the backyard with a sketch pad to observe nature in action. I then had the kids find something of interest observe it and make a sketch of it.

Here is Sport sketching a plum tree. He chose to lay on the pavement and not the wet grass. Notice the warm ski cap. Our weather has been warm lately but he just loves the hat that his Grandma crocheted for him.

Dancer chose to sketch our daffodils that are now in bloom. Yes, daffodils in January. Last weekend we had temperatures in the 80's here. We are in desperate need for rain around here. We appreciate the warm weather but we need Rain!!!! Sorry I didn't take a picture of our daffodils to share with you.

Here is a picture of Dancers' Nature page of the daffodil. After she sketched the daffodil we read about them in the Handbook of Nature Study book. I also had her write the Latin name for the daffodil. She also wanted to disect it.

She tried to taste the sweet nectar but was quick to spit it out. She said it was very bitter. I don't blame her. She was hoping it tasted like the honeysuckles we have growing in our yard.

As you can see we even taped down our daffodil specimen to save.

I will point out to you that Sport my oldest quickly sketched his but was not the least bit interested in researching about his plum tree. He was more interested in working of working on the project he had begun outside yesterday. Now that the rocks are all cleared he is excited to begin his clubhouse construction. Did I mention...One Step at a Time.....

Blessings,

Amy

PS. As I type this the weather report is expecting rain today. Praise God!