Nature walk - Nature's architects

We had a great week and I wanted to share some of our interesting findings during our nature walk.  We found a piece of bee hive.  We investigated the perfect hexagon shapes in the bee hive. It’s really amazing how these small bees built their house using beeswax and how they built theses perfect hexagon shapes. 

I drew the beehive using rangoli powder and my little one’s attempt to draw a hexagon ends in a oval shape.

Another attempt

Here are the second tiny architects.  Found these busy weaver ants during our nature walk  Look at their nests. How beautifully they connected the leaves using saliva and built their houses.

Bayaa weavers are common in our farm land.

  But, I have been looking for a weaver bird’s nest. When I visited my professor at Nit, Trichy, his daughter showed me this weaver’s nest in their backyard. My professor’s wife is maintaining a great backyard and I am lucky to see this weaver’s nest there.  I clicked this for my little one.

We found these big caterpillars in our backyard.  There are so many.  We are waiting to see the pupae.

Found this guava seed in our nature walk.  Look. Isn't it look like a brain?  Taken it for our nature box.

 You can view all our nature study posts here

A Diorama of Sources of Water

It’s been my little one’s long time wish to visit a waterfall.  Her wish fulfilled recently. We visited 'kutralam' one of the famous waterfalls in Tamilnadu, India .  Though it’s not the season time and there was only a little water, she had a very nice time there. She even had a bath in the water falls. She and her dad stood under the cold herbal water for a long.  When she returned from the waterfalls, she was really icy cold. 

We used to visit the beaches, lakes, river and pond now and then.  So, I thought of making  a diorama of sources of water with my little one(Similar to land form models).

 I set the model of waterfall, river, pond, lake, well and tube wells in a cardboard box. I used agar agar strips for the waterfalls and small plastic boxes for pond and Lake. We also added few toys to represent the life in pond, lake and the riverside.

It really helped her to understand the source and destination of a river (Destination -Ocean is not included in the diorama as we thought of doing a separate study).

 We also visited our farmland to see the bore well.

We also watched this video

See our experiment on water cycle and sensory play on pond life

Small Wonders: Insects

The theme of this week is Insects.  My little one can identify most of the common insects like ant,  butterfly, dragon flies, lady bug, grass hopper, praying mantis, house fly, mosquitoes, cockroaches… But, I still want to have some activities on this theme. 

      Bug watching:

        To get started, we went for bug watching.  We watched the honey bees going inside the flowers, busy ants moving in and around their ant hills; dragon flies and butterflies flying around the yard.Undoubtedly, these tiny creatures will grab the attention of kids. It creates an opportunity to see a variety of new bugs too. (Later, we googled with a key word ‘bugs’ and found their names).

Hurrah! We found these jewel bugs in the river bank.

Look at these baby jewel bugs.

Box elder bugs.

Stink bugs on teak leaf.

We finally found one lady bug.  

 2.        Everybody is so fascinating about ants and watching an ant colony is one of the favorite activities for most of us. But how the any hill would be beneath the land surface? After reading many articles and watching videos about making an ant farm, I decided to make one.  Of course, my aim is not to make an ant farm.  Just to watch an ant hill. It’s really great to watch.

3.        And finally, here is our insect theme sensory bin for small world play.

Nature Study II: Scavenger Hunt For Kids

Scavenger hunt is one of the great activities for kids to  keep them busy.  A scavenger hunt can be made with many themes like alphabets, colors, shapes, backyard, outdoor or seasonal like winter, autumn, summer or Rainy.  Our today’s scavenger hunt theme is nature.

 A scavenger hunt list may be a list of clues, names of the object or pictures. As my little one is only 4 years and not yet started reading, I drew a set of pictures for her hunting. (We can even prepare it using clip art and  take a printout.) Here is the list of items which were drawn (This is only for the readers.  For my surprise my baby understood most of those items except the shell and the nut (pei) of a coconut)

                 1. A cosmos, a black seed, a croton’s leaf, two identical stones

                 2.  Leaf, Leaf, bud of a grass, ant

                                  3. Y’ shaped stick, flower, red leaf, root

                 4.  Black pebble, shell, nut of a coconut, tall grass

                 5.  Leaf, a plant with red stem and green leaf, small pink flowers. .

Some of her questions before going for hunting,

I Row:“Ma, why you drew two stones?”

III Row:“Is this a stick? Can I have to take a stick of this same shape?”

IV Row:“Is this a  pebble or some seed?”

Scavenger hunts keeps the child busy and help to improve her recognition of various objects, shapes and colors.

Nature Study 1: To the garden, to the garden, we are walking down....

It’s been raining since yesterday.  It’s hard to keep my little one inside the house for hours. She started asking for an outside walk.

Whenever she is bored, she would ask, “ Amma, Shall we go for a walk?” .  When we step out from our house, we would sing, “To the garden, to the garden, we are walking down”. One of her favorite songs.  If we go to the river bank, it will start like this, “To the River, to the river we are walking down.  In the river you can see…”

In Charlotte Mason approach, nature study is the base for science, math, art and language.  As per Charlotte Mason, a child has to spend several hours outside every week for nature study.

I have been taking my child outside since she was 10 months old.   Believe me; she started telling the names of most of the flowers, trees, vegetables and birds available in our place by 3 years old.  I don’t believe in flash cards for teaching kids.  Nature study is the best way to introduce our environment.  For nature study, you can take your child to anywhere like, river, pond, beach, Neighborhood Street, farm fields…etc. Even when we go out on bike ride with my hubby, whenever we see something new to my child, we’ll stop there; spend few minutes for our child to observe it.  That’s how she was introduced to goose, ducks, donkeys, pigs, king fisher……  

Back to the story.  So, when there was a slight gap in the rainfall, we had a walk around our backyard. My father is maintaining a coconut grove with a wonderful garden. Though it is not a well organized one, you can find almost all the common fruit trees of TamilNadu that includes banana, guava, Mango, Jack fruit, Lemon, Mosambi (Sweet lime), pomegranate and other trees like coconut, goose berries, Teak wood, Eucalyptus…..  From this garden only my daughter learnt the names of flowers like jasmine, Hibiscus, Rose, Oleander, Periwinkle, chrysanthemum, 4’o clock, cosmos,Mary gold, zinnia, Thunbergia (King's mantle), Clittoria (butterfly pea)…

Today’s task was to collect the flowers she would see on her way. She grabbed her magnifier and a bag for collecting flowers. During the nature study, the child has to lead. She has to see the beauty of nature. She has to hear the birds' sound. She has to touch and feel the different texture.She has to observe,learn and explore. So i just followed her.

Watching the Ant colony; “What will happen, if the rain water goes inside. Shall we cover the hole?”

“Amma, Pumpkin is a creeper. Why it is climbing?”

“Spiral shape”

“Touch me not.  Where’s that ‘Horton’ Flower? See the millipede" 

Running to pluck periwinkle

 Naming the flowers

“Nature [is] the greatest of all teachers” 

 “Children should be surrounded with the things of nature which have their own educational value.”

                                                                                                                          -  Rabindranath Tagore