Tag Archives: nature study

Helping Kids LOVE the Outdoors

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It’s no secret that we spend a lot of time outside and love the outdoors. Peruse our Facebook page, Instagram account, or even here at the blog, and almost all our pictures are outside. In the fields, in the woods, at the tree farm…even without structured activities our days are split about 60/40 outside time to inside time, other than school hours. Maybe even 70/30…if the weather is nice on the weekends even 90/10! (Yes, my housework suffers for it!) Here are some of the ways we lever the kiddos … Continue Reading…

Bald Eagle Encounters…Bald Eagle Study Resources

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I’m out the door in the morning the same time the boys head to the end of the driveway to catch the school bus. When they get picked up, I head to work. So we’re all heading out the other day and the Cowboy comes racing back in, “Mom, where’s your phone?!” Between my laptop, purse, lunch bag, and coat, I had no idea. He stormed through the house, grabbed it and headed back out. We had a Bald Eagle. In the driveway. I dropped my pile of junk by … Continue Reading…

On the Trail of the Beaver, Part 2…the Daily Farm Adventures {112}

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So on Monday I started to share how we spent all of last weekend scrounging through the woods on the tree farm looking for beavers. They’re damaging and flooding out young pine trees–which is the main product on the tree farm. {smile} But our adventure stopped just short of finding the new beaver hut… Well, here’s what we found–not just a den, but an entire new ecosystem! There are three different dams built to create a two-tier pond system.   Of course, Coal the Cattle Dog had to immediately jump … Continue Reading…

On the Trail of the Beaver, Part 1…the Daily Farm Adventures {111}

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You might think that tree farming is about the easiest farming there is. I did at first. I mean, you’re growing pine trees, and surely they don’t need much supervising…right? Wrong. For crying out loud, sometimes it feels like growing those trees takes more work than raising our human children! {smile} You have to cut, mow, burn, plant, pray for rain…mow, cut, thin, spray…and then the predators…rabbits, mice, rats, voles, disease…apparently everything that doesn’t eat meat loves to eat trees! And now beavers. I wrote before that we’ve found some beaver damage … Continue Reading…

Sign of the Beaver…the Daily Farm Adventures {103}

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No, not the book by Elizabeth George Speare (although we like that too!). I’m talking about the real thing. Brown. Wet. Big flat tail. Makes ponds where there should be no pond. Beavers. He was here… And here… We’ve got beaver problems at the tree farm. We’re not immediately ones to campaign against the local wildlife. We try to have a live-and-let-live philosophy. We only target wildlife that is specifically damaging our resources. For example, we know there’s coyotes around here–but none have ever bothered our stock, so we don’t mind sharing … Continue Reading…

Always A Bird Thing Going On…the Daily Farm Adventures {67}

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I’m not sure what it is about our kiddos, but they seem to be a magnet for hard-luck cases. Remember the Ladybug’s little bird adventure over the summer? And then there’s the case of the crazy, snuggling chicken (who is still living hale and hearty in the backyard). Well, now the Cowboy (who’s been inside most of the weekend struggling on and off with stomach issues) comes out of the house for ONE MINUTE Saturday evening to check on me working sheep alone–apparently the’re not sure I can handle anything … Continue Reading…

The Night-Stalker…the Daily Farm Adventures {66}

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Well, I posted on Monday asking how everyone felt about pictures here on the blog–do you mind my sometimes blurry, sometimes grainy, sometimes shady pictures? Or would you prefer for me to find only good photography to share (which would probably not be my own!!). All the comments and emails I got were “yes, we like your pictures!” so here’s some more! {smile} I mentioned on Monday that we’ve got an owl in the neighborhood that seems to have made himself quite comfortable and is settling in. Well, he’s taken … Continue Reading…

Wild Turkey Nursery…the Daily Farm Adventures {60}

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W have a lot of wild turkey in our area, and managing our field and wood edges carefully encourages them to stick around. We have a local flock that raises two batches of poults a year on the farm. You’ll see a couple hens out there with a passel of babies wandering through the tall grass every morning and evening. The fences and equipment don’t make them nervous. The sheep don’t make them nervous. The cows don’t bother them. The chickens don’t bother them. They just come and go as … Continue Reading…

Backyard Nature Birthday Party

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The Ladybug turned 9 back in August. So why am I just posting about her birthday now? Well, partly because we didn’t have her party until November. Awkward? Eh, maybe. But she wanted to invite school friends so we decided to wait until after school started. And September and October are just really busy times for us with school starting and soccer and lamb harvest and just everything. Besides, this is Tidewater Virginia. November is just Fall here, not winter. We didn’t sleep outside, but we did spend the rest … Continue Reading…

Nature Study Display Frames

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We love nature study around here. It’s one of our favorite real life homeschool topics and can fit in to pretty much any moment of the day. But it also means that we have quite the conglomeration of feathers, rocks, skins, twigs, beetles, moths, and other cool finds. We use nature journals to save pictures, drawings and notes (along with the occasional leaf) but our adventures to the Virginia Living Museum inspired me to create nature study display frames to put on the walls in our newly painted playroom. It … Continue Reading…

Nature Encounters…The Great Horned Owl

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Have you noticed how much hustling about there is right now out in the world of wildlife? Everyone’s scurrying around to find new homes and territories and stock up their dens and burrows and bellies for winter. Seems like the squirrels around here are having a festival of foolishness around the roadside ditches. Mr. Fix-It and I were off for a walk, alone, the other day (how often does that happen!!) and collected a bunch of turkey feathers and an empty turtle shell to take back and show the kiddos. … Continue Reading…

Real Life Homeschooling — Learning While Camping

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Real Life Homeschooling is a monthly blog hop with 20 other blogging mommas that I’ll be participating in this summer. It’s all about the non-traditional face of homeschooling today. What it looks like when it doesn’t look like school-at-home. Last week my introduction post touched on our love of nature study and family read-alouds. This week I’d like to touch on the idea of learning everywhere, all the time. I’ve been writing about our camping adventures lately, and I think that’s a perfect example of how we can surround our … Continue Reading…

Real Life Homeschool…On Teaching Something Every Day

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  Real Life Homeschooling is a monthly blog hop with 20 other blogging mommas that I’ll be participating in this summer. It’s all about the non-traditional face of homeschooling today. What it looks like when it doesn’t look like school-at-home. Which, obviously it doesn’t around here since our crew goes to a Christian school full-time and home-learning has to be fun and relaxed to keep us all from getting burned out. One question you may have is Why do we even bother, if our kids are already getting an excellent … Continue Reading…

Spring at the Virginia Living Museum

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Well, I had a bit of time with the kiddos while they were on spring break last week and we headed to the Virginia Living Museum–which we’ve been enjoying often since becoming members last summer! It was fun to see it in Spring, before everything blooms, but when everything is just coming awake.We’ve visiting in Summer, Fall (boy these pictures take me back a bit!), and Winter now and not only have we gotten to see different exhibits, we’ve gotten to see the animals and habitats change for the season. … Continue Reading…

They Will Soar–Backyard Wildlife Adventures

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Ever have one of those moments when something just stops you in your tracks and changes your everyday moments to not-so-everyday moments? Something exciting suddenly swoops in and the joy lasts long past when the moment is gone? Yeah, bald eagles do that for me. {grin} We had one visiting the back field for about 30 minutes or so last week after Annabelle had her new calf. We’ve come to expect a certain conglomeration of turkey buzzards to show up after a birth looking for any buzzard-ly “treats.” But every … Continue Reading…