This week’s Outdoor Hour Challenge is the Seasonal Tree study. We watched the YouTube Videos that Barb posted on the Handbook of Nature page for the Tree Study. I was really excited to see how she draws the leaf. I think I try to get too much detail on the rough sketch. Her video of how she draws the leaf is on her page. I also enjoyed the video about the stages the leaf goes through to change colors before falling off the tree. I had never seen nor heard it explained this way. Amazing process! I love learning something new every day! We spent time this week drawing leaves, and today we drew to the detail. Our new word is Petiole instead of the leaf stalk, and Mid Rib for the main vein. The Handbook of Nature Study Book talked about the terms that a 4th grader should know so we wrote these out for Jon to pay attention to. Except for Head and Foliage, he knew them all, and now knows those two words also. The Bole was our word of the day last summer – and they love knowing what to call the main growing trunk leader.
I was fascinated to hear that they didn’t have a clue about the sap. We cut a branch that I cut on Friday, and then a branch that they cut today. We filleted them both. The moisture was gone from the 4 day old branch. They felt the slime and moisture from the branch 1 hour old. They got the idea of a straw that distributes the moisture to the leaves. They understood in Human Body terms what the veins are, how the skin heals, how it prepares the leaf to fall. I loved hearing them talk all of this threw with the ah-ha voices of boys who had never thought about this before. I love being their teacher!
Our study into the leaves only brought more questions – or areas to understand more deeply. The Chlorophyl. The Keratin for color. The Sap of Maple vs Alder vs Pine. How the Sap heals the bark. If we can slice a piece thin enough to see under a microscope. Questions. Curiosity. And to think, I started this study with the thought that we had “out done” the leaf studies though the years. 🙂 The boys did, of course, enjoy chopping slicing and dicing the limbs to tiny little fragments on the kitchen table. 🙂
Come join us at the Outdoor Hour Challenge! http://handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com/2010/10/autumn-2010-ohc-5-seasonal-tree.html
+Angie Wright
Pebblekeeper 
As always you have done a wonderful and thorough nature study. I envy how natural it all seems to be for you! I especially loved seeing your nature journals this week with all the labeling. What a blessing this post was to see.
You are just the sweetest!
Wow! You make me want to dive in right now. It looks a little more doable the way you wrote it up and fun. I plan to show my son this post and the lego one below too. Perhaps he will also get excited about it.
Thanks,
Amy @ Missional Mama
New follower, came over from the hop, love being able to scout out other homeschooling sites … and make new friends.
Love your study, my girls love being out and making projects and keepsakes, great time of year for it too.
We had an awful week over here with the most (Distasteful Sites – word deleted by Angie ) attaching to our computer during my 12 yr olds book research … friendly warning to all in my blogpost, please take a moment and have a read (and for your future reading pleasure, my posts are not usually so gloomy!)
We went through this a year ago – I limit the research they do on the computer for this reason. I recently came aware of two sites – KB Teachers and Resource.com. So far – only open ended research with mom over shoulder or watching on Lanschool.com. He can have free reign over the Library. 🙂
Love everything about your study. I have to say that every time we study our trees and leaves we learn something new…there is just so much to know and question about our world.
Ecc. 3:11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.
What an awesome Creator we have.
What a beautiful encourager you are Barb!
We will be doing something similar with leaves also. My kids love to walk and collect them. of course they are 6 and 4! Thanks for linking up with the Hip Homeschool Moms!