Plants Part 1:

Trees and Leaves

Books: 

• From Nut to Tree by Millie Landis
• Why do Leaves Change Color? by Betsy Maestro
• A Tree is Nice by Janice May Udry
• Leaves (The Basic Science Education Series) by Bertha Morris Parker
• A Tree for All Seasons by Robin Bernard
• The Tremendous Tree Book by Barbara Brenner and May Garelick
• Los Arboles Son Impresionantes! por Lisa Trumbauer
• A Busy Year by Leo Lionni
• A Tree is Growing by Arthur Dorros

Activities:

• Outdoors: leaf collecting. We only collected what we could find in our yard, but we also had some stored from our property visit. We gathered flowers as well. 

• Outdoors: tree observation. Identify trees around the house. Lay underneath them and look up through the branches and leaves. Feel the textures of the bark. Imagine the root systems beneath your feet. 

• Leaf and bark rubbings. Place the leaf underneath the paper on a flat surface, and color over it. For bark, take the paper and crayons outside. Place the sheet right up on the tree and color on it carefully (so you don't get a bunch of holes from the bumps and cracks). It's odd to think about the fact that you are using a thin slice of a tree to color on another tree. We also remarked that some bark really looks like skin, with little "flakes" piled on top of each other all over the surface (that can peel off). I recently read The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, and I will never be able to look at a tree the same way again. It is interesting to draw parallels between ourselves and trees, and to wonder at how they perceive their environments. 

• Pressing leaves and flowers. We took coloring books that we never color in and placed the plants in between the pages, then set it underneath a heavy tub of reference books. We will check on them in two weeks. We have some older pressed leaves from last year that I have yet to do anything with. I ordered an album with adhesive pages, and as soon as it arrives, we will transfer those leaves and flowers into it. 

• Laminated leaves. I actually don't own a laminator, but I do have clear matte contact paper left over from the "stained glass" crafts we did when we studied rainforests. I cut out squares of this, and placed the leaves carefully between the two sticky layers. Then I cut them out, following the basic shape of the leaf. These were great to look at and match to pictures of leaves in the books. We also held them up to the windows to better illuminate them and examine the veins. If I had a light table, these would be great to view on it. Someday! 

• Exercise: "tree" stretches. A little like interpretive dance or pretend play, really. First, pretend you are an acorn. Spread your arms out across the ground and stretch like your roots are seeking water. Then send out a shoot by reaching one arm up into the air and spreading your fingers out as the leaves grow. Then raise the other arm, and slowly stand and stretch, reaching as high as you can, with all fingers spread out. Then hold your arms out perpendicular to the ground like branches, and stand as still as a tree for as long as you can. Next pretend a wind is blowing your branches. Etc... repeat until toddler is becomes bored or exhausted. 

• Craft: Leaf painting. Gather an assortment of leaves. Paint the undersides, then press down evenly on a piece of paper. Peel off, and the leaf pattern is left! We did one page together, and then we each did one of our own. Evie did everything herself for her colorful page. She painted, pressed and peeled. She also picked all of the leaves. At first, Evie was only painting part of the undersides of the leaves. She said she wasn't a very good "spreader-outer." So I showed her how to paint the entire underside of the leaves, and held them down for her. By the end, she proudly announced that she was a better "spreader-outer."

Frogs and Toads: Part 2

We started off this day by building a bigger habitat for the tadpoles. Also, it turns out we actually have eight. I missed one! 

Books: 

• The Magic School Bus Hops Home: A Book about Animal Habitats by Patricia Relf
• True or False: Amphibians by Melvin and Gilda Berger
• The Fascinating World of...Frogs and Toads by Maria Angels Julivert (Barron's Publishing)
• Reptiles and Amphibians Field Guide: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan by Stan Tekiela

Activities:

• Tadpole Habitat. We took a large storage container and added about 4 inches of water to the bottom (a mix of spring water and some pond water, complete with mosquito larvae). After adding a rock and some bark, we put the jar containing the tadpoles in the water. We let it set for a couple of hours to allow them to acclimate to the temperature. Then we released them, and added a couple bits of boiled spinach. It was nice to see them spread out and have more room to swim. We also noticed the teeny beginnings of back legs on a couple of them. 

• Frog Puzzle. 24 piece puzzle of a Red-eyed tree frog that I found at the Dollar Tree. I'm teaching Evie to identify corner and edge pieces and to sort those out first.

• Listen to frog sounds. Here is one of the sites we used: https://www.in.gov/dnr/kids/5914.htm. Evie found some of them quite hilarious. We also tried to imitate them. Hopefully the next time we are up at our property, we will be able to identify more of the frog calls around us. 

• We re-watched David Attenborough's (whom she inexplicably calls David Raisin) Fabulous Frogs. Evie said she wanted to watch "the documentary where the frog burps up babies." She found the Darwin Frog's method of parenting to be extremely entertaining, since the male carries the eggs in a throat sac as they hatch and develop. He then seemingly...burps the babies out. She's not wrong...

• Frog life cycle: We put up the life cycle of the frog on the playroom wall. Evie loves both using tape and putting up decorations. We put it right at eye level for her. 

• Frog coloring! We did frog coloring pages, dot to dot and tracing. 

• Catching frogs and toads: We found many on our property, including American toads, a wood frog, and a green frog. We caught each one, examined it, and then let it go. 

Bonus: Other finds at the property. A young Four-toed salamander. I took a picture of his bright white, speckled underbelly.

A green caterpillar. I believe it is either a Luna or Polyphemus moth. It's still quite small to tell (probably 2nd instar), so we are trying out maple, birch and oak leaves to see what it will eat.



We also found the biggest Red Velvet Mites I have ever seen!

Frogs and Toads: Part 1

After a two-week hiatus due to illness, we are back to our usual schedule of learning fun. We caught some tadpoles, and then naturally decided to find out more about frogs and toads. I have always loved catching amphibians, and it seems that my daughter also has this curiosity. 

We started off with many books surrounding our theme (fiction and nonfiction, as usual).

Books:

• Frog and Toad are Friends by Arnold Lobel
• Frog and Toad Together by Arnold Lobel
• Days with Frog and Toad by Arnold Lobel
• Frog and Toad All Year by Arnold Lobel
• Fantastic Frogs! by Fay Robinson
• Felix's Hat by Catherine Bancroft
• Life Cycles: Tadpole to Frog by Camilla de la Bedoyere
• Why Frogs are Wet by Judy Hawes
• Commander Toad and the Dis-Asteroid by Jane Yolen
• Poison Dart Frogs by Jennifer Owings Dewey

Activities:

• Experiment: Raising tadpoles. We caught some tadpoles from a small pond at my parent's house. My dad said he saw a very fat toad sitting by the water's edge, so we are guessing that they are American Toad tadpoles. Time will tell. Evie is very excited to witness their metamorphosis. We have seven of them. As they grow, we will feed them boiled spinach and lettuce until they are large enough to eat mosquito larvae. 

• Pretend play/ small world play: Sensory bin with glow-in-the-dark slime. I found some glow-in-the-dark slime at The Dollar Tree, as well as a bag of toy "reptiles," which included two plastic frogs along with the turtles, snakes, and lizards. I filled the bottom part of a storage container with water, added some twigs, bark, and dead leaves, and set a toy frog on top of the floating bark. Then I took some black beads (pony beads), and pushed them into the glob of slime to look like frog eggs. It didn't take long for the tannins to seep from the wood and turn the water orange, and then we emptied it. We will use the same tub to set up a habitat for the growing tadpoles. 

• Pretend play: lily pad hop. I cut out lily pad shapes from green construction paper, then labelled them with letters and numbers. I then used painter's tape to fix them to the floor. We then played a few hopscotch-style games with them, including one where I randomly called out a letter or number and she had to hop over to it. I used letters A-D and numbers 1-3. 

• Activity: Hunt for frogs and toads. We only found one frog, which was too fast for us to catch. I think it was a wood frog. But we also found an American Toad, which I caught and held for Evie to examine up close. We talked about the differences between frogs and toads. She held it for a moment before it jumped out of her hands, and then we watched it hop along the ground. 

Videos (both on Amazon Prime video)

• Nature: Fabulous Frogs narrated by David Attenborough  (this one was our favorite and we actually watched it twice)
• Show Me Science Biology: Understanding Frogs & Toads 

Birds: Part 4

Local birds and Birdwatching

To wrap up our unit on birds, we took a day trip up north to our property. Before that, though, we learned about the species to be found around us, to better be able to identify them in the wild. We sat and looked through field guides, examined specimens, and found a fun game to help us learn.


Books

• The Birds at My Barn by Kathleen Moeller
• Wild About Michigan Birds: For Bird Lovers of All Ages by Adele Porter
• My Spring Robin by Anne Rockwell
• Tico and the Golden Wings by Leo Lionni
• Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey

Activities

• Game: bird bingo. This was a lot of fun, and we played several rounds. It didn't hurt that the incentive for getting a bingo was an M&M. I found a very simple version online to print off for free, and used counters as markers. We could only print in black and white, so I added a little bit of color with crayons to make the birds easier to identify. Evie really liked the game, and I may use different versions of it for more subjects in the future. Here is the link to the game I found: http://www.freehomeschooldeals.com/free-backyard-birds-pack/

• Bird coloring pages. I went through our coloring books and pulled out all of the birds I could find, then we spent an hour coloring them together. 

• Craft: Pine cone feeders. In an effort to attract more birds to the vicinity of our windows, we decided to make some food offerings for them. I remembered the pine cone bird feeder craft from when I was little, and since you only need four things (pine cones, peanut butter, bird seed, and yarn), it was very simple to put together. The only difficult part was trying to stop Evie from eating all of the peanut butter before we could use it. We found pine cones right in our front yard, then brought them in and spread peanut butter all over them. Next, we rolled them in bird seed. I tied a piece of yarn to each of them so that we could hang them, then put them up on a little Japanese Maple in front of our bay windows. The cats have appreciated the resulting bird gatherings, as well. 

• Specimen examination. I gathered most of the bird-related specimens from my collection, and put them on the coffee table for Evie to look at, touch, and talk about. We have feathers, eggshells, a nest, and a couple of feet. We have a turkey foot and the foot of a goshawk. It was interesting to point out the differences between the feet while talking about how the birds obtain food. Evie liked seeing how sharp raptor talons really are. Looking only at the feet of a bird, it's really easy to picture them as the feet of a prehistoric animal. It's the scaly feet that really connect birds with dinosaurs in my mind. 

• Birdwatching at property. We piled into the car to drive up north and spend a day on our 63 acres! It was beautiful weather, and we saw quite a few birds. We looked for other species, too, of course. Here is a list of every species of note that we saw:

1. Turkey Vulture
2. Osprey
3. Crow
4. Robin
5. House Sparrow
6. Blue-Spotted Salamander

1. Four-Toed Salamander
2. Red-backed Salamander (both color morphs)
3. Eastern Newt Eft. This was by far our most exciting find. My father and I have been looking for one of these for years. It wasn't the bright red variety, but it was still very interesting. It was a brownish color with dark red spots and a bright yellow belly. My dad has all of the pictures, so i will not be posting one here, but I will provide a link to a page with more information about Eastern Newts. http://www.biokids.umich.edu/critters/Notophthalmus_viridescens/
4. Land Snail (we may or may not have brought two of them home...)

I'm especially thrilled with the salamanders that we found. I feel like it is getting harder and harder to find salamanders nowadays, and it makes me very protective of the populations that we have on our property. When we live up there, I may even start trying to monitor the population sizes. 

Video

The Secret Life of Birds