Digging in the Dirt

One of my favorite parts of homeschooling with my kids is nature study. I think I may get just as much, if not more, out of it than they do. Most of the time we sit outside and choose something to draw. Get up close and personal and draw it in a sketch book. Here are a couple of my favorite sketches from my book. 

Sometimes we go for walks, paying attention to what we see and hear and smell. Sometimes we just sit and birdwatch. This morning we identified a new species in the yard! That was super exciting. A very common, but new to us, brown thrasher. Sadly, he was too fast for me to get a picture. But he sat in the top of the tree (completely hidden) and sang for us for about 5 minutes.

And then there are the days - my favorite days - we get to play in the garden.
We are not very experienced gardeners, but we sure love playing in the dirt and have been working on cleaning up my parents' gardens - a rather large vegetable garden and a nice flower bed. Today we finished cleaning the weeds out of the flower bed and planted some new flowers! Pink dahlias, yellowy-orange pansies, and this pretty little purple flower that Chelsea picked out and I forget what it is called.

We met quite a few critters and worms as we went along. Both Chelsea and Zach have a particular fondness for worms, but the big winner this morning was definitely the toad. A cute, bumpy, little, brown toad.

He jumped out from under an overgrown leftover from last year and just sat in the middle of the garden while I recovered from the surprise of finding him (and being grateful I didn't skewer him while I was splitting that plant he was hiding under). Of course, I called the kids over and they were completely enthralled. We scooped him up and took turns holding him for a few minutes and then put him back under his plant. Come visit again, Mr. Toad! (I'll do my best to not let my inquisitive children scare/squish you to death with loves.)