Keeping on...Nature Study in October

Celeste had an optional prompt for this month's Keeping link-up:

What part of Keeping do you find the biggest challenge--either personally or in encouraging Keeping habits in your children?  What part do you find the most enjoyable?  And further, for those that have been Keeping for a while now: what is the biggest benefit you have found to your Keeping over the years?  What has been the hardest habit to form or maintain long-term?

Here are some of my thoughts on this:

The biggest challenge - this was probably establishing a regular habit in the first place and in the second keeping up the habit when my children didn't express enthusiasm. 

Most enjoyable - in Nature Keeping, my own growth in this area; seeing my children develop their own sense of wonder outside of our 'assigned' nature study; my youngest daughter wanting to do everything she has seen her older siblings doing in this area.

Biggest benefit - the pleasure my older children have in looking back over some of their notebooks; the record I have of the way books have impacted me in my reading (from my Commonplace); reading the quotes Benj writes in his Commonplace book.  

Hardest habit to form or maintain long-term - this has been different for everyone. If I check and require them to do something, write it on their schedules, it makes all the difference & they know I'm serious about it.

 

My 20 year old son took this photo during his lunch break at work. So good to know that he still does his nature study!

Moozle's painting of a freesia done in her free time. A few times recently she's called me outside to show me a bee getting its nectar - we read about this about a month ago in The Story Book of Science.

Benj found this little fellow when he was doing his Saturday morning outside jobs. I was out shopping but he took a photo and told me about it when I got home. It was still in the garden waste bin and when I tried to get him out he leaped out of reach. I was amazed at the length of his legs compared to the rest of him.

I used this opportunity to read William Gillies' & Robert Hall's book, Nature Study in Australia  section on frogs. We've done this previously but Moozle was fairly young. The Green Stream Frog (Litoria phyllochroa), also known as the Green Leaf Tree Frog & the Leaf Green Tree Frog! is a regular visitor around here but difficult to spot at times as he blends in so well with all the greenery.

 

Benj's Nature Notebook

A nasturtium plant I grew from a cutting which I thought had died but has resurrected itself

Australian parrot, the Galah, Eolophus roseicapillus. I was surprised to find that they have been  known to breed with other members of the cockatoo family, such as the Sulphur-crested cockatoo. Now that would produce an interesting looking offspring. Interesting that we only rarely see these birds in our valley but if we go up the road a bit they are there in abundance.

A spring onion gone to seed...can you tell growing veges is not my forte? At least we got some nature study out of it. Fascinating...like something out of The Day of the Triffids.

I mentioned in a recent post that I've just finished reading The Keeper of the Bees by Gene Stratton-Porter. If you need a push to get outside and soak up the beauty of the natural world, get a hold of one of her books. They always inspire me to actually get up and get out - even in the middle of a chapter.

'To the extent of my brain power I realize Your presence, and all it is in me to comprehend of Your power. Help me to learn, even this late, the lessons of Your wonderful creations. Help me to unshackle and expand my soul to the fullest realization of Your wonders. Almighty God, make me bigger, make me broader!” 

Mrs Comstock's prayer in Chapter 15 of A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter