Outdoor Hour Challenge. IV.

Here’s what I have learned to love about the weekly Outdoor Hour Challenge:

1.  My desire to complete a goal and write a post about it has encouraged me to be regular and routine in our Nature Hikes and Nature Notes.

2.  The kids look forward to Tuesday walks more than I do.

3.  The regular walks have been a great excuse to take weekly photos of the kids, the yard and our school progress.

Because I am joining the Outdoor Hour Challenge late in the game, I am currently working my way through the first ten “getting started” challenges before joining the challenges right where they are.

But I’m not going to lie – I’m pretty anxious to be right where the blog is instead of back in the “getting started” arena.

Mainly, I want to be right where the blog is because it’s more of a real-time experience for me.  A little more current and a little more real-time community with other homeschoolers doing the same projects.

And that is the reason why I again combined two challenges and on our walk the kids and I did both #5 and #6 on the same day.

I’m not saying everyone should do that.

(Who am I to say what everyone should do anyway?  And besides, even if I was so bold as to say what everyone should do – who’s going to listen?)

I really feel fine about combining a few of these topics because we have been having Nature Walks as long as we have been having homeschool.

The idea of Nature Walks is not new to me.

But the routine, regularity, focus and accountability of Nature Walks is new to me.

Challenge Number 5 is to keep a list of what we see on our walks that deals particularly with birds – our family’s current focus.

We have our lists in the back of our nature notebooks.  Some of the kids are better at remembering the details and adding to the lists on their own and some have to be encouraged.

But the part of this week’s challenge that I was most excited about was the collecting part.

Challenge #6 encouraged us to begin some collections inside the house of all we love outside the house.

In our former home we brought nature in as much as we could but it usually ended up all over the kitchen table.

Which meant – my tolerance for the pine cones and leaves and tree branches on our eating space was not all that high.

But in our new home we are blessed with a mantle in nearly every room.  And a lovely one in the school room just crying out for something natural.

This lesson was so timely for us, as well.  We had just been to a friend’s house and their family does a marvelous job of embracing nature inside their home.  Birds nests and rocks and tree branches are peeking out all over the place in perfectly decorative ways.

After the hike outside (which was on a nearly-balmy 70 degree day for goodness’ sake) we gathered our finds and spread them out across the table.

What we found was incredible.

Mosely was the champion of the day when she gingerly dislodged a deserted bird nest we’d had our eyes on since we moved in.

Forsythia was actually beginning to bloom.

Our yard is abundantly blessed with camellias in several colors.

And the kids were desperate to add a little red resin bird we picked up at a sweet bird store in Hendersonville.  (They named him Inver.)

Overall, it added up to a lovely display.

With plenty of room for more treasures each week.

I love that it brings our walks inside the school room.

And I love that the kids picked out their treasures and love seeing them on display.

I love that they are controlled and not escaping all over the table.

And we all agreed – the rule is – we can stuff the mantle full, but when it begins to overflow we have to replace the old with the new as we see fit.

I think, perhaps, this collecting assignment has been my favorite so far.