Wild Hour #1

This is the first (and I hope of many more) of our Wild Hour report. We plan to work through the Outdoor Challenges laid out by Harmony-Art Mom at her blog site Handbook of Nature Study. (Read my previous post on Rethinking Nature Study to understand why and what I am doing)

Our task, in brief, for Outdoor Challenge #1 are as follows:
1. I am to read p1-8 of Handbook of Nature Study(HSN) and underline points that I agree with or is helpful to me.
2. Take a nature walk (10-15 min). Enjoy being outdoors. Come inside, sit the children down and ask them what they SAW. Examine whatever they have picked.
3. After the discussion, come up with 2 things to investigate further.
4. Refer to HNS myself on the items the children were interested in. Relate any interesting facts to the children sometime during the week.
5. Post an entry on my blog!

1. I am to read p1-8 of Handbook of Nature Study(HSN) and underline points that I agree with or is helpful to me.

Here are some phrases that struck a chord in me:

When we no longer care about anything except our own interests, we are then old, it matters not whether our years be twenty of eighty....

Nature study does not start out with the classification given in books, but in the end it builds up in the child's mind a classification which is based on fundamental knowledge; it is a classification like that evolved by the first naturalists, because it is built on careful personal observation of both form and life...

... it is safe to assume that the pupil's lack of interest in nature study is owing to a fault in the teacher's method. She may be trying to fill the child's mind with facts when she should be leading him to observe these for himself, which is a most entertaining occupation for the child...

It might be better to give it a regular period in the day, for there is strength and sureness in regularity...

The nature study lesson should be short and sharp... should not be repeated...


2. Take a nature walk (10-15 min). Enjoy being outdoors. Come inside, sit the children down and ask them what they SAW. Examine whatever they have picked.

We headed to Jurong Lake Park for our first "official" Wild Hour. I brought everything we needed to do bible devotion at the park as well. We were seated on a bench working through a day's worth of discussion in Our 24 Family Ways by Clay Clarkson. We had a hard time concentrating because we could catch glimpses of things waiting to be discovered! Nevertheless, we had a very fruitful Devotion Time before we tramp around the area.

Here is our little naturalist, perched triumphantly above the remains of a fallen tree. He was tracking an army of ants prior to this shot.



We were excited to see a monitor lizard, ...


... disgusted by this carcass of a dead fish ... (obviously a bottom dweller- Boys were making up all sort of hypothesis as to how this fish got out of the water and remained relatively intact...)


... intrigued to find a section of a bee hive (Smelled of honey!!! Collected this home of course!), ...


and amazed to spot quite a number of birds (more than what we saw at Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve!). Amongst those we saw were the cattle egret, common iora, and I think this one below seen circling above us is a type of kite.


While we were sitting on a bench discussing, B suddenly shrieked and said something wet just hit him on his head. On examining him closely, I realized that a bird has just pooped on his head! And that led him to ask with all sincerity the question, "Why don't birds wear underwear?!" :-D

We have surely been rewarded with lots to see! The irony of it all is that the boys ended up collecting two items that we couldn't identify!


We have already started the habit of drawing in our nature journal so we did that. We were not sure what it was. It looks like a pod to me. We have looked around and couldn't find another pod nearby. We have no idea which tree it fell from.

Here are my boys' drawings. (See my post on the StinkingToe for how I used this as an art lesson on watercolour pencil technique.)




3. After the discussion, come up with 2 things to investigate further.

We decided to find out the identity of the two fruits the boys collected. I was a little nervous about this as I was not sure I could identify them!!

I flipped through all my little Science Centre guidebooks and found a fruit that vaguely looks like one of the fruits we collected. It is from the West Indian Locust Tree. On researching more, I found other interesting bits of information about this tree and its fruit. (mostly from these two sites 1 and 2).

I will give my boys the pleasure of telling you what we found out. You may visit D's blog and B's blog for that. :-)

We will definitely want to look harder for the tree that bore this fruit the next time we go to the park. Thankfully, I found a good description of the rest of the tree.

We could not identify or investigate on the second fruit we collected. :-(

4. Refer to HNS myself on the items the children were interested in. Relate any interesting facts to the children sometime during the week.

I used the index in HNS and found and conducted Lesson 100 on The Honeycomb.

5. Post an entry on my blog!

Just did!