Nature Study: Mostly Mushrooms

"No science professor in any university, if he be a man of high attainment, hesitates to say to his pupils, 'I do not know,' if they ask for information beyond his knowledge...In nature-study any teacher can with honor say, 'I do not know.'"  -- Anna Botsford Comstock, Handbook of Nature Study 

When we began our nature study a couple of weeks ago, I was worried that the kids would grumble about going each week.  I thought that an hour would be more than enough time.  I never expected that we'd be running late to get back to music each week.  I never expected the kids to start begging to go as soon as the last bite of lunch was in their mouths.  I never expected us all to love it.


Our weekly nature study has quickly become a time that we all look forward to.  We may have to change it to a different day just so we'll have more time.  The lady at the visitor's center is proving to be a wonderful source of information.  This week she mentioned that we were there at the perfect time of day to see turtles in the creek.  She told us the best place to see them and the best way to approach so as not to scare them off.  I'm not sure we quite made it to the spot she was talking about.  We didn't see any turtles, but we had a wonderful time.


We saw no less than five different varieties of mushrooms.  It didn't occur to me until several days later to check to see what the Handbook of Nature Study had to say about mushrooms.  I just bought it over the summer and started using it when we do our nature study, so I'm not quite used to it yet.  I still haven't had a chance to sit down with the kids and the pictures and show them what I learned.  Soon, soon.

Apparently, the cap goes through several stages of shapes as the mushroom matures.  We saw some in the convex stage:

...the plane stage:

...and depressed:

The red ones were my favorites.  From what I can tell, they appear to be different stages of a red boletus mushroom.  If anyone knows for sure, I'd love to know.


We saw this beautiful fungus (it doesn't sound like those words should go together, but it really was pretty, don't you think?):

I think it is vericolor trametes bracket fungus.  I'm so glad that I can say, with honor, "I don't know." 


We walked across this bridge expecting to find another smooth, flat trail on the other side.

Instead, this trail went up the side of the mountain hill: 

We didn't explore it too far because we wanted to have time to sketch.  I got a great idea for our sketch books from Handbook of Nature Study on p. 14.  The student had drawn straight lines, at about a one inch margin, across the top, bottom and side of his nature journal.  This gave him a large center area for sketching, smaller areas for smaller sketches (such as animal tracks that he saw), and little boxes at the top where he could number and date the journal entry.

The kids wanted to use their whole pages, but I did mine like I saw in the book (No, I'm not very artistic.):

 

We sat at our favorite spot by the creek to sketch.  The kids all drew pictures of the creek.  It was so pleasant sitting beside the rushing water drawing together.  The kids were also thrilled to find these hinged shells still attached.

On the way back, we saw the biggest rabbit I have ever seen in the wild.  He let me get pretty close for a picture. A second one bounded away right in front of me.

 

I think we're all in agreement that the membership fee was the best $35 we've spent in awhile.  I look forward to many more nature study excursions with the kids this year.