Outdoor Hour Challenge Week 6

This week's challenge is to think about starting a collection. We already have a little cardboard box on our school table where we put all the things we collect on our nature walks - leaves, pine cones, acorns, pebbles, berries etc. The children love collecting things, and it's a habit now to pop things into the pocket at the back of the pushchair if they want to take them home. The other day carting home 4 large sticks (almost tree branches) was a bit of a problem, and I had to convince Hubbie that it was worth keeping them in the garden for the bbq for next summer :-)

I decided, since our focus is on trees, that we would collect photographs. The plan is to choose 10 different trees that we see regularly and to take a photo of them once a month (hopefully from roughly the same angle each time). At the end of 12 months we'll be able to print them all off and make an interesting display of how each tree has changed through the seasons.

We already have an ash tree and a hawthorn tree that we're keeping an eye on, so we've added a fir tree, a sycamore tree, an oak tree, a lime tree, a willow tree and a crab apple tree from the park, and also an apple tree and a plum tree from our garden (hopefully for some pretty blossom next spring!).

Here's the willow tree we chose in the end after lots of deliberation:

Willow Tree

On the way home we noticed a birds nest left in one of the trees that had lost all its leaves. We tried to think of which kinds of animals actually live (not just climb) in trees, and all we could come up with were birds and squirrels. Back at home Sophie found the chapter in 'The Adventures of Pip' by Enid Blyton (which is a fantastic nature book for little children) where Pip the Pixie learns about how birds build their nests.

Bird's nest

Maybe when we're more experienced students of nature we'll be able to identify which bird this nest belongs to :-)