Winter Wednesday Week 1

We've had to postpone our Outdoor Challenges for a few months while winter's here, so instead we're working through the Winter Wednesday challenges on the Handbook of Nature Study blog.

This week we were supposed to look out for winter colours on our nature walk. It was a beautifully sunny day, with blue skies, but at minus 9 degrees Celsius it was just a little too cold for Charis, who cried and whined practically the whole time, while I ran round as quickly as I could taking photos of our trees for our tree study and looking out for things of colour. Fortunately Sophie enjoyed it, and Nathaniel was asleep the whole time in his pushchair. Sadly we found that one of our willow trees had fallen down and was broken into pieces. It was a really beautiful tree.

We tried really hard to spot some red berries but we couldn't see any. Instead there were greens on the fir trees, brown bark, a brown squirrel, blue sky, yellow sun, sparkly silvery snow, and some colourful birds - a green and red woodpecker, a great tit with a yellow tummy, and a brown and black female chaffinch. Later, at home, Sophie and Charis (who'd cheered up by then) filled in their colour charts:

Sophie's chart

At home we also started a winter window sill garden. We planted the tops of a carrot, a beetroot and (what I think is) a swede, and I also planted some basil and kale. The girls were quite excited about this. We're looking forward to seeing what's going to happen.

Outside we refilled the bird feeder and positioned it within sight of our schoolroom window. We know we have chaffinches and great tits in our garden, but I don't hold high hopes of seeing many birds because our dog Pepper keeps barking and chasing them away! Anyway, I feel a bit more hopeful about what we can focus our attentions on in our nature study times during these cold, winter months, when it's so hard to get all three kids outside for more than 30 mins or so at a time (not to mention the 30 mins it takes to get all three of them into snowsuits, boots, hats, scarves and gloves)!

Witnessing amazing events in creation, from the small to the large

Last week we noticed that the little brown hairy caterpillar that we put in a jam jar last June had finally hatched! After we captured it, it only spent a couple of weeks eating the leaves we gave it before it turned itself into a chrysalis at the bottom of the jar. It then stayed there for ages, and we didn't have much hope of seeing it turn into anything. But then, the other morning, I was dusting and noticed a white insect on the walls of the jar. It had turned into a beautiful White Ermine Moth. It really was very pretty - furry white with little black dots and a yellow abdomen. We had to release it in the garden, but we were worried about it because it's winter now. Perhaps it got confused in our warm house and came out too early. Still, the children were very excited to witness its miraculous transformation.

The second amazing event took place today. We were walking in the park at midday when we noticed there was a partial solar eclipse taking place! We hadn't seen the news for a while so weren't expecting it. It was quite cloudy so we were able to look at it long enough to see what it looked like. The moon was covering about half of the top of the sun, but the day didn't seem darker because of it. It lasted quite a long time. If only we'd had our camera! When we got home the girls drew a picture of it for our nature diary.

Becoming a Worshipper

For the last few weeks I've been working through Linda Dillow's book "Satisfy My Thirsty Soul: For I Am Desperate for Your Presence." She is writing for those of us who want to experience more of God and a more intimate relationship with Him, and her advice is that the way to do that is to focus on worship. This is an area I've found a little difficult: my prayers tend to be more of the 'Please can you do this and this' type than the 'Lord, You're amazing and we bow in Your presence' type. Early on she asks the question: Have we mixed up the order of the first and second commandment in Matthew 22v37-39? Are we first and foremost a lover of God or a worker for God? I had to be honest that I was actually the latter.

I'm excited to be working through the 12-week study guide connected with this book. Again I've been convicted that I should be spending more time in God's word, so one of my New Year's Resolutions is to read through the Bible in a year. I chose this reading plan because I liked the way it was broken up into different topics, which hopefully will help me avoid getting bogged down in Leviticus as usual and giving up on the whole thing. The Father seeks worshippers who will worship in the Spirit and in truth. Linda suggests that "To worship in truth is to worship truly. This means you must know God's word and be sincere." I'm also hoping to spend more time memorising Scripture.

I wanted to finish by sharing with you my answer to the question: What does face-to-face intimacy with God look like to me?:
   "Knowing wholeness, completeness in His presence. Feeling totally loved and understood. Hearing His voice and knowing what He wants me to do. Feeling uninhibited in my expression of love and adoration towards Him. Wanting to be with Him every second of every day. Feeling contentment, peace and knowing that I am in the centre of His will for my life. Having a wonderful purpose, joy, hope and zeal for life. Feeling unrushed, unhurried, calm. Sensing a greater love for others flow out of my love for Him. Knowing His power at work within me enabling me to accomplish all that He wants from me. Being able to lift every burden into His open arms and know His peace and assurance. Completely trusting in His goodness and faithfulness towards me."

If I come even a little bit closer to experiencing this in the next 12 months then 2011 will have been a good year :-)

Leisure by W.H.Davies

What is this life, if full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like stars at night.
No time to turn at Beauty; glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

Working at Believing

    We were doing a Bible Study at our church mums' group the other week about how our salvation is a gift from God which He wants us to receive gratefully but without feeling like we have to 'earn it back' or 'do something in return'. The culture in which we live here is a bit like that. At first we just thought people were extremely generous, bringing gifts of food and toys and clothing for the children whenever they came round; and they are very generous people, especially considering how little they have, I don't want to diminish that. However, it didn't take us long to realise that there was an expectation in return that, as part of their wider 'family', we would be there for them when they needed something, like borrowing money, or giving a lift in the car somewhere. God's gift of eternal life, however, has no strings attached, and there's nothing we could ever do to pay Him back for it.

    However, I digress. What struck me as I was reading the Scripture passages which talked about this subject was the implication that 'just believing' is also something you work for. Don't build on sand, build on rock. Don't store up treasures on earth, store up treasures in heaven. Don't work for food that spoils, work for food that lasts. Make every effort to be holy. 'Build', 'work', 'store', 'make' - they're all active verbs, not passive ones. What particularly struck me was in John 6:27-29 where Jesus says 'The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent'. Now maybe He was just drawing a comparison and I'm reading too much into it, but I did get to thinking that perhaps I need to 'work' harder at believing.

    There's a temptation to get a bit lazy about faith, and just have a 'let go and let God' attitude, but with any relationship, of course, our relationship with our Heavenly Father needs constant tending to if it's going to grow. I was challenged that afternoon to make more effort not just to get to know God better in my Quiet Times but to work harder at believing - believing that God is always present with me, in His character, in who Jesus is, in God's promises to me, in what He says about me...

    These past couple of weeks I've seen my early morning alone times with God as an absolute priority. I need to give more of my time and energy and effort if I'm to live a more joyful and abundant life in the Lord Jesus, which, ironically (and I love it that life in Jesus is filled with ironies like this) will mean that my normal daily life will seem less demanding on my time, energy and effort. I need to actively fill my thoughts with heavenly things and not earthly things during the day. I need to be more mindful of God's presence, more spontaneous in prayer and worship. These things are not natural to me, but I trust that as I work at them there will be great rewards. I have already seen rewards. It’s amazing how much more smoothly my day goes, how less irritating the children are, how much more time I seem to have on my hands if I’ve spent some time that morning worshipping and talking to God.

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 :-)

Outdoor Hour Challenge Week 5

It's been a while since we completed an outdoor hour challenge, but we haven't given up! We've had a month or so off homeschooling because of various travel commitments. However, I'm hoping it won't be too difficult to get back on track.

The children and I enjoyed a lovely nature study morning in our local park last Friday. We've been having wonderful weather for the last couple of weeks - around 20 degrees C and it's amazing to be out and about in just a t-shirt in mid-November. However, the trees are losing their leaves fast because winter is supposed to be on its way soon, so I thought this might be our last chance to collect any autumn leaves for craft purposes.

First stop was to check out Sophie and Charis's trees, and they'd both lost all their leaves:

Sophie's Ash tree

Charis's Hawthorn tree

We haven't started started our list of trees in our nature journal yet, but the first entries to go in will be Ash, Hawthorn, Sycamore, Lime, Crab Apple, Willow and Oak, since those are the trees we come across most often in the park. The kids had a lot of fun, and I'm so glad that they seem to be enjoying our nature study walks more than when we first started, although it's not every day they get to jump in huge piles of crunchy leaves! We picked up several leaves that we thought still looked pretty, although many were already dry and brittle. Sophie and Charis also had great fun collecting sticks and spotting a jay and a squirrel in the trees.

Back at home we tried to iron our leaves between sheets of wax paper and stick them on the windows. I'm sure there's a better way to do it, but it came out pretty well I think (the large red one is actually from our neighbours grape vine, which we spotted on the ground when we came back home):

Autumn leaves

We also used some of the leaves we'd collected to make greetings cards by covering them on the front of the card with clear laminate.

Sophie, who's a budding artist, has been voluntarily drawing lots of trees in her pictures recently. I don't know if it's got anything to do with our nature focus! She's getting pretty good at seeing how the branches come off the trunk. I asked her today if she'd like to draw one of the apple trees in our garden so that we could put the picture in our nature diary, which she did. As you can see, it's still hanging on to a few of its leaves:

Apple tree in our garden by Sophie aged 5