A 10 Year Old's Nature Notebook & maybe a rare find...

We've been going through our weekly Insect Study which happens most weeks regardless of whatever else we do or find in the nature department. This has been our special focus for a while and generally takes the form of me reading aloud from First Studies in Insect Life in Australasia by William Gillies (an old black & white book, ca 1920) while Benj & Moozle draw in their nature notebooks.

We've progressed from beetles to scale wing insects, and I've been reading from this lovely book below by Australian naturalist Densey Clyne, alongside Gillies' book, as it has wonderful photography.

 

Oh! pleasant, pleasant were the days,
The time, when, in our childish plays,
My sister Emmeline and I
Together chased the butterfly!
A very hunter did I rush
Upon the prey:--with leaps and spring
I followed on from brake to bush;
But she, God love her, feared to brush
The dust from off its wings.

William Wordsworth

What Bug is That? A guide to Australian insect families.

An interesting aspect of studying insects & other creepy crawlies: Medical entomology. Check out the tick section. They are scientifically classified as Acarina,  have eight legs so are not actually insects (which I didn't realise before) and belong to the same Order as mites. Early this year our cat had a Paralysis tick and we found him under a bush in the garden. We coaxed him out and noticed his back legs were partially paralysed so it was off to the vet for some antiserum. One of the boys tries to do a regular tick search - problematic at times if the cat's in one of his feral moods - to make sure we catch anything before it burrows in & starts trouble.

Like mother, like daughter...one of my notebook pages...

Moozle's notebook page...




Moozle has been 'experimenting' with making perfume & dyes with flowers from the garden. Estee Lauder & Lush started their beauty products in the kitchen...

Hibbertia (Guinea flower)

Maybe a rare find, Epacris purpurascens (Port Jackson Heath) flowering in late July

Stretching out a Week...

We don't usually follow the official school holidays except over Christmas and New Year but some of our regular activities such as dance lessons are suspended over the holidays between school terms which leaves us with some free time. Road traffic reduces dramatically during school holidays and with the combination of that and a reduced schedule we usually do some things we don't always get the time or inclination to do at other times.
We had a week's holiday a couple of weeks ago & I didn't want to have a complete break so soon after that, so I'm doing something that works well for us - ie. stretching our weekly schedule out over two weeks.
I printed each child's schedule at the beginning of the week. This is Benj's:

 

If there are certain things I want each of them to get done, those are given priority. Looking at the schedule above, I know that dictation and Jensen's probably won't get done but I'm fine with that.
I usually plan a few outings or catch up with family and friends during our 'extended week' and we
also make a time to meet my husband near his work and have lunch together. This was a priority so I made sure we did it earlier in the week.

Benj is reading through the poetry of George Herbert and he came across the following poem which intrigued him:

Paradise

I bless thee, Lord, because I GROW
Among thy trees, which in a ROW
To thee both fruit and order OW.

What open force, or hidden CHARM
Can blast my fruit, or bring  me HARM
While the inclosure is thine  ARM:

Inclose me still for fear I START.
Be to me rather sharp and TART,
Than let me want thy hand and ART.

When thou dost greater judgements SPARE,
And with thy knife but prune and PARE,
Even fruitful trees more fruitful ARE:

Such sharpness shows the sweetest FREND,
Such  cuttings  rather heal than REND,
And such beginning touch their END.

(The old spelling is retained in order to preserve Herbert's ingenious construction: furnishing new rhymes by the dropping of a single letter at a time - Albatross Book of Verse, edited by Louis Untermeyer)

I suggested he try writing a poem of his own using a similar construction. He managed the construction but had a hard time coming up with a serious poem! 

 Another priority was a bush walk. We've been doing regular nature study but hadn't had a good observing time outdoors. We went to a park a little way out of our area today that we hadn't visited in ages and found some interesting fish to draw and a bird we hadn't seen before.

Very well camouflaged...identification anyone?

A trip up to our local lookout...

Some climbing on the rocks & trees...

And then I read aloud in the warm afternoon sun, which we haven't experienced much of in recent times. 

When we got home, I had a look at the flowers I pressed a couple of weeks ago. They were nicely dried so I put them into my nature notebook.

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