Outdoor Hour Challenge Autumn Series-Pumpkins

Ah! on Thanksgiving day, when from East and from West, From North and from South come the pilgrim and guest, When the gray-haired New-Englander sees round his board The old broken lines of affection restored, When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more, And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before, What moistens the lip and brightens the eye? What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin pie? Oh, fruit loved of boyhood! the old days recalling, When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling, When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin, Glaring out through the dark with a candle within! When we laughed round the corn-heap, with hearts all in tune, Our chair a broad pumpkin - our lantern the moon, Telling tales of the fairy who travelled like, steam, In a pumpkin-shell coach, with two rats for her team! ~~J.G. Whittier from Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock

Once again, we're joining in with Barb over at Handbook of Nature Study! Our challenge was to:

You can either plan a field trip to a pumpkin field to observe pumpkin plants and pumpkins or you can purchase a pumpkin at the grocery and bring it home and complete this study with a real pumpkin. You could also plan on doing both!

Knowing this challenge was next this week, and Halloween was this week-end, we decided to head to a wonderfully new pumpkin patch to gather our pumpkins for the upcoming events! We had a great time, and with our "supplies" ready, we dove right in today!

Waiting patiently for the other kids...

Making observations...this was Rayzor's favorite nature study so far...

Seany digs right in while B-Rad looks on...

Collecting the seeds to clean and roast...

We were all surprised at how different Rayzor's pumpkin was on the inside, compared to the rest...

Mommy, what about me???

Seany works on cutting his Halloween placemat...

...while Ev colors his page...

All done! (See the funny gift bag from Aunt D in the background?!)

By: Rayzor "My pumpkin was really ripe and meaty."

Rayzor decided to cut up his pumpkin to cook and taste...

What would taste better...the pumpkin or the pumpkin butter???

Sampling the pumpkin butter...

Sampling the cooked pumpkin...

Joz thought the cooked pumpkin tasted like squash...

Rayzor cleaned and roasted the pumpkin seeds...

Learning the life cycle of the pumpkin...(Thanks Barb, for sharing your links!!!)

By: Joz "Creases up and down. Color: orange, bright orange. It feels a bit lighter without all of the seeds and gunky stuff. My pumpkin was full before I took everything out. Now it is wayyy lighter and emptier."

By: B-Rad "It sounds like a drum. The creases go up and down. The pumpkin butter tastes like pumpkin pie. My pumpkin sat on its bottom. My pumpkin is mostly empty."

After the kids recited the pumpkin poem, Joz colors hers...

After making their observations, Rayzor, Joz, and Seany decided to make their pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns...THE END

Halloween Recipes

The kids got a very thoughtful gift from a wonderful relative (thanks Aunt D!) and have been enjoying the gift bag full of bubbles, crayons, coloring books, glue gel pens, temporary halloween tattoos, pencils, activity books, and stamps. My two oldest have gotten the greatest enjoyment from the Halloween recipe book that was tucked into the bag. While we were out on Monday we stopped at the store and gathered our ingredients for a couple of the recipes. Joz picked Spooky Spiderweb Pizza:
She made this and another "regular" pizza and we had that for dinner Monday night! And Rayzor picked the dessert, Mud Sodas:
Yum!

Punkin Patch 2009

Looking at the sheep... We followed the "clues" around the farm.

They had these radio flyer wagons to collect your punkins. B-Rad insisted on pulling it and Ev wanted to ride in it.

Big Daddy

Still looking...

Here's a good one!

The End

Outdoor Hour Challenge Autumn Series-Oaks and Acorns

"Full in the midst of his own strength he
stands
Stretching his brawny arms and leafy
hands,
His shade protects the plains, his head
the hills commands." ~ Virgil (from Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock)

Yesterday we joined in again with Barb at Handbook of Nature Study for some more outdoor fun, this time studying oaks and acorns. It is easy to find both oaks and acorns here in Maryland. We decided to revisit "Bob" to see how he was doing and to study him a little closer than last time. The weather was beautiful and in the low 70's. This nature study took 2 days: yesterday to go outdoors and study, and today to do our leaf prints and sample our acorns!

Joz studies "Bob" from a nearby picnic table...

We figured out from our tree study that "Bob" is a white oak...

The boys collect leaves and acorns...

On to the playground...

Benny studies the acorns...

...a little too close...

Pirates!

By: Rayzor

By: B-Rad

By: Seany

By: Ev

By: Joz

We made leaf prints! We tried markers and water colors but the best results were made with the washable paints...

We read that in the white oak group that "the acorns have sweet kernels..." as opposed to the black oak group "the acorns have bitter kernels..." We decided to test our white oak...

We sampled the white oak acorns and thought they belonged in the black oak group...the results of our sample were bitter!

Sampling...

We decided to stick with our pistachios and almonds instead!

Here are their final leaf prints...

Looks like he's having second thoughts about the acorn sample...