Simple Nature Experiment

I was listening to Mary Jo Tate’s Homeschool Channel interviews. There was an interview about nature. She talked about creating journals, taking nature walks etc. I started thinking about how to make that work for us. We have some significant problems with getting up and walking outside. We have mobility issues, heat/cold intolerance issues and the list goes on. BUT I truly believe that nature should be a vital part of our science learning.

I decided that I needed to just make a date with the outdoors! I bought several composition books and gave one to each child. My goal was to take the books with us while we walked and draw or measure or whatever sciency thing while we were walking. That didn’t work out. I ended up holding all the books and pencils two house down our road. So change up… We take a bag with us now. While we are out we can collect various items of nature to bring home and observe. NO neighbor’s flowers, or cats, and definitely not their dog!

Also I asked the kids to look closely and try to remember one thing on the walk down our road and back. Then try to draw what we are remembering in their book. Other things that go into the nature book pressed leaves, thoughts about the trip, anything outstanding or special that happened. I would like to have these and an ongoing project of our world.

Here is last week’s simple nature experiment:

My son found a white mushroom

We carefully brought is home, no shaking. Then I cut off the stem. A white or light colored mushroom goes on a dark paper a dark mushroom goes on light paper.

We carefully put it up for 24 hours. Make sure there are no fans, breezes etc.

The mushroom dropped it’s spores! It also dried tremendously overnight.

The process of dehydrating made it shrink leaving scraps in the spores.

Super simple and very easy to see the results!