The Lilting House Archive

Almost Time for Another Season of Project FeederWatch

When Scott and I moved out of our little 2nd-floor Queens apartment to a rental on Long Island with a real back yard, the first thing I did was buy a bird feeder. And when we moved to Virginia two years later, the box with the bird feeder was—I'm not kidding—the first one I unpacked.

I am nutty that way. We love to feed the birds.

We've been participating in Project FeederWatch since our very first Long Island winter, paying an annual $15 for the privilege of helping track bird populations in North America. It gives the kids experience with collecting and tabulating data, hones their powers of observation and perseverance, and provides our whole family with the immense joy of getting to know our local feathered friends. Even baby Rilla is part of the fun; standing at the patio door watching the birds is one of her favorite pastimes.

The new FeederWatch season begins November 10th, so if you're interested, flit on over and sign up!

Friday Morning Fire Update and Other Stuff

Well, I think the Union-Tribune sums up today's status nicely with this headline: "No new evacuations, but fires far from out." They have a very good update (with links) this morning if you'd like today's top fire stories.

Laurie at Sea Glass Hearts has a nice update too, as well as a thought-provoking look at what impact the fires are likely to have on the Diocese of San Diego. I urge all my Catholic friends to read her post—those of you who live outside this Diocese could certainly help with your prayers.

We ventured out of the house yesterday afternoon for the first time since Sunday. Our young friend had a birthday to celebrate, and it would take more than a little particulate matter in the air to thwart such important plans. The air was pretty clear in their neighborhood (though probably still not terribly healthy to breathe—"dangerous air quality" warnings are in effect all over the county. Here at home, our eyes and throats burn when we step outside to water the plants. At least, they did yesterday. I haven't been outside today.

After spending all week poring over San Diego County fire maps (Click to download a PDF of the county's latest version), it was a welcome change of pace this morning to visit the Journey South Monarch Butterfly Migration map. (Be sure to change the "Week Ending" date to October 31st for the most recent version of the map.) The monarchs are on their way south to their wintering ground in the little mountain town of Angangueo, Michoacan, Mexico. I have to say it gave me a little thrill to look at all those "monarchs were here" dots on the East Coast and know that some of those might have been "our" butterflies, thanks to Sarah, who made sure our milkweed lived on after our move.

IMAX Beavers: Thanks for the Tip

I've studded my Netflix queue with your suggestions, and the Beavers* movie a couple of you raved about sounded so intriguing we bumped it to the top of the list.

Whoa.

Stunning movie. The cinematography will knock your socks off. I kept thinking, this can't be real, it's like really good CGI...But it's real. Up close, delightfully personal, and captivating. Rose and Beanie watched the movie three times, I think. (It isn't very long, alas.) And I snuck in an encore viewing myself—I couldn't resist showing it to Scott, you see.

There were beavers on the undeveloped land surrounding our old neighborhood; they had a big lodge downstream of the place the kids called the Rock Store, named after a splashy afternoon spent collecting and displaying stony wares on a big flat boulder where the creek ran wide.  To get to the Rock Store, you had to hike through a field that had once been young woods. The beavers had turned it to meadow, and we marveled at the stubby, pointy tree trunks left behind, so exactly like pictures we'd seen in books.

As the creek wended its way toward the marshy basin where a bald eagle was rumored to fish, it gurgled past trees whose lower trunks had been wrapped with chicken wire: the attempt of a concerned neighbor to save our woods from the enterprising beaver clan. Undaunted, the beavers turned their attention to a location half a mile away, where slender trees shaded the small pond that welcomes people into the neighborhood. One by one, those trees began to topple.

The film's narrator remarked that after humans, beavers wreak more change upon the landscape than any other animal.

They dance, too; did you know that?

Excellent tip, ladies. I hadn't realized you could get IMAX films on DVD—you can bet we'll be checking out a good many more. The whales movie, for starters...

*Link added per Brigid's request...always happy to oblige our Brigid!

Her Blog May Be Green, But I'M the One with Envy

Theresa of Lapaz Farm is in Alaska, which is soon to be her new home. Have you seen her Nature List in the sidebar? Among the species she has spotted so far: three kinds of whale. Awesome.

Now come on, woman, get those pictures uploaded!

Must Get Milkweed, Stat!

I just read the latest Journey North Monarch Migration update:

Right Now... Monarchs Are on the Move!

It's too early for spring migration, but the butterfly colonies are moving now. The butterflies are spreading down the arroyos  (streambeds) in search of water. Mexico is nearly 5 months into the dry season now, and water is scarce. These early signs of colony break-up mean the wintering season is coming to a close—and  the journey north will soon begin!

And it struck me (this keeps on striking me, and will take us all a while to get used to) that OH THAT'S RIGHT, WE ARE IN SAN DIEGO NOW, and Mexico is about fifteen minutes away. Not that the monarchs' wintering spot is right near our border, but still...we are so much farther south now, it won't be long before those butterflies will be passing through here, looking for a place to lay their eggs.

We filled our Virginia garden with milkweed and were dazzlingly rewarded. Looks like I'd better start scouting out a west coast source.

(You Easterners can find everything you need at ButterflyBushes.com.)

It Isn't All Sunshine and Roses (At Least Not on Paper)

I've been writing a lot lately about the aspects of the Charlotte Mason method that work so very well for us here in the Lilting House. Today I thought I would balance that by talking about the pieces that aren't exactly clicking perfectly here at the moment.

You know what isn't happening? Nature notebooks. One of my new California friends, upon hearing that I'm this huge CM enthusiast, said she can't wait to see our nature journals. I had to laugh. There isn't much to see. Jane and I started off great guns when she was, oh, maybe four years old. Her first journal contains charming if barely decipherable drawings of garden flowers, beach treasures, and neighborhood leaves. We glued in some pressed pansies, which are now crumbling out of the book.

It was a fine beginning, and a beginning is all it was. Fully half of the pages are blank.

A year or two later, we started afresh, this time in the manner described in Karen Andreola's Pocketful of Pinecones. We got one of those composition books with the black-and-white covers, and Jane began carrying a clipboard with drawing paper on our walks. Her drawings were cut to size and pasted into the book, labeled, and then (if I made her) she might copy a short poem on the facing page. Again, charming pages—all six of them.

Oh, we have started afresh a time or two since then. I am a great one for fresh starts. And of course Beanie and Rose acquired their own journals along the way. I found the latest batch yesterday, the ones we were working on in Virginia, before we moved. Way before. The most recent drawings were labeled "April 2005."

Hmm.

Despite this inconsistent and unimpressive record, I have spent some six years now blithely thinking of "nature journals" as one of the defining factors of our family experience. Living books, narrations, deep discussions, and nature journals: I am sure I have rattled this list off a thousand times when people ask questions about how we homeschool. I didn't mean to be deceptive. Mainly I was fooling myself: that comfy knowledge that we have done it sometimes translated into an airy conception of this is something we do.

(We really DO do the rest of the list, I am relieved to be able to say!)

What was happening was the muddling-together in my mind of nature study and nature journaling. Nature study is a regular daily occurrence around here. Hardly a day passes in which we are not observing and discussing and looking up various flora and fauna. We are passionately interested in birds; we get giddy about growing things; we run for the magnifying glass when a strange six-legged beastie shows up in the backyard, the butterfly net, or (in a shuddersome stretch of days some time ago, which I do not ever care to revisit) on someone's head.

But here we are, in a new environment, making the freshest of fresh starts; and this time, we're going to get serious about our nature journals. We are all agreed upon this. Yesterday we hunted up all our supplies and arranged them neatly in the patio room where they can be snatched up on a daily basis. Daily! All right, every-other-day-ly! Or weekly! I'll settle for "often"!

We are all excited, the girls and I. But enthusiasm does not equal perseverance, so I shall rely upon my gentle readers for some accountability-assistance. Ask me in a month or two how our nature notebooks are coming along, and if I don't answer, you may interpret that as a blush.

To aid us in our new endeavor, we shall keep in mind the guidelines for nature journaling which Miss Mason herself laid out. At the extremely useful website called Charlotte's Daughters, a generous CM enthusiast has typed out some actual PNEU syllabi. These make fascinating reads for a number of reasons, and I will be referring to them often in days to come. For now, I want simply to focus on the nature-journaling aspect of these programmes. The science section of each level includes instructions for students to "find and describe" various natural objects and creatures: for example, six-year-olds are to find

6 wild fruits
6 twigs of trees
6 wild flowers
 
Watch, if possible, and describe 30 birds and 15 other animals.

and to "keep a nature notebook." The syllabus does  not elaborate on what that means (presumably it was explained in other accompanying materials), but farther down the page we find instructions for the year's drawing lessons:

Drawing and painting
 
Pencils should not be much used.
 
1.    Observation
 
In season, in brush painting or in pastel, draw
 
6 wild fruits or berries, and autumn leaves
6 twigs of trees, especially with buds or catkins
6 wild flowers
 
Draw or paint 18 animals that the child has been able to watch.
 
Draw and paint occasionally from memory.
 
2.    Technique
 
"Children should have exercises in brush strokes and should paint freely on large sheets of ... paper ... They should draw with brush, crayon, charcoal, or blackboard chalks. ... Avoid pencil outlines filled in with colour."
 
Simple flat color washes of shapes or clouds, sunsets, the sea, etc.
 
3.    Imaginative work
 
Pictures of people or scenes read about in Literature
 
Christmas, Easter, birthday, and other greeting cards

This is for the first-year students, remember, about age six, and is an overview of the goals for the whole school year. I imagine a great deal of this happens spontaneously in most homeschools...but it is nice to have as a frame of reference, don't you think? Especially in regard to the nature journals.

Drawing goals for eleven-year-old PNEU students (Year 6) were similar: over the course of the year, draw

6 wild fruits or berries, and autumn leaves
6 twigs of trees, especially with buds or catkins
6 wild flowers

18 studies of animals that the child has been able to watch.

Draw from memory.

And (under Science)

Make special studies for the season with drawings and notes, e.g.,
 
        seed dispersal
        twigs, seedlings, etc.
        learn the songs of 6 birds
        visits of insects to plants
        wild flowers that grow together.

Our pencils are sharpened. (Never mind that "pencils should not be much used.") Our most recent half-filled notebooks are ready and waiting. Our trusty Prismacolor pencils are handily arranged. We have the will; we have the way; now all that remains is to do.

Speaking of Migrations: Project FeederWatch

This is the first year in seven years that my kids and I haven't signed up for Project FeederWatch, a birdwatching-and-counting program sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. In New York and Virginia, we spent every winter spying on chickadees and juncoes out our kitchen windows. In fact, when we moved to Virginia in January of 2002, the very first box I unpacked was the one marked BIRD FEEDERS.

This year, I figured we were too busy settling into the new California life (after all, at the time of that last move, there were just three tiny girls to keep track of), so I let the FeederWatch deadline come and go. Besides, our Eastern Birds poster won't help us here in the land of scrub jays and parrots.

But I woke up this morning missing the fun of our Counting Days, and I popped over to the FeederWatch site to see if it's too late to join the project this year. Turns out you can sign up through February 28. And this year, it appears the good folks at Cornell Lab have tumbled to watch a fantastic match Project FeederWatch is with homeschoolers. They now have a whole page devoted to the connection.

Your $15 registration fee gets you a nice little package of materials:

1. Welcome Letter
2. Instruction Booklet
3. FeederWatcher's Handbook, full of information on birds and bird feeding
4. Full-color poster of common feeder birds with paintings by noted bird artist, Larry McQueen
5. Bird Watching Days Calendar, to help you keep track of your Count Days
6. Data forms—ten Count Forms for your region, one for each Count Period, and one Count Site Description Form
7. Envelope for returning data forms to FeederWatch

(You can also eschew the paper data forms and submit your data online instead. You'll still get the handbook, poster, and calendar.)

Like Journey North, this project is a wonderful way to bring living science (not to mention math!) into your home and homeschool.

The Whales Are on the Move

Journey North reports:

As you sit in your cozy classrooms today, where are the California gray whales? Are you surprised to learn that many are still plowing south on their 5,000 to 6,000-mile swim from Alaska to Mexico? But most gray whales are in the warm Mexican lagoons right now.

Going on a whale watch is one of the top items on our list of things to do in San Diego. We missed the boat, so to speak, last month, but we're on board next year for sure.

What migrations do your families get jazzed about? In the east, we loved watching for the juncoes every winter and (of course) the monarchs in the summer. We had a nesting pair of bluebirds in a box under our deck; every year they delighted us by raising a small brood outside my office window. Here, it's the parrot flock that delights us, whirling above our street in their noisy green throng. They live here year-round, I believe, the descendants of long-ago escapees. One of these days I'll get a picture.

From bluebirds and juncoes to parrots and whales! Talk about a wild year!

I Hate to Have to Tell You This

Herodotus is no more.

At least he didn't suffer Herod's gruesome fate. He just simply stopped munching. We don't know why.

This hasn't been our year for butterflies.

And there are no signs of life from the caterpillar-husk we thought The Monster was pupating inside, nor any other indication that the ravenous worm-thing exists in any form.

Perplexing.

All Is Quiet on the Butterfly Front

After all the excitement last week, the past few days have been positively anticlimactic. And yet the suspense remains. Herodotus continues to chomp his greens, but...he isn't growing. He has been the same smallish size for four or five days. Homer got big and fat very quickly, growing noticeably larger day by day until the day he fastened himself to the twig—the last happy day of his life, we melodramatic types are wont to call it.

Herodotus eats for much of the day, but he isn't plumping up. The words failure to thrive whisper themselves in the back of my mind...

We wait and wait, and we'll see.

Meanwhile, there is still no sign of The Monster, in any form. I've tried to find out how long his pupa stage might last, for surely that's where he's gone, right? If he has indeed made a cocoon of Homer's body, it can't be much longer now before he emerges as an adult wasp.

More waiting and seeing!