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Mary K
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| Posted: May 19 2010 at 5:46pm | IP Logged
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Hi Ladies,
My 10 yods and I are leading a book club on Rascal.
We hope to go outside; but if we can't, I was wondering if anyone has indoor nature study ideas that would appeal to boys around 10 years old.
Thanks and God bless,
Mary
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Angie Mc
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| Posted: May 19 2010 at 6:11pm | IP Logged
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Rascal - how fun! Here's a topic where I asked for help with indoor nature study....here's another one. Hope this helps, Mary!
I'm always looking for nature study ideas for when it is just tooooooooo hot to go outside. I look forward to others sharing ideas.
Love,
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Angie Mc
Maimeo to Henry! Dave's wife, mom to Mrs. Devin+Michael Pope, Aiden 20,Ian 17,John Paul 11,Catherine (heaven 6/07)
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JodieLyn
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terraniums or ant farms??
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Jodie, wife to Dave
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JodieLyn
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oh!! get a venus fly-trap 
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Jodie, wife to Dave
G-18, B-17, G-15, G-14, B-13, B-11, G-9, B-7, B-5, B-4
All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
-Sir Walter Scott
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Sarah
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I think trying to get outside is always best. But for inside stuff I would say get a Betta fish, plant some indoor plants under grow lights, get some cacti, petri dishes and make mold, sprout beans or sunflower seeds and study the sorts of a seed, raise a parakeet, inspect corners for cobweb weavers, dissolve yeast in a bowl and watch it expand then bake bread and look up fungi, taste different mushrooms, set up a bird feeder by a close window to watch indoors and identify the birds, do an apple taste test, cut up different types of fruits and berries and learn about them, learn the difference between fruits and vegetables and eat them, look at onion skins under a simple microscope as they are large and easily visible, learn all about eggs and test them for freshness by doing the water floating test, crack open the egg and learn the parts of it.
Best of luck.
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Six boys ages 16, 14, 11, 7, 5, 2 and one girl age 9
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Becky Parker
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How about bird feeders right outside a window. We have several and we've been able to observe not only birds, but chipmunks, 3 different types of squirrels, turkeys (yes, it was winter and I think they were really hungry) and even a pesky oppossum who kept stealing the suet! I've always wondered about the type that stick directly to the window. How cool if a bird would actually a next in one of those.
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Becky
Wife to Wes, Mom to 6 wonderful kids on Earth and 4 in Heaven!
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Mackfam
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Becky Parker wrote:
| How about bird feeders right outside a window. We have several and we've been able to observe not only birds, but chipmunks, 3 different types of squirrels, turkeys (yes, it was winter and I think they were really hungry) and even a pesky oppossum who kept stealing the suet! I've always wondered about the type that stick directly to the window. How cool if a bird would actually a next in one of those. |
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This is EXACTLY WHAT WE DO!!! We work very hard and invest a lot of gardening energy in making the gardens outside our window very attractive to a variety of wildlife. It has really paid off for us!
** Butterfly bushes are great for attracting butterflies.
** We found an oothecas (an egg case for Praying Mantis - it's a papery case in which about 300 Praying Mantis emerge from in early spring!) and moved it up to our honeysuckle trellis and watched an AMAZING number of Praying Mantis emerge - from the kitchen window!!
** We have purple martins nesting in the corner of our front porch.
** We adopted and hatched 11 skink eggs last year - and watched it all from our learning room window. (Edited to clarify...the eggs were found and had been disturbed from their original location so we took them in a last ditch effort to try to save them - we were so pleasantly surprised when 11 baby skinks emerged in front of our eyes!
It's been a process for us, but such a worthwhile one, to cultivate and encourage a wildlife-friendly garden space so that nature study during the super cold winter days and super humid hot summer days can take place from our windows. A great book for this is Attracting Backyard Wildlife by Bill Merilees.
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Jen Mackintosh
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lapazfarm
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| Posted: May 21 2010 at 1:38pm | IP Logged
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Sarah wrote:
I think trying to get outside is always best. But for inside stuff I would say get a Betta fish, plant some indoor plants under grow lights, get some cacti, petri dishes and make mold, sprout beans or sunflower seeds and study the sorts of a seed, raise a parakeet, inspect corners for cobweb weavers, dissolve yeast in a bowl and watch it expand then bake bread and look up fungi, taste different mushrooms, set up a bird feeder by a close window to watch indoors and identify the birds, do an apple taste test, cut up different types of fruits and berries and learn about them, learn the difference between fruits and vegetables and eat them, look at onion skins under a simple microscope as they are large and easily visible, learn all about eggs and test them for freshness by doing the water floating test, crack open the egg and learn the parts of it.
Best of luck. |
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What a great list! 
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Theresa
us-schooling in beautiful Fairbanks, Alaska.
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CandaceC
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Here are a few things we've done:
Learned about the cactus -- our cactus plant of course while reading books (roxaboxen) on desert, etc.
We did a Tabletop Garden that was a lot of fun -- one entry of table top garden, there are several more entries on our tabletop garden, we measured and charted the growth, lots of different things you could try. :)
Ant Farm (we had lots of fun watching these!)
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Candace - wife to David since 2000...mommy to Hannah (Feb. 2002), Emily (April 2003) and Caleb (March 2005)
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4Real Forums : Exploring God's Creation in Nature and Science
Topic: wanted: indoor nature study ideas
