Exploration Day Pictures...9/7/2012

Friday was a beautiful day and perfect for our curriculum's instructions to "Go out and Explore God's Creation!" So we went...armed with "naked" crayons (giggle), blank paper, a ziplock bag and a camera. Our only requirements were to use our eyes to look for evidence of trees spreading seeds and then to find trees to do bark rubbings. Needless to say we found plenty of trees--finding them WITHOUT poison ivy wrapped around them was the main challenge! LOL! But we pulled rubbings from 4 trees and used them to make predictions about other trees on the property.

But we found REAL treasures in our exploration...here are our pictures!

 Stunning blue flowers--I have never seen them before on our property in all my 10 years here. I looked them up and they are Commelina erecta and native to Kentucky. Their common name is Widow's Tears or Dayflower. Gorgeous! I need to find a way to get them to grow closer to my house!

 These are all over in our creek and called Impatiens capensis--or Spotted Jewelweed. Very delicate and very beautiful with their orange!

 We have Morning Glory's growing along a chain link fence...here is a shot of the purple variety...love the maroon creases in the blossom.

 And the more common white ones...but look at those purple centers!!! I wish I could pick them and they would stay open!!!

 For the boys, the most exciting find was this perfectly intact insect skin. Little Britches was absolutely fascinated with it! He couldn't figure out how a bug could leave even his antennae behind! LOL! We carefully removed it and brought it home.

This week we are going to record all our findings in our science journals and then try to find a place to keep this great bug skin! LOL!