Outdoor Hour Challenge #33

First of all for extra credit, we have an Oak Lane and a community named Maple Leaf.

Now that out of the way, our attempted study of oaks. I had always thought that our area had equal number of oaks and maples, I was sorely mistaken! We actually had a hard time finding multiple oaks to look at. In the end I was able to find several oaks in the white oak family and one in the black oak family. Princess easily picked up how to tell the difference between the two and for that I am grateful. Here's some of the acorns we collected, the top left one is from a black oak and it's already sprouted, princess thought that was really cool!

We ended up sitting down studying this bur oak tree...

We noted how the branches weren't all straight like a pine and how the light filtered through the tree. We also determined that the bur oak is part of the white oak family. We did bark and leaf rubbings for our nature journals. Here's what we did...

On the way back we ran across a public garden in which princess insisted on drawing several of the flowers. At first I wanted to say no because we still needed to find a few more oaks, right? But then I realized that the whole point is to get her interested in nature and if she wants to stop and draw flowers, it's ok! We don't have to study every oak in town. Thanks again Barb for giving me a framework for nature study and the freedom to let my daughter explore her interest in nature! Looking forward to next week!