Wednesday Explorers Club ~ Leaf peeping

In some place the leaves have begun to turn. It's like a cosmic switch has flipped, and the green goes off and a leaf's true colors are revealed.

So this month - become a Leaf Peeper. Find a tree, or group of trees to watch. Make sure to take your journal/notebook/sketchbook with you and see what you can discover.

1. Do all the leaves on a tree turn the same color?
2. Do all the leaves on a tree turn color at the same time? If not, where does color begin?
3. How do your leaves fall? Are they the kind that fluttery-flap to the ground? Or do they whirl and twirk?
4. Somewhere I read that each leaf is unique, and those lower on a tree are a different size than those above. Try to collect lots of leaves from the same tree and compare them.
5. Make leaf rubbings, prints, tracings - a good way to collect data!
6. What stories do your leaves tell? Look at their scars, holes, nibbles.

Hawk Rising and Desert Animals

Hawk Rising
by Maria Gianferrari; illus. by Brian Floca
40 pages; ages 4-8
Roaring Brook Press, 2018

themes: animal families, birds

Father Hawk stretches wide his wings.
You stretch your arms as Mars rises red in the sky.

Dawn is breaking and hungry chicks are waiting for their breakfast. Father Hawk is on the hunt! But catching food is harder than we'd think - and there are other dangers facing hawks.

What I like about this book: The alternating viewpoint between the child ("you") and the hawk. The reality of being a predator in a hawk-eat-rodent world. I love Brian Floca's muted watercolor illustrations. I love the suspense: will the hawk nestlings get a meal?

And, of course (!) I like that there is back matter. More details on the lives of red-tailed hawks: where they live, how they fly, what they eat (just about anything!) and tips on spotting a red-tailed hawk. Maria also includes suggestions for further reading as well as websites for learning more.

Over on a Desert, Somewhere in the World
by Marianne Berkes; illus. by Jill Dubin
32 pages; ages 3-8
Dawn Publications, 2018

Over on the desert resting in the hot sun, lived a tall mother camel and her little calf one.

Set to the tune of a familiar children's song, Marianne introduces readers to ten desert animals: camels, gila monsters, javelinas ..... real hot weather critters. Each spread introduces a new animal family as the number of young increase one by one to reach ten.

So why pair this book with the one above? Because hidden in one of the desert scenes is a hawk! In fact, each spread has an animal hidden in plain sight in the arid scene, but you might not find it until your second - or third - reading.

What I like about this book: It offers a wonderful opportunity to sharpen observation skills, plus we learn about desert life. I like that there's a map on each page that shows where these animals live.

The other thing I like about this book - and indeed, all Dawn books, is the back matter. There's a half page on desert facts, a challenge to find the "hidden" animals scattered through the pages, and more information about each animal family featured in the book. Plus there are activities to try!

Beyond the book:

What kinds of hawks do you have flying around your neighborhood? Here's how to distinguish a red-tailed hawk from other species.

Go on a hunt with a hawk! Here's a video from a hawk cam.

Make a hawk mask - or a mask of a desert animal.  

Today we're joining the STEM Friday roundup - and we're also joining others over at Perfect Picture Book Friday, an event in which bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's site. She keeps an ever-growing list of Perfect Picture Books. Review ARC's from publishers.

Wednesday Explorers Club ~ Going to Seed

This year my purple coneflowers went to seed early. The runner beans have long pods drying in the sun. Sunflowers have disks filled with fat seeds set in spirals - and the birds have already discovered them! Milkweed pods are cracking open, leaving room for their seeds to take flight.

What kind of seeds do you find in your neighborhood? Some form sticky balls like burrs, that velcro to cat hair, socks, and sneaker laces. Some form parachutes, while other seed pods burst open, shooting seeds through the air. Go on a seed walk and draw pictures of some of the seedpods you find.

Who is collecting seeds? Around here, goldfinches cling to the tops of plants, pecking seeds from the centers. In some places ants collect grass seeds for the colony. What animals do you see collecting seeds?

Draw pictures of different kinds of seeds produced by plants in your neighborhood.