Our study of pine trees and evergreens sort of spread out over our other nature studies this winter. We noticed the green in the snow during our winter weather study. Some sketched pines for our Tree Silhouette study. I guess you could say evergreens were the ‘backdrop’ study of our other winter outdoor hours.
And we paid attention when we went to Mama Ann’s because she has a yard full of evergreens.
Plus, I count her wonderful carpet of moss as evergreen, even though it’s not a tree.
The children sketched on notebook pages and we took a look at deciduous versus evergreens in our Answers in Genesis: God’s Design for Life.
We collected a few pine cones on walks for our other studies. They are abundant in the side yard under the tall Georgia pines.
But we also added a new evergreen to our studies. We looked closely at the Southern magnolia. It’s tree branches are used for decoration at Christmas. It’s fragrant blossoms were scattered about at mine and Hodgepodgedad’s June wedding. The magnolia just might have to be our new, year-round tree study.
So, this week, when all the children were hit with sickness, we enjoyed looking through our photos and talking about what we have learned about evergreens.
Early on this week we also enjoyed counting the birds perched in the evergreen trees as part of the Great Backyard Bird Count!
Oh, we also noticed the variety of pine cones on the latest stamps 🙂
Plus, this week we’ve been cheered by crocus and jonquil!
Thank you so much for a glimpse into how the evergreen has been a part of your winter nature study. We just cut down our magnolia tree….messy beast of a tree in our front yard that I couldn’t take anymore. (Did I just say that?) I love the tree but it drove me nuts dropping leaves year-round, cones, seeds, and blossoms. Our tree was twice as tall as our house so it had a lot to be messy with. 🙂
We replaced the magnolia with a beautiful new pick dogwood…a deciduous tree that will drop its leaves all at once and we can pick them up and be done with them. My time can spent elsewhere now instead of forever sweeping and raking up after the magnolia. I look forward to watching your new year-long study and seeing how your tree compares to the one we had.
Thank you for listening to my little whine about trees and for sharing your evergreen study with the OHC.
We need to do a pastel study on the wonderful Georgia pines! Loved this post!
Forever,
Nana
Barb – you feel about magnolia like I do about the invasive mimosas in our backyard! I do understand. We are deciding if we want to do a year long study on the magnolia at the front of the neighborhood (not in our yard 🙂 ) or on the river birch in the backyard.
Nana, yes we do! Would love it!
I love how you noticed the stamps! I also love that you did the Magnolia….an evergreen that we don’t think of because it doesn’t have needles!