The Green Hour Challenge
I have to thank Rebecca for this, she pointed out a fun challenge that I had not yet heard of but would love to join in. The Green Hour Challenge!
The Green Hour Challenge is a weekly challenge to get kids outside and interacting with nature. Every week a new challenge is issued with activities and reading for parents to do to get their kids outside and excited about nature. You can read the official explanation of it here along with the first week’s challenge. Every Friday the new challenge will be up along with a Mr. Linky at the bottom for you to share your posts. The challenge is already at week 5 but you are more than welcome to jump in now and join the fun, or go back to the beginning and take it one week at a time on your own schedule.
The only thing you will really need for this is a copy of Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock, which you can find in most libraries or online for fairly cheap. You can also access a PDF version for free. This book is a classic, one that every homeschooling family should have just for the fun of it.
I’ll be joining in and starting from the first challenge, so anyone keeping up will be ahead of me. But the most important part is getting outside and sharing nature with our kids. Every Friday I’ll share what we did here. Is anyone else joining in?
nature, outside, education, children
March 17th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
Oh yes! Thank you for posting this. We already have Ecojournal Wednesdays, in which we write about our nature experiences with the help of Toni Alberts wonderful seasonal Ecojournals… http://www.amazon.com/Kids-Winter-EcoJournal-Activities-Exploring/dp/0964074265 (here is winter, which we just finished with).
This challenge each week will be a perfect addition.
Your site has been a real blessing… I have been planning on making a homeschooling blog for next year and you have been a big inspiration.
Blessings,
Val
March 18th, 2008 at 7:17 am
Thanks for sharing the PDF file. We’re planning to incorporate nature studies in our homeschool lessons, too, and I’d been looking for a good resource. Unfortunately, the weather here is still inclement (we can’t even see our backyard in the fog today!) so we’ll have to hold off another couple of weeks.
March 18th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Oh they are WONDERFUL books. I have really enjoyed the little stories and the drawings are more than stunning… I am an art mama at heart. And I am teaching an artist. lol… she has been known to say things like;
“Mom, art is my LIFE. So I don’t need to do my math, because I can draw anything.”
Being only six, I still make her learn her numbers and subtraction etc, but, when looking for workbooks to implement into our days, we always look for the ones with the nicest real art in them. It has been a set back sometimes…
Ok, I’ve had too much coffee. lol…
Babbling aside, I have really enjoyed the addition of the Ecojournals to our weeks. We work on them on Wed and we often will do the projects that are in them as well as writing about our nature walks. They are being put in a book that we will be adding to according to season (meaning that this Spring will go with last Spring, not after this Winter. If that makes sense…) so we will see the different things the kids notice, year by year, but all in the same seasons. With the way the world is changing, it has already been very interesting and has brought up many conversations about the changes with my older (6th grade) child.
Blessings,
Val
March 22nd, 2008 at 8:46 am
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