Fall Nature Study

As I have been out of the practice of writing for quite some time, this will be a very short-winded post.

Of late, I find myself with all sorts of thoughts running through my head, but am unable to express them adequately; however, I do wish to try (again) at recording a few thoughts and happenings of our homeschool life on these pages.

For now I hope posting a few pictures will sufficiently express where my words fail me.

And where better to start than Nature Study?

some lichen with tiny inhabitants at the base of an elm tree

moth in our porch

a slug! can you see it? we thought it was a snail looking for a shell until I read that snails are born with shells and slugs are not. The Handbook of Nature Study is a wealth of information.

some amazingly beautiful mushrooms in our yard. and huge! how do we miss these things growing?!?

sketching the mushrooms

The Amazing World of Ants ... (and how to get rid of them!)

Ants aren't really something I get excited about... unless they are biting me or all over my kitchen counter (both of which have happened more times than I can count living here in the jungle!) But seriously, they have never captured my attention before until living where we are now... because our living room, kitchen & dining area are all basically "outside". So they pretty much come and go as they please: under the doors, through the screen windows and squeezing through the numerous cracks in our walls. And I never realized how many different KINDS of ants there are. Within the first week we were here, there was an ant crawling across our living room floor that was almost the size of Hubby's pinky finger!!! Conversely, there are your everyday "tickle" ants, as we call them (because they are so tiny, many times you don't notice them until you feel them tickling you as they crawl over your skin). Then there are regular fire ants that hurt like the dickins! And there are black ants in enough sizes that your toddler would be challenged in doing a Size Sort activity... According to National Geographic, ants are so prevalent in tropical forests that they may make up half of all the insects living in some areas!!! I can believe it.

The kids & I were outside having a snack one afternoon. Cutlet dropped a piece of cracker unknowingly, and within a matter of a minute or so, a team of ants had swarmed the cracker, hastily carrying it off like a miniature team of bandits with their stolen treasure. The kids & I decided to watch where they were taking it. (I was curious as to the location of their hide-out amidst all the grass in our yard).

It was a captivating sight... I was amazed at how they managed to finagle their way across tiny sticks, limbs and leaves, at times the ants dangling themselves as they desperately hung on to their loot. And of course they all worked diligently together to get it back to their nest.

(And did you know that an ant can lift or carry something more than 3 times their own weight?) ...

Which brings me to the well-known leaf-cutter ants. This may look like just a scattered batch of leaves, but beneath each leaf is a mighty leaf-cutter, transporting this small plant morsel to an underground city. 

According to Wikipedia, "next to humans, leafcutter ants form the largest and most complex animal societies on Earth," and " the central mound of their underground nests can grow to more than 30 metres (98 ft) across." Wow!

Even more interesting to me is the reason for all these leaves. These ants are actually cultivating their own little fungus farm. They feed this fungus with all the leaves they bring in, cultivate it, and feed the fungus to their larvae, and the adult ants feed off the leaf sap. The fungus needs the ants to stay alive, and the ants need the fungus... which, in scientific mumbo-jumbo, is called ant-fungus mutualism.

Well, as I mentioned previously, I've had more than my fair share of ant invasions all over my kitchen counter... enough to make me just about go nuts and start spanking them with a kitchen towel. So last year when my in-laws came for Christmas, my FIL hooked me up with my new secret weapon for killing those resilient insects. He found the solution here, and after I set it out, I was absolutely amazed at its result. I've put it out on 2 or 3 occasions since then... sometimes it seems to take a bit longer to have an effect, but I can vouch for it's effectiveness in the end. Of course some ant types may not be affected by this, so it's just a matter of trial and error. Either way, it's worth a shot!

In conclusion, I don't mean to belittle the importance of these tiny bugs. I do realize that God has created such an intricate, elaborate, awe-inspiring world. And there are SO many facets to the functioning of it. If we didn't have ants, I'm sure all sorts of natural processes would cease to work properly. Ants are a vital part of nature... I just don't care to have them as my house guests.

Our Jungle Apple Tree

The tree is in our front yard and is a great shade tree!

The pomarosa, or mamey (mah-may), as it's called in the jungle area of Peru, is something we had never heard of before until we moved here. The most common name is the Malay Apple due to the presumption that this fruit originated from Malaysia. After researching a little, it appears that this fruit is strictly tropical (not even being able to produce fruit in California or Florida) and is found all over the world with a number of different names.

Right now we are enjoying the sweet, juicy goodness of this interesting fruit, which is in the Myrtle family. It is a pear-shaped piece with very thin, deep red skin, and soft, white flesh you can easily sink your teeth into. It tastes somewhat like a pear... with a hint of floral essence. Yum.

And as you can also see, the tree itself is quite attractive with amazingly bright hot pink flowers.  The petals are stick-like and when they fall, the sheer quantity of them makes a beautiful natural carpet on the ground.

I Spy

The kids & I enjoy taking walks in the late afternoon from time to time. Lately I've been researching more about homeschooling methods and curriculum and have started to delve more into what the Charlotte Mason method involves. I don't know if this is just another one of my whims, but I am drawn to this teaching style for a number of reasons, one of which includes the study of nature and taking nature walks. So yesterday we went walkabout here and I decided to encourage the kids to observe more of their surroundings; hence the game "I Spy". I would notice something and say, for example, "I spy some bananas." As this was the first of a series of things, I had to help them a little to look up into the trees!

Then as we went along, they (mostly my ds) started to see more things that I was seeing...
Papayas...

Kumquats...

Cherries...

And even a wild mushroom growing out of a tree trunk! (which, by the way, today is MUCH bigger than it was yesterday!)

So the kids & I had a productive outing and we look forward to our next walk through the jungle...