We had plenty of opportunities to observe clouds in the past few days. It has been really cloudy and wet...only a few breaks in the weather where we were able to get outside and breathe some air. I tried to enjoy the rain but it really did just bum me out. I was really glad that this week's challenge was to pull out some art supplies and make a watercolor entry for the weather in my nature journal.
I collected some water for my watercolor project from the rain gauge. Now that I had my supplies ready I was anxious about actually watercoloring in my journal so I decided to make the painting on a separate sheet of paper and then add the painting to my journal with tape.
I played with my gray watercolor pencil before starting the actual artwork, experimenting with different methods of applying the color to the paper. You should try this if you have a few minutes just to see how different the effects are on your artwork.
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If you are interested in this sort of thing, here are the options I used.- Left box: Use the pencil to draw the square, then apply water with a brush.
- Middle box: Dip the tip of the watercolor pencil in water, draw the square.
- Right box: Use a wet brush on the pencil tip, apply to paper.
Creating a journal page always cheers me up! Between the journal page and taking advantage of the breaks in the rain to get outside, I was starting to feel not so blah.
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One morning we woke to actual sunshine and we decided to take a hike to see our neighborhood waterfall. Kona loves this trail since we can let her off leash. She runs ahead and finds something interesting to sniff, following the scent until she detects another trail to follow. She definitely enjoyed the opportunity to get outside and stretch her legs alongside us on the trail. .JPG)
We were rewarded for our hiking efforts with the rushing sound of water coming down the hill and over the rocks. We took a few minutes to just enjoy the moment and then we all headed back up the hill, just in time for the rains to return. I realized that without the rain we would have had no waterfall to hike to.....sometimes we need to be reminded of the benefits of all that wet weather. This will wind down our weather study for the month. Just for fun, I will be keeping our rainfall records as we move through January. We might get a dusting of snow later this week which would be the perfect way to wind up the month. If you currently have snowy conditions, remember that there are quite a few snow challenges here on the Handbook of Nature Study up on the Winter tab.
The highlight of 2012 was traveling to upstate New York to 
I love making goals and then seeing them achieved...but honestly, I love the journey as much as the achievement. Especially when it comes to nature study, always having a goal or focus helps make things happen. The Outdoor Hour Challenge is really just a way of breaking nature study goals down into weekly steps. Each challenge gives us a way to focus for a few minutes with our children on something that could easily be skipped if we aren't careful.
