Nature Day

We belong to a local homeschool nature group. Once a month, they take a field trip. We just signed up in Januray and today we went on our second outing with them. It was fun and educational.

One highlight of our day was the Cypress Swamp. The first photo is of Alexandra taking a picture of the cypress trees. Her Aunt Conni had given her a disposable camera when we went to Kansas City and she still had some pictures on it.

I was interested in the cypress knees as I'd never seen cypress trees & knees before. I looked up cypress knees at wikipedia when I got home since I wanted to learn more about them. The knees are part of the roots. Their purpose is uncertain, but scientists think they might serve the purpose of getting oxygen to the roots of the tree. They also might be for stability.


The second picture is also of the Cypress Swamp. There were 2 trees with faces. Alexandra LOVED these!

Since we'd studied carniverous plants a couple of months ago, we were excited to see 2 different types of pitcher plants. We looked inside 2 of them and think we saw a bug at the bottom of each. It was really neat to see these growing at the edge of a pond!


I found an inchworm on one of the girls backs and the kids watched it and played with it for about 10 minutes. Alexandra wanted to measure it (I had a ruler in the back of a nature guide) to make sure it was an "inch"worm. It was 3/4 of an inch, so she figures it must have been a baby. The above picture is of some of the kids observing our "baby" inchworm.

We also got to watch 2 large bunnies. They were munching on something that must have been delicious because they hardly moved while all of us tried to watch them. And, we weren't the quitest group!

It was a beautiful day to be out. The temperature was in the low 80's with a slight breeze. It was overcast most of the day and the majority of the time we were walking in the shade of the trees. We can't wait for the next nature day, which won't be until next fall.