Outdoor Hour Challenge: Petunia Flower Study

Outdoor Hour Challenge:
We have never had an official Petunia Outdoor Hour Challenge so this is going to be a fresh nature study experience for all of us. Petunias come in so many colors that there is sure to be one that attracts the attention of your children. Take a trip to the flower nursery and pick out a petunia to add to your garden or to plant in a pot.

Use Lesson 162 in the Handbook of Nature Study to learn more about your petunia. Read the introductory paragraphs and pick out a few facts to share with your children. Then, using the suggestions in the lesson, make some careful observations about your petunia. The notebook page below will be helpful in getting you started. Remember there is also a notebook page for garden flowers in this month's newsletter.

Here are a few ideas from the Handbook of Nature Study:

• #2 and #4Sketch or describe the flower.
• #6 Cut open a flower and describe its parts.
• #9 Describe the stems.
• #11 Describe the seed capsule. 

Printable Notebook Page for Petunias

Printable Petunia Nature Study Notebook Page

Getting Started Suggestion:
If you already own the Getting Started ebook, complete Outdoor Hour Challenge #2 - Using Your Words. Use this challenge to help you child come up with some words to describe their petunia flower. Record their thoughts on the accompanying notebook page.   



You are welcome to submit any of you blog Outdoor Hour Challenge blog entries to the Outdoor Hour Challenge Blog Carnival. Entries for the current month are due on 12/30/12.

Udi's Gluten Free Product of the Week: Pizza!

Pizza! Gluten Free Pizza!

Udi's Gluten Free won my approval when I tasted their gluten free pizza. I was skeptical because most gluten free products have a different texture but not the pizza! It is super duper good.

I love a good slice of pizza and both kinds that we have tried so far, the Pepperoni and the Margherita, are delicious! The other flavors available are Three Cheese and Spinach and Feta. There is also pizza crusts available so you can make your own specialty pizzas. You can view them all on Udi's: Pizza and Crust products.

This was something the whole family enjoyed and we will be serving it when our gluten free friends come to visit and enjoy a meal with us.

They are found in the frozen food section and this pizza is worth the slightly higher price.

Thumbs up all around for Udi's Gluten Free Pizza. My teens loved it!

Udi's provided free product for this review but no other compensation. You will always get my honest review. 

Garden Flowers Focus - Using Notebooking Pages

We have studied many of the garden flowers listed in the Handbook of Nature Study over the years. Using the simple ideas in each lesson make it enjoyable and memorable. For this challenge (Focus on Garden Flowers), we picked just two flowers to study more in-depth- Salvia and Petunias (which will be the star of the next OHC this Friday).

Guess what? We have never had salvia in our garden before so a trip to Home Depot was taken and we found several varieties of salvia to choose from. We picked this purple salvia which we are hoping will apply to the salvia in the Handbook of Nature Study. From the label we learned it needs a sunny spot (6 hours of sun) and water every other day. It blooms summer to fall and will grow to a height of 10-36".

I decided to plant my saliva in a pot so I won't forget to water it and so I can watch it grow and blossom and hopefully watch the bees in it. It is a perennial so I will eventually add it to the flower garden.

From the lesson in the Handbook of Nature Study (Lesson 161), we looked closely at the flowers, looking for the corolla-tubes, stamens, and anthers as described in the narrative. The bees apparently have to push their heads agains the inner arms of the stamesn to lift them which causes the anthers to leave a streak of pllen along the bee's fuzzy sides. The bees then have to crawl almost inside the tubes to get the nectar. I'm not sure that my variety of salvia will provide such a show but we will be watching.

I will be on the lookout for some Saliva as described in the Handbook of Nature Study so we can really get a good look. I printed the salvia notebook page from NotebookingPages.com's Wildflowers, Weeds, and Garden Flowers set.


While we were at Home Depot, I picked up some more seeds to plant in the garden. They had some larkspur seeds and I will plant those and use along with the lesson in the Handbook of Nature Study, hopefully later this summer. There were two other seeds that caught my eye and I will be planting those today along my fence-line- Hollyhocks and Black-Eyed Susans!

Our garden is all planted and I hope to get a garden entry done sometime in the next week to share all the lovely Renee's Garden seeds that we have tucked into their garden beds...just waiting!

I am an affiliate for NotebookingPages.com and highly recommend this set for your Wildflower, Weeds, and Garden Flowers study.

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