Nature Study and School on the Road

Today we took a field trip to Tallulah Fall State Park and this is the Gorge. The park has an interpretive center, trails, and overlooks. Very beautiful and only 25 minutes from our house. We go here often for nature studies which is also what we did today. I planned a little road schooling while we were out. Grace read a book about Hares on the way to the park and a book about Medieval History on the way back. I also had her write some sentences including adjectives to describe what we saw and heard on our nature walk.

We are starting the Outdoor Challenges connected to The Handbook of Nature Study since we have already finished our science book for the year. The challenges advises picking a focus topic, and even though we studied birds with our science book last summer she wanted to do birds again. Here she is drawing her illustration of a cardinal for her first nature journal page.
The picture below she is looking out over the gorge to try and spot some bird activity.

We also spotted this beautiful young tree with really big leaves. We looked in our tree identification book and thought it was some type of maple but the park ranger told us it was a pin oak. But it doesn't look like the pics in our guide. Does anyone have any ideas?

After the park Grace went to her new volunteer program at the library. Today was her first day and she was kind of nervous. But once there she really enjoyed herself. She will just be going once a week for a hour. Today was some training and book shelf organizing.