A Horse of Course - Autumn OHC #3

I'm a little late with this one, but late is better then never.  And since my girls did all this work and loved watching, observing and looking for horses, I could not NOT write about it.

Over at the Handbook of Nature Study last weeks challenge was to study horses.  The great thing about this study is that where we live there is a horse stable about two tenths of a mile from our house.  We pass it many times a week.  That is not the only place where we see horses, but it is definitely the one we see the most.

A few weeks ago the farm added 3 new horses to their family.  We've been wanting to go up there and stop by, so this challenge gave us an 'excuse' for the walk.  (The farm also has some emus, donkeys, and goats, the later having actually escaped into our neighborhood to graze on our 'center area' in our neighborhood.)

So last Saturday as we passed by the farm we stopped and took a few pictures.  The horses actually came close so we got a few close up of the new ones.

Then earlier this week we downloaded a picture of the horses anatomy and a notebooking page and here's a picture of Ari working on them.

On Thursday, I took all the children for a quick stroll up the road to see these beautiful creatures.  At first they were all back by the stable.  Then one became a bit adventurous and came to observe us.  She even let me pet her (the girls were a bit scared, but did like getting such a closeup.  Here are some of her best shots.

Then later, I printed two different horse coloring sheets for the girls.  They really loved coloring them and after observing all the horses down the street they tried to make their horses on the page look the same or very similar to the horses at the farm.  Don't they look beautiful?  I think so.

Arianna also  wanted to figure out what 'type of horses' that the farm has.  We have concluded that they have at least one pinto - called the Tobiano a chestnut, a bay, and possibly a splashed white (which is also a subset of  the pinto, I think.)  We also were able to glimpse a few greys while driving to church last Sunday.

Part of the challenge was to compare the horse to another mammal like a dog.  We have two collies, so this was easy to do.  The girls have mentioned that they both use their tails for entirely different reasons.  Audrie told me that the horse uses her tail to swat away all the ugly flies that are bothering them.  Ari told me that our dogs were small compared to the horses and they had way more fur.  Here's a picture of our two dogs just so you can see them too.  They are resting in this picture - almost bedtime.

Well, we had fun and I hope you did too.  Be sure to check out the  Handbook of Nature Study and join in on the fun, get outside and observe nature.