Simple Nature Study: Can you force a bud to bloom?

Here’s your Charlotte Mason Monday for this week…

If your family feeling a little cooped up? Starting to really anticipating warmer weather and signs of spring?

Here is a really simple nature study we enjoyed to infuse hope in our hearts that God always brings the springtime again. Here’s the question we asked:

“Can you force a bud to bloom?”

We wanted to find out if we could ‘trick a twig’ into believing it was spring time! All you need for this simple experiment is a few fresh branches or twigs from outdoors and a big jar of water!

We took a nice winter nature walk in search for promising buds to trick. These were from plants that had berries, were early blooming trees, or that had well pronounced buds. It was a frosty day, but we were hopeful that we could at least give a few little buds a taste of spring! We came home and organized our jars in the sunniest spot we could find, right by the back window in our ‘discovery room’.

And the answer?

Yes! As you can see, we definitely can force a bud to bloom and its really fun to watch and record what we are observing!

Consider keeping a chart or sketching each day in your sketchbook to keep track of the progress of you blooming bud!

We found the best ‘bloomers’ were smaller plants that tend to be some of the first to blossom in spring. Our branches from trees did not blossom as well as those taken from smaller bushes, plants, and vines.

Here are some of our Nature Journal sketches –