Living where we do has had its good and bad qualities... one good thing is there is a lovely playground right out back! I can be in the kitchen, school room, or upstairs and see kiddo playing right out back. Right along the playground are a couple of plumeria trees. My daughter has brought me plumeria blossoms that have fallen so many times I can't even count. My son strung me a plumeria lei for Mother's Day this year. When the wind is blowing just right, you can smell the sweetness of the blossoms in the air, sometimes very strongly.

So this past Friday, the topic for our nature study was PLUMERIA. I simply assigned my DD to read a page in a Hawaii nature book on them, then go outside and observe and sketch.

I looked outside a bit later and yep.. still sketching. I was surprised actually so see where she had chosen to sketch (sitting on the playground, looking towards one of the trees.) It was such a nice day out, and I truly didn't have anything pressing to do so I grabbed my sketching supplies, camera, a towel to sit on and headed out with her.

I was further surprised to see her sketching the whole tree! (I had figured she's opt to sketch just a blossom or a leaf or something. But no, she went for the whole shebang!) So I took her lead and did so too.

Below our our attempts at capturing the specimen. Click for larger views.

My DD's pencil sketch colored with color pencils.

My pencil sketch, done up with water color pencils.

Writing ink is a Pigma Mircon pen in size #2.

And here is a picture of the actual tree we were sketching.

And a photo of my DD while she was sketching it

For more images of Plumeria, you can visit this site.

My DD still has to attach her drawing to a notebook page and write the details of it (common name, genus, species, date, etc) And, since she's played with those treese nearby for almost the last three years, I think I'm going to have her narrate memories of them (climbing, shady place to play, gecko watching, etc) and type it up for her to include on the page.