When preparing for our year long object studies one of the accounts that I spent time studying was Leah from High Garden Tea. Her Instagram is full of helpful recipes and foraging ideas throughout the year. When I was planning out what we would study for February I was a little stumped because so much of the local flora is dormant in this cold wintertime.
I saw Leah’s post about thyme and dry Italian seasoning for winter colds and knew that would be the perfect activity for our nature study this month! Not only would it be super easy to gather some store bought Italian seasoning for a sinus steam bath, but we could also spend time talking about the botany of plants in the thyme family such as oregano, rosemary, sage, and mint.
I happened to have an oregano plant as one of my houseplants so I brought that with me to talk about the aromatic properties and healing properties of plants in the Lamiaceae plant family. One of the coolest traits of the plants in this family is that they have square stems! We were fortunate that the park where we met has a lot of catnip growing (another plant in the Lamiaceae family) so we could observe the square stem on this plant as well as my oregano plant. And now that the weather is warming up a bit, a BUNCH of henbit and purple deadnettle can be found everywhere – another square stem plant!
The steam bath was a fun experience for everyone, although not everyone liked the smell! Some said it smelled like bug spray, some said it smelled like household cleaner! That is all so true since many natural household cleaners include thyme for it’s antifungal and antibacterial properties! And many natural bug spray ingredients are made from the Lamiaceae family like lemongrass, oregano, and rosemary!
After we did our nature journaling which included these three important usages for thyme:
- Tea is used as medicine to treat the common cold – drink and use as a steam bath
- Salve and infused oil treats skin problems like acne
- Essential oil from thyme can be used as a disinfectant and cleaner
(This post has more information about the plant and other medicinal properties)
We went out looking for square stems and also enjoyed a Valentine exchange since our nature date ended up landing on February 14th!
Nature is my favorite and I’m so glad we were able to spend Valentine’s Day outside on a beautiful winter morning. I read a cute nature Valentine story called The Bird’s Valentine after we had a fun Valentine folk dance! (And I love this thyme Valentine idea!)
To see more nature object lessons we have done with our group, visit the page here with a full list of lessons and classes we’ve held in our homeschool community!
KIND + CULTIVATED 