The gentle art of Nature Study

Sometimes a serious reevaluation of things are necessary.  People go through ‘Spring cleaning’ phases where they declutter down to the things they love and get rid of those things that are not useful anymore.  Well I am doing that with homeschooling, time, and priorities right now.  In the last few weeks I have been reading a few homeschooling resources that feature Charlotte Mason Education.  Since literature and poetry are a focus of mine anyway, these ideas were very easy to incorporate into my schooling days.

Charlotte Mason’s thoughts are close in focus to Waldorf Education, but without the pedagogy that is rigorous in it’s ideals of child development.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that it is a better fit for my family because it allows younger children to move faster if they can.  There is no ‘year to year’ set of learning… just the fact that learning keeps moving forward.

Nature Study is one of her main focuses… as it is mine.  The concept of a nature notebook is not at all strange to me or my children.  However, Ms Mason believes that adding to it each and every school day is very important.  Also that one should always have direct contact with nature; including a nature walk or some other form of actual contact such as raising bugs in the classroom or perhaps a pet. 

I adjusted to make Nature Study more of a focus than a hobby during our school days and made it the second box for my children each morning.  That way, for box 1 I can read a book out loud (currently Bambi by Felix Salten) and then move on to Nature Study and then in box 3 is individual animal study (currently raising Praying Mantis).  After that they split off into their own subjects for the next 7 boxes (yes, we now only have 10… I’ll get to that in a later post).

Here are a few snippets from our Nature Study mornings from the past three weeks:

Cyan draws a flowering current twig in a jar of water.

My pea sprout picture (I had so many I didn’t feel at all bad about pulling one up to measure the roots…. which are the same height at this point as the ‘shoot’.  The kids and I thought that was really cool!!)

A pair of mallard ducks that landed in our front yard on the first day of our Nature Study project.  I felt like Mother Nature had put her stamp of approval on the change in our school days!

Logan looking intently at the first open Flowering Current flower. 

“Isn’t it pretty mom?  It looks like a star!”

The next few posts will be dedicated to the changes I have made and how they are working.  Stay tuned!

Our Schedules

Here is their individual schedules with the curriculum we are using for each subject. This is what I started with. The actual schedule came after I figured out how long each subject took for my kids.

Alex has a couple things that are still blank on his. We are not sure what he wants to do for electives nor what we can afford. So we are still talking/working on that with him.

Our school days are set up a bit differently than most. We switch back and forth with my husband's work schedule. We have four day weeks with rotating weekends. Every other month we have W, Th, F off, and every other month we have Su, M, T off. Yes... my kids always do school on Saturday because my husband always works. So far, our schedule has worked out just about like this:

It is a rough estimate... and of course, if we can get it done faster, we do. But for the most part, below is about what our days look like so far.

Our School Day Schedule

7:30 am

- Get kids doing their chores while making breakfast.

8:00 am

- Eat breakfast and make sure chores are done.

8:30 am

- Start school work with Critical Thinking and Calendar skills.

9:00 am

- Math

10:00 am (or whenever we are done with math)

- English/spelling

11:00 am (or whenever we are done with English)

- Break and snack

11:30 am

- Back to school work. Day one and three is Nature Science and Biology. Day two and four is History and Geography. Logan usually watches a Baby video at this time.

12:30 pm (or whenever we are done with Science or History)

- Lunch. Put Logan down for nap.

1:00 pm

- Meet the Masters, Art, or other elective time.

Summer Learning Curves

My kids have absolutely bloomed in the last two months. For some reason, they are much better learners in the summer than they are in the winter months. Perhaps it has to do with their birthdays (both July babies), or a bit of SADD (we get depression disorder here a lot in the cold/wet. I mean really, today it is 45* and raining), or what... but especially Cyan has FLOURISHED this last two months like she didn't at all in the months before.

In the last two months she has learned to: Tie her shoes, read fluently, stop sucking her fingers, ride a two-wheeler bike, rollerskate and make her own breakfast using the stove... all of these things have been tried before, esp this year... some a couple times, but never achieved... and this last two months they have all taken leaps and bounds and all of a sudden she is a full-on 'big kid'. You know? A real big kid who can do the whole length of the monkey bars and not drop. Who can ride her bike to the neighbors down the street and I know she will look both ways and not crash. That kind of big kid.

And Alex... His change is just starting, but I can see it too. Today, he set his alarm, woke up on his own, took a shower, got dressed with all clean clothes, and had made his lunch before I was out of bed. AMAZING! Amazing I tell you, considering just last week I had to have a talk with him about how I found one pair of his unders in over a weeks worth of laundry. (Yes... that is gross.) And today, he gets up and showers without even being told. I am amazed.

Perhaps what I have to do is change the year around for them. At least to see how it works. Afterall, Don can much more easily get time off in the winter than in the summer anyway. Why not make the school year around that and take a month off when dad can be there too?

Come to think of it... Logan has been growing leaps and bounds too. It is expected of his age, but he has been in a rut with the communication stuff. Lots of yelling, LOTS of screeching. Lots of deep breathing moments for me. However, this morning, he wanted Cyan to play with him. He was sitting on my lap, and looked at her playing and said "Hey!" and then signed 'girl' 'please', and pointed at her and grunted. It was pretty much the cutest thing ever! Cyan, of course, melted when she realised what he wanted and took him and they have been playing in her room ever since.

I have warmer weather learners. Long day learners, at least. lol... 'warm' is subjective here.

Perhaps it is just thoughts. But I would sure like to try. This isn't the first year I have noticed this summer time learning curve. If I can bank on that, who knows... we may be able to take trips for Christmas and do school outside all summer? Food for thought at least.