I hosted a homeschooling mother’s night at my house last
month. A few of us enjoyed a meal of
enchiladas followed by an exchange of nature study ideas. I thought I would put together a few of our
suggestions along with my favorite websites and references.
Bernadette asked what nature study is (looks like, etc). To
me, nature study is anything experienced, learned, found, read about, or
experimented about in regards to plants, animals, the weather, the stars, the
earth, rocks, ….. You get the idea. Here
are some pictures of our family doing nature study as I see it.
Stephen and Rex in April 2008
Chasing butterflies in May 2009.
Cormac helping plant onions in May 2009.
Stephen watering seeds he just planted in May 2009.
A family of birds above our front door in July 2009.
A cicada the boys found in July 2010.
Ice chunks the boys found in December 2010.
Blase's worm jar in June 2011.
Myrtle the Turtle we studied and released in July 2011.
Apple tasting in August 2011.
Rex's butterfly we raised and released in August 2011.
This is what happens when you let Stephen go exploring. Also August 2011.
Pumpkin messes and fun in October 2011.
Brech Earl picking apples in September 2012.
Cormac and Darren ice fishing excitement in December 2012.
Sunflowers - July 2013
Stephen's carrot in August 2013. It was quite yummy.
Some ideas for nature study include, but not are limited to:
Field trips
Nature journals
Nature walks
Nature table
Keep a weather calendar
Keep a bird list
I-Spy in the backyard
Keeping a pet
Reading a biography about a scientist
Growing a garden
Catching an insect (biggest spider I ever saw I caught for
the kids)
Learn about edible plants in the wild
OR learn which ones are poisonous (those two should be
taught together in my opinion)
The list goes on and on.
There are plenty of blog posts on various websites that provide a more
complete list of activities.
Some of my favorite resources for Nature Study reference
include:
There is a wonderful website dedicated to using this
reference book to encourage nature study. It is called
Handbook of Nature Study. They have a great program called The Outdoor Hour – Nature Study Close to Home. They offer Outdoor Hour Challenges as well as
a monthly newsletter with ideas, pictures, and notebooking pages to make your
job easier. Some of the ideas they offer
are Four Seasons of Tree Study, season challenges with various ideas to share
with your children, nature table ideas, and e-Books with notebooking pages,
tips, and simple challenges to make nature study exciting and doable.
This book is geared for a school setting, but could easily
be implemented in a home setting. There
are 100 units on topics such as trees, animals, garden plants, seasons,
weather, weeds, insects, and many more.
The book is arranged by months and follows the seasons. It also has a monthly calendar with ideas for
each day of the month. These could easily
be used as a guide to create your own personal calendar for your family. You can find pictures of these calendars on
various websites. For example –
Homeschooling the Hoffmasters blog The book gives a brief explanation for the teacher followed by a list of
activities for that topic. These include
lists for teachers themselves, all grades, primary grades, junior and
intermediate grades, and a list of books to read. The current edition, published by Hillside
Education, also provides a list of books published more recently. The book itself was originally published in
1955.
I just purchased this book to use as an idea book. I am SUPER pleased with it. The book has three parts: Part One - How to
Be a Naturalist, Part Two – Learning the Sky, Part Three – Exploring Nature A
Month-by-Month Guide. There are drawing
exercises, pages to fill out that help you notice the details in nature you may
have overlooked, and short teaching lessons on different nature topics. Each monthly section offers a page to keep
track of nature notes, a page to record things from a nature quest, a picture
of the month (could be a drawing or photograph), and topics related to that
month or season with pages to draw or record information you have found based
on that topic. It is a very easy format
to follow and doable for even the most inexperienced artist (me!). There are drawing activities to help you
learn to sketch and to see the colors of the different seasons. My favorite part was the activities for the
drawing lessons. They had you draw an
object without looking at the page, draw without taking your pencil off the
paper, and draw an object in 5 seconds and then 10 seconds and then 20 seconds
adding more detail as you went. They gave ideas of what information to include
with your drawing. It was basically an
easy guide to starting a nature journal.
This book is by the author of the previous book
suggestion. This one gives beautiful
nature journal entry ideas as well as practical advice to help you keep a
nature journal. They give drawing ideas,
color suggestions, examples of information to record with your drawing, and
many more ideas. It is a very inspiring
reference for anyone who is serious about nature journaling. It could help an
older student who is just getting into nature journaling understand what they
could include in their own journals.
This book reads more like a story than a reference
book. To me it was a gentle introduction
for a mother to show that nature study can happen in the home, in the backyard,
and various other “normal” places without much effort. Simply hand your children pencils and paper
and let them see their world, documenting it as they go. It offers short chapters with a few points to
consider afterwards or a nature study suggestion to implement in your family.
This book contains over 600 science experiments for young
children. The sections related to nature
study could be air, animals, beach, birds, day and night, environment, fall,
gardening, habitats, insects, nature, oceans, seasons, spiders, summertime,
trees and plants, water, weather, and winter.
There are great ideas to do that would be simple, yet educational for an
easy science day.
These are delightful books about animals told in story
form. Personally, we have only read The
Burgess Animal Book. It is about Peter
Rabbit asking Mother Nature about different animals in his neighborhood. Mother Nature starts a school of sorts for
the animals in the forest. In this book
they learn about the mammals of North America and touches a bit on some mammals
of the sea. I found the stories to be
easy to understand and read. The boys would always beg for another story. The only thing I did not enjoy was the “do
not shoot the animals” theme that sometimes presented itself. I did locate a set of pictures on
Fisher Academy International that has all the pictures in the book as a print out and other resources to use with this book. The kids did enjoy seeing the pictures in the
book and also being able to match them to our printed off copies.
This is a small book, originally published in 1903,
containing short stories about nature.
The stories always have a moral to share. The
SimplyCharlotteMason.com folks put
together a companion ideas book that gives simple activities to go along with
the stories. Cormac and Rex enjoyed this
book and the activities. As a side note
–
simplycharlottemason.com is a treasure trove of Charlotte Mason style
teaching resources.
This book provides a list of Catholic scientists from the
eleventh century on. Each scientist is
listed with their name, birth and death information, and a brief bio. This would be a good reference for older
students who need topic ideas for reports or as a stepping stone to encourage
them to read more biographies.
This book is beautiful and functioning guide for those
desiring to become naturalists. The book
contains information on what you might want to take along on a field trip,
equipment to keep at home, preserving plants and animals, and keeping live
plants and animals. It also has sections
on what you would look for in various nature settings including grasslands,
wetlands, rocky shores, smooth shores, seas and oceans, ponds, forests, both
coniferous and deciduous woodlands, deserts, and more. The pictures are beautiful and range from
hand-drawn sketches to photographs of actual plants and animals. I personally enjoy just looking through this
book. I will mention that this book does
touch on Darwin and his evolution theories in one section of the book.
These books contain short stories about nature. They are easy to read and would make a simple
addition to a science course. Both are published by Lepanto Press.
These two books are combined editions of smaller books. They contain information about topics like
rocks and fossils, flowers, birds, caterpillars, bugs, snakes, tracks, scat,
trees, bark, and much more.
Dover Nature Coloring Books offer a wide variety of nature related
coloring pages. Some examples of coloring books themes would be insects, butterflies, horses, wild animals, birds, flowers, etc.
This is a wonderful copywork idea for a young girl. This sweet book contains poems and hand-drawn
pictures about flowers and trees. Each
plant is assigned a fairy and the poem is a bit of information about that fairy
and plant. The book is divided into
sections about spring, summer, autumn, winter, garden, tree, and wayside plants
and fairies. It also has an alphabet of
flower fairies. An example of a poem
would be:
Red, red, vermilion red,
With buds and blooms in a glorious head!
There isn’t a flower, the wide world through,
That glows with a brighter scarlet hue.
Her name – Geranium – ev’ryone knows;
She’s just as happy wherever she grows,
In an earthen pot or a garden bed –
Red, red, vermilion red!
There is also an adorable music CD with the Flower Fairies Alphabet set to music. This is a favorite with all my children. I wouldn't find it unusual to hear them singing one of the songs.
Other books that we enjoy reading are:
Both of these books come with small magnifying glasses to
use to find animals and plants on the pages.
There are other books in this series.
All the books I have read by Jim Arnosky are great.
Mousekin’s ABC by Edna Miller – This alphabet book covers
a variety of flowers, insects, animals, and other nature related things.
Mousekin’s Close Call
by Edna Miller – This book is about predators and prey. Poor Mousekin almost becomes a meal and learns
a valuable lesson.
Mousekin’s Fables by Edna Miller – This book has a short
story for every month. Each story
teaches a lesson in true fable style.
Mousekin’s Family by Edna Miller – This book tells how
Mousekin finds a baby mouse who he thinks belongs to his family. It does not look the same, but Mousekin tries
to teach the baby how to be safe and take care of itself. Mousekin finds out later that the baby was a
jumping mouse, not a whitefoot mouse.
All of the Mousekin books we have are delightful. I am always keeping a look out for more
Mousekin books because they are so sweet.
What Color is Camouflage? By Carolyn Otto
What’s It Like to Be a Fish? By Wendy Pfeffer
What Lives in a Shell by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld
Switch On, Switch Off by Melvin Berger
Dinosaur Tracks by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld
A Tree is a Plant by Clyde Robert Bulla
From Tadpole to Frog by Wendy Pfeffer
Clouds by Anne Rockwell
From Caterpillar to Butterfly by Deborah Heiligman
How Do Birds Find Their Way? By Roma Gans
A Nest Full of Eggs by Priscilla Belz Jenkins
There is a series of books that are called
One SmallSquare. They examine the area of one
square yard in different areas. For
instance, the book One Small Square Backyard gives an idea of what you might
find in a square yard and 18 inches deep in your own backyard. It gives insect and plant examples as well as
ideas to include in your nature notebook. Some of the other book titles include:
One Small Square Woods
One Small Square Seashore
One Small Square Swamp
One Small Square Cave
One Small Square Pond
We are HUGE fans of alphabet books in this
household. Here some examples of
alphabet books we have enjoyed for science.
That is most of the books we have enjoyed and are
currently sitting on our shelves.
Other resources I have used include:
Homeschool Freebie of the Day website offers Nature Study related resources every once in awhile. I have gotten many, many things from their website. In fact, today's post is nature related.
Please
comment to this post with your favorite website links, book titles, and great
ideas to encourage children to enjoy nature.
For those who came for supper, here is the recipe:
Enchilada Casserole
For the enchiladas:
1 1/2 pounds of hamburger
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 (15 oz.) can refried beans
8-10 flour tortillas
For the sauce:
4 Tablespoons butter
1/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 cups milk
1 (10 oz.) can mild enchilada sauce
1 1/2 cups grated cheddar cheese
Brown and drain hamburger. Add salt, pepper, onion, and beans (I always fry the onions with the hamburger). Place 1/3 cup of mixture on flour tortilla and roll it up. Place it seam side down in a 9x13 inch pan. Make sauce by melting butter, then add flour, salt, and pepper (like making a white gravy). Slowly add milk and enchilada sauce. Cook until boiling, stirring often. Boil for 1 minute and remove from heat. Add 1 1/2 cups of grated cheddar cheese and pour over tortillas. Sprinkle additional cheddar cheese on top of casserole if desired. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.
