Nature Study: A Look at Charlotte's World, Out of Doors

Never be within doors 

when you can rightly be without ...

Perhaps a mother's first duty to her children 

is to secure for them a quiet growing up time, 

a full six years of passive receptive life, 

the waking part of it spent for the most part 

in the fresh air.

— Charlotte Mason

Spring Time by Ludwig Knaus (courtesy)

{Tomorrow at the co-op — really a mommy study group — we're delving into nature study as prescribed by Charlotte Mason and those executing it. Here's a rundown of the material I plan to introduce at the meeting.}

From Whom Does Nature Come?

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

— Genesis 1:1

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made ... And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (Jesus the Messiah), and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

— John 1:1-3, 14

"This is My Father's World"

Listen at Songs & Hymns, or Watch at YouTube

What did Charlotte say about

Out-of-Door Life for Children?
{For Discussion}

All page references are from this printing

Most of the Day, for the First 6 Years: (Also above) "Never be within doors when you can rightly be without ... Perhaps a mother's first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet growing up time, a full six years of passive receptive life, the waking part of it spent for the most part in the fresh air ... and long hours they should be; not two, but four, five, or six hours they should have on every tolerably fine day, from April till October." (pg 39-40)

Meals: "Meals taken al fresco are usually joyous, and there is nothing like gladness for converting meat and drink into healthy blood and tissue. All the time, too, the children are storing up memories of a happy childhood." (pg 39)

Method: "[The hours spent outdoors] must be spent with some method, or the mother will be taxed and the children bored." (pg 40, read on) Sometimes let them to themselves, and sometimes take opportunity to train the child's senses and attention.

Reading?: "In the first place, it is not her business to entertain the little people: there should be no story-books, no telling of tales, as little talk as possible, and that to some purpose." (pg 41)

Exploring Expeditions: "She sends them off on an exploring expedition ... Find out all you can about that cottage at the foot of the hill; but do not pry about too much." (pg 41, read on) They report back with "random observations."

Educational uses of such Expeditions: "This is all play to the children, but the mother is doing invaluable work; she is training their powers of observation and expression, increasing their vocabulary and their range of ideas by giving them the name and the uses of an object at the right moment, — when they ask, 'What is it?' and 'What is it for?' And she is training her children in truthful habits, by making them careful to see the fact and to state it exactly, without omission or exaggeration." (pg 42)

Such Expeditions are Gifts for Later in Life: "Think what a delightful possession for old age and middle life is a series of pictures imaged, feature by feature, in the sunny glow of the child's mind! The miserable thing about the childish recollections of most persons is that they are blurred, distorted, incomplete, no more pleasant to look upon than a fractured cup or a torn garment; and the reason is, not that the old scenes are forgotten, but that they were never fully seen." (pg 42)

Painting Scenes in our Minds' Eyes: "Get the children to look well at some patch of landscape, and then to shut their eyes and call up the picture before them, if any bit of it is blurred, they had better look again." (pg 42) "It is fatiguing, and should only be employed now and then." (pg 43)

Mother Helps by Setting the Example: "At first the children will want a little help in the art of seeing. The mother will say, 'Look at the reflection of the trees! ... She will even herself learn off two or three scenes, and describe them with closed eyes for the children's amusement; and such little mimics are they, and at the same time so sympathetic, that any graceful fanciful touch which she throws into her descriptions will be reproduced with variations in theirs." (pg 43)

Mother, be Careful not to Ruin the Gift of Appreciating Nature by Offering External Rewards: "The mother must beware how she spoils the simplicity, the objective character of the child's enjoyment, by treating his little descriptions as feats of cleverness to be repeated to his father or to visitors; she had better make a vow to suppress herself, 'to say nothing to nobody,' in his presence at any rate, though the child should show himself a born poet." (pg 44) I love what Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn says about this subject.

Children Should be able to Identify Flowers and Trees: "If there are farm-lands within reach, they should know meadow and pasture, clover, turnip, and corn field, under every aspect, from the ploughing of the land to the getting in of the crops ... every wild flower that grows in their neighbourhood, they should know quite well." (pg 44)

Charlotte recommended the Mother having a botany companion book to help identify plants. Many Charlotte Mason followers use the Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock. You can read it online here. (pg 45)

Trees and Seasons: "Children should be made early intimate with the trees, too; should pick out half a dozen trees, oak, elm, ash, beech, in their winter nakedness, and take these to be their year-long friends ... The Seasons should be followed." (pg 45) Charlotte suggested following the trees through the seasons, in their putting on leaves, buds, turning colors, again shedding leaves, etc.

Key to Love of Learning (in Context of Learning about Plants, Seeds, and Fruits): "All this is stale knowledge to older people, but one of the secrets of the educator is to present nothing as stale knowledge, but to put himself in the position of the child, and wonder and admire with him; for every common miracle which the child sees with his own eyes makes of him for the moment another Newton." (pg 46)

Calendars: "It is a capital plan for the children to keep a calendar — the first oak-leaf, the first tadpole, the first cowslip, the first catkin, the first ripe blackberries, where seen, and when. The next year they will know when and where to look out for their favourites, and will, every year, be in a condition to add new observations." (pg 46)

Nature Diaries: "As soon as he is able to keep it himself, a nature-diary is a source of delight to a child. Every day's walk gives him something to enter: three squirrels in a larch tree, a jay flying across such a field, a caterpillar climbing up a nettle ... Innumerable matters to record occur to the intelligent child. While he is quite young (five or six), he should begin to illustrate his notes freely with brush drawings; he should have a little help at first in mixing colours, in the way of principles, not directions." (pg 46-47)

Examples of Nature Journals:

• The Moments with Mother Culture blog (also author of A Charlotte Mason Companion)
• The Handbook of Nature Study blog offers an "Outdoor Hour Challenge" of Nature Study
• Creation Journals by the Texas Homesteader
• Youngsters Nature Journals at On Just a Couple Acres
• The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady by Edith Holden

My 4-year-old daughter and I are just beginning our nature journals — a first for both of us. Here are the new supplies from Hobby Lobby (those are water color crayons, which I'd never used before Monday):

Do Not Critique His Nature Diary: "As for drawing, instruction has no doubt its time and place; but his nature diary should be left to his own initiative." (pg 47)

Nature is a Perfect Place to Give Children Ideas:
"'The human (brain) is like a millstone, 
          turning ever round and round;
     If it have nothing else to grind, 
          it must itself be ground.'
"Set the child to definite work by all means, and give him something to grind. But, pray, let him work with things and not with signs — the things of Nature in their own places, meadow and hedgerow, woods and shore." (pg 47)

Creatures: Consider giving your child opportunity with "domesticated animals, squirrels and wild rabbits, a colony of ants, bees" (pg 48) "Children should be encouraged to watch, patiently and quietly, until they learn something of the habits and history of bee, ant, wasp, spider, hairy caterpillar, dragon-fly, and whatever of larger growth comes in their way." (pg 48) 

Fear of Critters: "With regard to the horror which some children show of beetle, spider, worm, that is usually a trick picked up from grown-up people." (pg 48)

Parents Role in Encouraging Nature: "Every child has a natural interest in the living things about him which it is the business of his parents to encourage." (pg 49) Both the author of the Natural History of Selbourne and Audubon received their encouragement toward nature from parents.

John James Audubon (1785-1851)

Audubon: "When I had hardly learned to walk," he says, "and to articulate those first words always so endearing to parents, the productions of Nature that lay spread all around were constantly pointed out to me . . . My father generally accompanied my steps, procured birds and flowers for me, and pointed out the elegant movements of the former, the beauty and softness of their plumage, the manifestations of their pleasure, or their sense of danger, and the always perfect forms and splendid attire of the latter. He would speak of the departure and return of the birds with the season, describe their haunts, and, more wonderful than all, their change of livery, thus exciting me to study them, and to raise my mind towards their great Creator." (pg 49)

Caterpillar in a Box: Charlotte says a city child can gain pleasant acquaintance with the caterpillar if you put him in a box and let the child observe him in your home over time. (pg 50)

Experience in Nature is Worth More than Reading Several Books — So Cure the Child Who has No Interest: "Most children of six have had this taste of a naturalist's experience, and it is worth speaking of only because, instead of being merely a harmless amusement, it is a valuable piece of education, of more use to the child than the reading of a whole book of natural history, or much geography and Latin. For the evil is, that children get their knowledge of natural history, like all their knowledge, at second hand. They are so sated with wonders, that nothing surprises them; and they are so little used to see for themselves, that nothing interests them. The cure for this blasé condition is, to let them alone for a bit, and then begin on new lines." (pg 50) "There is no sort of knowledge to be got in these early years so valuable to children as that which they get for themselves of the world they live in. Let them once get touch with Nature, and a habit is formed which will be a source of delight through life." (pg 51)

Unequaled Mental Training: "Consider, too, what an unequalled mental training the child-naturalist is getting for any study or calling under the sun––the powers of attention, of discrimination, of patient pursuit ..." (pg 51)

Reverence for Life: "On the whole ... the dissection even of a flower is painful to a sensitive child, and, during the first six or eight years of life, I would not teach them any botany which should necessitate the pulling of flowers to bits; much less should they be permitted to injure or destroy any (not noxious) form of animal life. Reverence for life, as a wonderful and awful gift, which a ruthless child may destroy but never can restore" (pg 51) "The child who sees his mother with reverent touch lift an early snowdrop to her lips, learns a higher lesson than the 'print-books' can teach." (pg 51)

Make Collections of Leaves and Flowers: "To make collections of leaves and flowers, pressed and mounted, and arranged according to their form, affords much pleasure, and, what is better, valuable training in the noticing of differences and resemblances." (pg 52) "The power to classify, discriminate, distinguish between things that differ, is amongst the highest faculties of the human intellect, and no opportunity to cultivate it should be let slip; but a classification got out of books, that the child does not make for himself, cultivates no power but that of verbal memory." (pg 52)

Use of Naturalists' Books: "The real use of naturalists' books at this stage is to give the child delightful glimpses into the world of wonders he lives in, to reveal the sorts of things to be seen by curious eyes, and fill him with desire to make discoveries for himself." (pg 52)

my 1-year-old son

Instill Appreciation of Form and Beauty: "All those who have shown a remarkable appreciation of form and beauty date their first impressions from a period lying far behind the existence of definite ideas or verbal instruction." (pg 55)

Observations instead of Reasons: "It is not necessary that the child should be told anything about disintegration or dicotyledon, only that he should observe the wood and pith in the hazel twig, the pleasant roundness of the pebble; by-and-by he will learn the bearing of the facts with which he is already familiar––a very different thing from learning the reason why of facts which have never come under his notice." (pg 56)

Mother's Method: "It is infinitely well worth of the mother's while to take some pains every day to secure, in the first place, that her children spend hours daily amongst rural and natural objects; and, in the second place, to infuse into them, or rather to cherish in them, the love of investigation." (pg 56)

Avert Temptation to Worldliness: " I have seen the young London beauty, amid all the excitement and temptation of luxury and flattery, with her heart pure, and her mind occupied in a boudoir full of shells and fossils, flowers and seaweeds, keeping herself unspotted from the world, by considering the lilies of the fields of the field, how they grow." (pg 57)

Teaching Geography: "Find a hundred opportunities to teach geography by the way: a duck-pond is a lake or an inland sea; any brooklet will serve to illustrate the great rivers of the world; a hillock grows into a mountain — an Alpine system; a hazel-copse suggests the mighty forests of the Amazon; a reedy swamp, the rice-fields of China ..." (pg 57) Also teach observation of the position of the sun; clouds, rain, snow and hail; distance based on the length of the child's step; direction; "a little compass of his own"; boundaries to remember direction; "draw plans indoors"; local geography; etc. (pgs 57-60)

What Should Mother do in Nature?: "the less she says the better" (pg 61) "An occasional 'Look!' an attentive examination of the object on the mother's own part, a name given, a remark — a dozen words long — made at the right moment ... not more than one or two such presentations should occur in a single day." (pg 61) "The mother's real difficulty will be to keep herself from much talk with the children, and to hinder them from occupying themselves with her." (pg 61) "There is one thing the mother will allow herself to do as interpreter between Nature and the child, but that not oftener than once a week or once a month, and with look and gesture of delight rather than with flow of improving words." (pg 61)

Out-of-Door Games, Etc: "The daily French lesson ... Afternoon noisy games for elder children "the more they run, and shout, and toss their arms, the more healthful is the play ... use their lungs to their hearts' content" (pg 62-63) Charlotte then listed all sorts of games played outdoors in her day.

Climbing: "The mother may do a good deal to avert serious mishaps by accustoming the younger children to small feats of leaping and climbing, so that they learn, at the same time, courage and caution from their own experiences, and are less likely to follow the lead of too-daring playmates." (pg 64)

Bad Weather: "If the children are to have what is quite the best thing for them, they should be two or three hours every day in the open air all through winter." (pg 65) "Winter Observations ... down it goes in the diary ... There is no reason why the child's winter walk should not be as fertile in observations as the poet's; indeed, in one way, it is possible to see the more in winter, because the things to be seen do not crowd each other out." (pg 65-66) "the beating rain itself is exhilarating" (pg 67)

Bird Observations: "The key to knowledge of birds is knowledge of their notes ... The joy of tracking a song or note to its source is the joy of a 'find,' a possession for life. But bird-stalking is only to be done upon certain conditions. You must not only be 'most mousy-quiet,' but you must not even let a thought whisper, for if you let yourself think about anything else, the entirely delightful play of bird-life passes by you unobserved; nay, the very bird notes are unheard." (pg 68)

Physical Health Enhanced from Being Out of Doors: "For health's sake alone, it is of the first importance to give children long days in the open country. They want light, solar light, as well as air ... To secure the ruddy glow of perfect health, certain changes must take place in the blood ... What is more, men of science are beginning to suspect that not only the coloured light rays of the solar spectrum, but the dark heat rays, and the chemical rays, minister to vitality in ways not yet fully understood." (pg 70)

CM Nature Study Elements

by Dr. Carroll Smith

Entire presentation available at Child Light USA

1. Keep a dated record
2. Notebooks are managed by the children
3. Illustrated by drawings
4. Knowledge necessary for these records is not given in the way of teaching
5. One afternoon per week
6. Students notice and observe for themselves
7. Teacher gives a name or other information as it is asked for
8. Teachers are careful NOT to make these nature walks an opportunity for scientific instruction
9. Observation without direction is the goal
10. Nature study builds background knowledge for future science teaching
11. Learn to know and delight in the natural objects as in the familiar faces of friends
12. Not the occasion for titbits of information

Thoughts on Nature Study

by Eve Anderson

Presented by Dr Carroll Smith, available at at Child Light USA

1.  Once a week

2.  Classroom teacher for flexibility

3.  The teacher must not be a ‘know it all’ but a willing learner

4.  Nature notebooks are personal diaries of words and paintings

5.  In grades 6-8 does not have to be the art teacher but a teacher who had interest

6.  The younger the better

7.  Bug boxes

8.  Even though coloured pencils have improved enormously, water colours are the best medium.  

9.  Water colours are best for observing light, shade and colour mix.

10.  For the very young - 5 years or younger there are other things to do.

What Do Others Say?

w Free Charlotte Mason Curriculum: Ambleside Online, through which you can also join several Yahoo! groups to discuss Nature Journals and the like.

w Child Light USA annual Charlotte Mason Conference:

• "Nature Study" presentation by Dr. Carroll Smith
  Listen at ChildLight.org
  Read presentation highlights (list excerpt above)
• "Teaching Nature Study to First and Second Graders"
  by Deborah Dobbins and Holly Anne Dobbins
  Listen at ChildLight.org
  
  
  

w An Excellent Read (or CD listen, as I did from a library loan): Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv

w A Few Powerful Scriptures on God's Creation:

• Job 38 & 39: Read here
• Gen 1 & 2: Read here
• Psalm 19:1-6 To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David. 

The heavens declare the glory of God;

And the firmament shows His handiwork.

Day unto day utters speech,      

And night unto night reveals knowledge.

There is no speech nor language      

Where their voice is not heard. 

Their line has gone out through all the earth,      

And their words to the end of the world.           

In them He has set a tabernacle for the sun,

Which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,

And rejoices like a strong man to run its race. 

Its rising is from one end of heaven,      

And its circuit to the other end;           

And there is nothing hidden from its heat. 

May you and your children enjoy and cherish all your time invested in your out-of-doors life!