Charlotte Mason Homeschool Cottage

I love the idea of nature study and bringing my kids outdoors and exploring science in a natural way. But how do you turn it into something where you know your kids have learned some of those scientific concepts you want to teach?

Sure, I like Charlotte Mason’s ideas of attention to detail and creating a picture in one’s mind of what you are looking at. I also like the idea of getting outside in the fresh air and experiencing science and nature first hand. But, I guess I’m a little to up tight to just leave it at that without turning it into some kind of lesson on a concept.

One way that Charlotte Mason and homeschoolers do this is by keeping a nature journal of what they are observing in nature. Through the use of observation and reading field guides, children can narrate onto journal notebook pages what they have observed in nature, what they read in the field guides, any other information about their nature walk, and maybe a drawing.

If you want to put this narration and drawing in a bound book, you can find these in book stores or school supply catalogs with lined or blank pieces of paper. Some may have fancy fabric covers; some may be plain white or with a simple outline sketch on the outside. We have used all of these variations and have enjoyed them all.

Now that is an effective way of teaching about what you see directly in nature. But, how do you teach areas within biology, physics, and chemistry from there? Well that’s where you build a bridge or connection between what the child experiences first hand in nature and has a personal connection with a concept of science that can be extended from the child’s first hand knowledge.

Let’s say you are studying weather where it is common to experience thunderstorms and lightning during that month. After you observe this weather, maybe making charts of what the weather has been or making predictions, and researching what causes thunderstorms and lightning, you want to extend your study into other areas of science. From thunderstorms, you  begin to read and do science experiments with sound waves and vibrations or examine the water cycle. Or, you look at acid rain and focus on some chemistry experiments looking at the effects of acid rain, which can extend into a study of acids and bases and ph.

Maybe you want to move from there and look at lightning and what causes that and do experiments with static electricity and electrical circuits and conductors and insulators. Or, after rain, sometimes you can see a rainbow. After looking at the causes of a rainbow, you look at the color spectrum and perform experiments with white light and prisms and color absorption.

As you can see one study in weather, can lead you into more detailed studies encompassing areas of physical sciences and chemistry. Any studies with different classes of animals and plants can build into anatomy and physiology, and botany studies.

So, don’t be afraid to let go of that textbook, at least for a little while. After exploring where your nature studies lead you, you may find you are enjoying and learning so much more science than you imagined that you will forget to return to your textbook.

If you are interested in more ways to teach science this way, check out Using Nature Study, Nature Journals, and Poetry Through the Year.

I had promised for a few months now, that anyone who subscribed to our newsletter would have a chance in a drawing for a copy of our new nature study ebook, Using Nature Study, Nature Journals, and Poetry Through the Year.

So, we notified our winner last night and received an answer back from her this morning! Congratulations, Joanna! We hope you enjoy the book and your nature study adventures with your kids!

If you haven’t checked out the book yet, please take a look here: Using Nature Study, Nature Journals, and Poetry Through the Year.

To check out a slide show describing this ebook, click on this link: Ebook Slide Show

We hope you enjoy!

It’s finished! I apologize for the delay – but family comes first The ebook I’ve been working on for months – Using Nature Study, Nature Journals, and Poetry Through the Year – is now finished!

A number of months ago, I had a poll on my website which some homeschoolers graciously filled out and requested more information in various areas of using Charlotte Mason methods in their home schools. The number one top request was more information on using nature study and nature journaling.

This ebook is a year long study of nature divided into seasons and months and the natural events that occur during those seasons. Through a natural introduction into science through nature, this study introduces children into different areas of biology, physics, and chemistry.

For an overview of what you will find in Using Nature Study, Nature Journals, and Poetry Through the Year, I invite you to view a slideshow I created to help explain my ebook:

 Using Nature Study, Nature Journals, and Poetry Through the Year ebook slideshow

Would you like to give nature study a try but don’t know how you will find the time or fit it into your schedule and still feel like you are covering everything you really feel the need to cover for science?

I’ve been there. That is why I have written a book that takes the time for nature study but still covers different areas of biology, chemistry, and physics as an extended study of what you observe in nature. These topics can be covered generally or more in depth. It all depends on you, your child, and the time and interest you have for each topic.

This 215 page study includes the following sections that you can print off a few at a time depending on the topic of your study and the time of year:

• Each Season has 3 months
• Each Month has poetry and quotes that have to do with that month or topics within that month
• There are different topics and a different number of topics depending on the natural events during that season or month.

  For example, under Winter, you will find December, January, and February. Within January, you will find the topics of Trees in Winter, Astronomy, Owls,and Nocturnal Animals.
  
  Within each topic you will find:
  

• Pertinent poetry and quotes
• Suggested Living Book list
• Nature Walk and Post-walk Activities
• Questions with which to engage your children in conversation about the topic of study during the walk
• Scientific Connections that naturally draw your child into an extended study of biology, physics, or chemistry that is connected to your nature study topic
  
  For example, a topic study in July is Weather – Thunder, Lightning, Rain, and Rainbows. After observing this in nature and studying it, a Scientific Connection offers suggestions in which to extend that study into a study of Electricity, Sound Waves and Vibrations, Color, Light, or Acid Rain.

             Each Scientific Connection has

• Suggested Living Books list (if books are available on the topic)
• Suggested Activities and Experiments
  Some of these are described in the book, others are websites or books of experiments.
   
• The Next Major Section of the book is Nature Journaling
  Here you will find Recommended Nature Journal and Drawing book suggestions and websites. You will also find Suggested Sources for Nature Journaling pages and Sample Nature Journal pages within this book to get you started right away.
  
• The Last Section is the Poetry section.
  Here you will find Suggestions in which to integrate Poetry into your nature study through Writing and Studying Literary Devices commonly found in Poetry.

 So, you can see that you CAN do a weekly nature study and still tie it into a more formal study of the traditional scientific areas and have the best of both worlds.

You can purchase the Using Nature Study, Nature Journals, and Poetry Through the Year ebook here with Paypal

for an introductory price of $14.95.

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Please let us know how you like the ebook after your purchase. We are eager to hear your thoughts! If you know anyone else that may be interested please share our post. Thanks! 

I tried lapbooking with my two non-cutting, non-coloring boys (who don’t mind making things from scratch or writing notebooking and pages and adding their own artistic renderings of what they have written). It was not the success I had envisioned or hoped for. Something about the file folder and putting all of these little booklets on the file folder turned them off. I still don’t completely understand the emotional reaction they had to this, but we have found something that does work for us.

I’d like to share this idea with you. We use pieces of card stock, 3-hole punched and place these into our notebooks alongside our notebook pages. We do a couple of little booklets or whatever at a time and glue them onto the card stock as we study the topic throughout the semester. I think the variety of combining the written narration, their own drawings, and the booklets a few at a time breaks up what they might have felt either overwhelming or monotonous in putting together a big lapbook alone.

To give you some ideas of what we have done, I broke down ideas into subject areas and have included pictures, descriptions of what we have done, and links to resources you might find helpful:

• Science
  Botany Notebook – Using Jeannie Fullbright’s Exploring Creation with Botany
       My son used Jeannie’s free notebooking pages available here – Botany notebooking pages and whenever we went on a nature, Charlotte Mason style, we would look for a sample of the plant life he was studying in this book to take home. We dried it, glued it onto a piece of card stock, labeled it, slipped it into a plastic sheet protector, and placed it into the notebook with the rest of the pages.
  At the same time, I printed off little diagrams or booklets about parts of a flower, seed, or plant that he would label or fill out. After completing each one, he glued that onto a piece of card stock and placed it into the notebook in the appropriate section discussing that topic.
  Each piece of card stock would be labeled with the topic on that page, and would be close to full- so that it wasn’t just one or two small items on the page.
  Whenever, my son had a science experiment to perform, we had a science experiment procedure notebook page, that he would use to write out his hypothesis, materials, procedures, observations, data, results, and conclusion. This page would also go in the appropriate area of study.
  In the end, he had a nice botany notebook with a cover provided in the free notebooking pages filled with samples, notes, experiments, and little diagrams and booklets. All of these placed in topic areas, as opposed to notebook sections labeled “notes”, “labs”, “projects”. This was more fluid for him.
• Apologia General Science with my older son was a bit different.
  My older son likes a bit more structure and functions better when things are categorized. He labeled sections of his notebook “notes” (written narrations for him or handouts of notes), “labs”, “questions and answers” (lapbook parts from Live and Learn Press), “quizzes” (review study guides and tests provided by Apologia), and a pocket for index cards that he used to make flash cards for himself from the study guide questions.
  His notebook was organized according to function of the piece of paperwork. It was a combination of notebooking pages on which he wrote narrations of topics he read aside from the Apologia text and handouts where he read something and answered questions (this usually was a tie in to the historic period we were studying and how it related to his science), science experiment procedure notebooking pages (just like his brother) or printed from the Apologia text CD-Rom, and lapbook booklets glued onto pieces of card stock.
  The lapbook components we use are from Live and Learn Press – Live and Learn Press. They have booklets in which he can write the answers to questions from the Apologia text and write down definitions to vocabulary words as he proceeds through the text. My son glues these onto pieces of card stock as he works on them in order of the text.

• History
  For the past two years, we have studied ancient civilizations and the middle ages. We put together a notebook for each during each year. We used a variety of notebooking pages from different sources for our written narrations and map study. For a study of crests and family history, we had matchbooks and other little books to glue onto cardstock to explain heraldry.
  For the chain of causes for the black plague, we used the wheel from the Story of the World Activity book, glued onto cardstock also.
  This year, we will be studying the Renaissance; we’ll be using a lap book (glued onto card stock pages) for that as well from Live and Learn Press along with our notebooking pages.

Heraldry and our Ancestors

Learning about the Hagia Sophia.

Notebooking Links

Here are a variety of resources that you may find helpful in assisting you in your notebooking endeavors:

Notebooking Pages (Great pages to purchase – big sale right now)

http://www.homeschoolnotebooking.com/All_About_Notebooking.htm

 Cindy Rushton – Notebooking Queen

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Notebooking/

http://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/teacherslounge/notebooking.php

http://highland.hitcho.com.au/notebooking.htm

http://www.jeanniefulbright.com/productspage.html (Click on the Exploring Creation product and then the journal pages you want)

http://www.holdthatthought.com/ (Great notebook pages to purchase)

http://www.squidoo.com/notebookingexhibit (Great notebooking lens by Jimmie)

http://www.knowledgeboxcentral.com/notebooking.html

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NotebookingNook/

http://www.homeschoolhelperonline.com/notebooking.htm

http://donnayoung.org/forms/planners/notebook.htm

http://www.historyscribe.com/

http://www.squidoo.com/lapbooking-vs-notebooking

Notebooking training resources (ebooks, audio seminars in mp3 format)

http://www.homeschoolshare.com/Notebook_Pages.php

Lapbooking

http://www.homeschoolshare.com/lapbooking_resources.php

http://www.squidoo.com/lapbooking

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Lapbooking/

http://www.homeschoolingonashoestring.com/lapbooks.html

http://lapbooklessons.ning.com/

http://www.homeschoolhelperonline.com/lapbooks.htm

http://www.knowledgeboxcentral.com/stkitforla.html

http://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/teacherslounge/lapbooks.php

http://www.liveandlearnpress.com/

http://www.handsofachild.com/shop/

http://lapbookladies.com/

Cindy Rushton lapbooking ebook and audio seminar

It’s time to gear up for another school year! And Debra at Notebooking Pages is having a wonderful sale here at NotebookingPages.com Back-to-School Sale Event – 50% Off. Here is the scoop you need to know:

Now is a great time to try some of NotebookingPages.com’s products during their 3rd Annual Back-to-School Sale Event! Every product and specially priced combo set is 50% off! You can get ALL of their products for $50 (click here for full details) – save almost $90! PLUS, all customers purchasing their full set of products (for $50) will receive a free BONUS gift package from the following homeschool publishers:

Check it out here: