Happy Results: Sarah M.’s Nature Study Story

It’s always encouraging to hear stories of how Charlotte Mason’s methods work in real home schools. There’s something about listening to others’ successful experiences that bolsters your confidence and fuels your enthusiasm to keep spreading the feast for your own children.

Charlotte knew that people like to be told whether her approach works. And she coined a simple phrase that says volumes when she answered that question in her own day. In Volume 3, School Education, she outlined the key points of her thoughts on education and then assured her readers:

“This plan has been tried with happy results for the last twelve years in many home schoolrooms, and some other schools” (Vol. 3, p. 214).

Happy results. Don’t you just love that little description? It sweetly sums up what we are hoping for in our own home schools.

We are happy when we see growth happening, a love of learning kindled for life, relations formed, and lives enriched. That’s what Charlotte’s methods achieve.

But those things don’t just happen by accident. They are a result—a result of trusting her philosophy and using her methods.

Happy results.

We at SCM are privileged to hear about happy results from the parents we talk with in our convention booth or sit with at our own Encouragement Conferences and receive notes from all year. But we think it’s important for you to start hearing about them too.

So we are starting a new initiative. We want to begin sharing those success stories with you—to encourage you and to assure you that Charlotte Mason’s methods do work.

To start things off, here is a Happy Results story from Sarah M. on nature study:

One day I decided to stop and enjoy the sunshine. I thought, “I might as well attempt this nature study thing.” The kids and I grabbed our nature journals, a handful of colored pencils and sat in the backyard to draw a tree. All of a sudden we spotted a robin sitting in its nest. This turned into days and days of the kids taking their free time to observe the beauty of God happening one step out of our back door. Our hearts were coming alive! It was all around a little bird. What this turned into for my 5 year old son was a stunning fascination with God’s creation—birds, bird songs, colors, sounds, workings of nature. It was stunning to see his heart come alive! It became a habit of his to grab the field guide instead of the iPad. We actually just went ahead and put the iPad away. After a few weeks, he didn’t ask for it anymore. 🙂

Now, a year later, we are so very excited to explore more of this method we call Nature Study. It is a method that creates space for encounter.

Watch for more Happy Results stories in future posts. And if you have one you would like to share, feel free to send it in.

Because we all enjoy hearing about happy results with Charlotte Mason methods!

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