How to "Beef Up" Outdoor Secrets & Companion

We really enjoyed Outdoor Secrets and the companion books.  Don’t miss it.  But I think we spent only half the year on it.  I think you could add in library books on the topics or follow your children’s interests on some fun rabbit trails.  If you have the Christian Liberty Naure Readers, you can read more on some of the insects like the housefly and dragonflies.  You could read the poem about the Spider’s Dinner Guest (a fly) and then learn about spiders.  The poem is in Favorite Poems Old and New.  Plan a field trip to an Apple orchard.  Make Apple crafts.  You can push whole cloves into nice round red apples to make designs and then set out for an air freshener and decoration.  Read How to Make an Apple Pie and see the World for geography too.  You could add in nature videos of insects, like BBC Planet Earth or Moody science videos like City of the Bees.  You could expand on bees to learn about beekeeping and making recipes using honey.

I don’t have any suggestions better than the ones above but I wanted to just say that I’m using Outdoor Secrets and the Companion with 3 of my sons (ages 11, 10 and 7) and we are enjoying it so much.  I started it for my 7 year old but my older two always wanted to listen in and participate, so everyone enjoys it.  My oldest is going through Land Animals….Apologia, and they all read their level of Christian Liberty Nature Readers and make notebook pages on their readings, but this is the common Sciency thing we all enjoy most.  Just saying it’s good and I hope you enjoy it!  🙂  Definitely a “don’t miss” and you can do as much or as little as you have time for.  Oh, and I do sometimes pull out the Handbook of Nature Study to pull questions from.  Today we were on the Goldenrod chapter, so while we drew/painted a goldenrod, I glanced through HoNS and drew out a few interesting tidbits for them that were thought provoking.

I agree that Outdoor Secrets and the Companion are enough. I am doing OS with my 6 year old this year and we absolutely love it. It’s perfect for little ones just starting to appreciate the magnificence of God’s world.

When we want to learn more about something, we just stop where we are and borrow books from the library on the topic. ***We commonly turn to the Jim Arnosky books available from the library. I would buy every single one if I could. The Arnosky books are just absolutely wonderful. You could simply use those only and have an entire of year of science before you for young ones. I can’t speak highly enough of those.

Ditto using Favorite Poems Old and New and the Comstock Handbook for additional information.

Don’t forget to go on Nature Walks once a week. Those are the best!!!
May the LORD bless you and keep you, Mollie

We didn’t tie it to OS, but we LOVE Arnosky books!

GreenBalts, thank you!  That looks great!

Another Arnosky/Crinkleroot fan here.  🙂