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Nature Study 1st Grade
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Hello there! I am so excited to have stumbled upon this site. It has been a wonderful resource for me as I plan out our next school year. My son just completed MFW’s Kindergarten curriculum but I have decided to go forward in a comlete Charlotte Mason fasion. My question is in regards to the Nature Study. From the reviews I’ve read, Outdoor Secrets sounds wonderful. I plan to purchase it and the companion as well. Will these two books suffice for the entire school year? Also, I read great reviews on The Handbook of Nature Study. Would you recommend that I purchase that as well, to have on hand throughout the years? And I’ve seen mentioned on other sites, field guides. Do you recommend having a set of those as well? Thank you so much for your time. Blessings!
My DS is going into 1st as well. Nice to meet you! As for Outdoor Secrets, it depends on the pace you want to use it. I believe it has about 50 lessons, so if you do 1-2 per week it will last the year. We are not doing any specific book for our nature study this year. I do have the Handbook of Nature Study and it is a useful reference! I get the HNS emails and newsletters and we do the “challenges” when we can. DS has a nature notebook. Once a week we do a nature walk where we just walk and observe and talk about what we see (he collects “treasures” when he can). Another day a week we do nature study where there’s one specific thing I want him to draw and observe and narrate to me (and I write it in his book for him). This week he drew the sunflower he planted and described it to me. We also have a “pet” tadpole that we are observing. I was really intimidated by the thought of “doing nature study” a few months ago, but the more I read about it the more confidence I have!
We do have a couple fieldguides that we try to use for identification but it’s tough! I have ones for trees, butterflies, flowers and birds.
Pleasure to meet you! Thank you so much for taking the time to write. I looked up field guides on Amazon, specifically National Audobon Society which were highly recommended on another blog but I found that there were many others rated highly. You mentioned “it’s tough”. Do you mean in the sense of not being able to reference your findings? Would you mind sharing which title/author you own? Thanks again!
I mean it’s tough because you have to kind of know what you’re looking for to find what you want. I think that doesn’t make sense! I feel like sometimes we end up flipping through the whole book to find the thing that looks like what we have.
The bird and butterfly books I have are the state ones (birds of georgia or something like that) since there are local variations. The one I like most is the tree one from DK Publishing. I will get you more info tomorrow. Hubby is ready to head to bed. Looking forward to chatting more!
I would think that Outdoor Secrets along with Nature Study is plenty, and if you use Outdoor Secrets there will be Nature Study suggestions all through the OS. That makes using the field guides a bit easier. You would continue to read living books as part of your read-alouds through out the year – in fact, you can repeat the wonderful books from OS as much as your child wants. 😉
I think we tend to think that we must teach all students all subjects all year. You don’t have to and it is okay not to! In PS, they split the year into two quarters of science and two quarters of social studies.
For additional ideas for Nature Study, you can always check out this site:
http://handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com/2008/02/green-hour-challenge-1-lets-get-started.html
We love the Handbook of Nature Study newsletter…you can sign up at their blog. It comes once a month and has some fun tasks, drawing lessons, and lots of pictures. Another thing we’ve loved is Nature Friend magazine…it’s full of fun articles, drawing lessons, and drawings/pictures submitted by readers of the magazine (mostly children).
We have the Handbook of Nature study, but honestly, I rarely pull it out. I prefer our regular field guides (we have a mix of Audubon, Golden Guides, and Take Alolng Guides). You can find free copies of the Handbook Of Nature Study online and see if you are interested in it before buying. I do like all the discussion questions, but I often have a hard time finding exactly what I’m looking for. It is one of those resources I love, but just don’t often get to…maybe you would have better success that me though. lol
I just purchased Outdoor Secrets, but we haven’t used it yet. There are go-along picture books that you can use (or find similar ones at you library).
Thank you all for sharing your thoughts! I’m definitely going to order Outdoor Secrets and it’s companion and will also sign up for the Handbook of Nature Study newsletter. I think I’ll hold off on purchasing the actual book right now. I found a series on Amazon called Fun with Nature and it has excellent reviews. I’m planning on ordering one to use as a field guide. And Sheraz, thank you for your words of encouragement. They took a bit of the pressure off of me that I was putting on myself =)Blessings!
We like Fun with Nature! I have that one too. I’m somewhat of a nature book addict. LOL! It has some fun craft ideas. DS enjoys just reading it for fun.
For science you might also want to get a living book or two. We are doing some picture books from the library on different topics, but you could also look into the “Among the ____ People” series by Pierson or any of the Burgess books (animal, bird, etc).
I love nature too! I spent so much time browsing all the wonderful books! I wish I could buy them all! Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll look into those as well =)
Have you considered the Christian Libery Nature Readers? They were highly recommended by a friend and I’ve read wonderful reviews about them =)
I forgot we have those too. LOL! We did the K one loosely last year and I wasn’t super impressed, but I think that one was written later than the others. He read through book 1 independently as assigned reading and narrated it to me. He’s now reading one section of book 2 each day to narrate to me. They are great!
Hi! I went ahead and ordered K and 1. I figured it’d be good to eventually have the entire set since I have two year old twin girls who will also benefit from them. I decided not to get Outdoor Secrets this year. Going to look into all the other suggestions first. Thank you so much for writing. I truly appreciate it =)
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