Nature Study

Another thing that comes to mind is to begin close to home.  Literally, begin in your yard.  Learn about the plants and trees you have.  Learn about the bugs and wildlife.  Set up a bird feeder and start birdwatching.  Spend a month tracking weather (preferably in a month when your area tends to have changeable weather!) and looking at clouds.  Stargazing (and looking for bats!).  Figure out just what that weed is in the garden or what kind of mushroom sprouted.

We live in town, meaning we have a small yard with an alley on one side and a house about 12 feet away (not in the city, but not in the country).  You would be surprised the amount of nature study of these sorts we have been able to do over the years right at home!  Yes, we enjoy going somewhere away from home for a special nature study opportunity, but we have so much to learn right where we are too.

I would say it’s enough!

I started adding more structure to our nature study and it’s been a great improvement on how much my DC enjoy it.  Mostly it’s helped me be more organized and make the time for it.  DH and I have been making a bigger effort to get outdoors with the kids more as well.  Just getting outdoors leads to discovering more things.  We’ve taken up gardening and fishing this year and I’m amazed about how much more nature we’ve seen than just going outside for a walk!

We didn’t do well with the “go outside with sketchbooks and study nature” method.  I’ve recently started having Object Lessons and my DC get much more out of our nature study time.  I ask them many of the questions from the Handbook of Nature Study and it gets them looking closer at the object/creature we are studying.  I think some moms do this naturally without thinking about it, but I need a bit of help in this area!  Reading through the section of the HNS gives me lots of ideas of possible questions, yet I don’t feel like I’m giving them a lecture.  I think eventually, I’ll get the hang if it and not need suggested questions, but for right now it’s been a great help.

For the coming year, I have some living science books written in our plans.  I’ve discovered that I’m much more likely to do a lesson if it’s written out in the plans!  If I just have “read science book” or “go for nature walk” written in the planner, I’m likely to skip over it.  Instead, if I write “read p. 50-55 of Woods Walk” or “have object lesson to study the moon”, then I’ll most likely complete the lesson.

In our weekly schedule for the coming year, we have 1 object lesson per week, 2 living books lessons, and 2 lessons from SCM’s Burgess bird guide.  Our object lesson will most likely include some outdoor time as well and we’ll be doing several studies at night to observe the sky.   For the living books lessons, we’ll just be reading a few pages each time, and it shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes per lesson.

I think what you are doing sounds like plenty.  We recently moved to the country and I’m amazed at how much more “nature” there is than when we lived in town!