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Nature Study is Not a Drill: How I Learn to Be Flexible


“If nature study is made a drill, its pedagogic value is lost. When it is properly taught, the child is unconscious of mental effort or that he is suffering the act of teaching. As soon as nature study becomes a task, it should be dropped; but how could it ever be a task to see that the sky is blue, or the dandelion golden, or to listen to the oriole in the elm!”
Handbook of Nature Study page 6

I know our family would never keep up our interest in learning about the world around us if it wasn’t something we enjoyed. I do think that it takes just one person to get excited about something and then everyone seems to catch the excitement.

I am sometimes that person but more and more it is the boys who are finding and exploring and drawing my attention to things that they see as they are outside. I have learned to follow their lead.

It is a little uncomfortable to just allow things to happen in nature study. There is always the risk that what interests your children will not be something you are interested in or that you know anything about. I can’t tell you how many times that happens in our family. Gradually I have learned the value in allowing some leeway in the topics we learn more about because I can see the growth in my sons’ love for and connection to the world they live in. I hear their appreciation for the complex system of life that was created for us to enjoy and benefit from.

Here is a real life example:
Most of you know we went to Oregon last month as a family vacation and as a way to learn more about marine biology. I had prepared these wonderful notebooks all about invertebrates that inhabit the tidepools of the Oregon coast. Great plan…or so I thought.

As the trip progressed I realized that the children were more interested in marine mammals than in invertebrates. Had I brought a book on marine mammals? Nope. I started to feel a rise of panic as we hit the third day and I was still fascinated by the sea stars and anemones in the tidepools and they were busy finding sea lion bones, watching sea otters play in the water, and sea lions on the rocks.

We decided to stop and go down into the sea cave along the Oregon coast where the Stellar sea lions winter over. The boys were excited to take the elevator down to this cave that is said to be one of the largest sea caves in the world, twelve stories high.

There were no sea lions in the cave at this time of year but pretty soon they will all be back inside after having time out at sea to bulk up for the winter. It was still a fascinating place and the boys were grateful we were willing to stop and pay the price of admission.

I could have made them go along with the original plan but it became clear that this was their experience on this trip. They had seen sea stars before and anemones were cool but they didn’t do too much to really observe. What they wanted was to watch the playful antics of the sea otters and sea lions and harbor seals.

Switching gears happened and by the time we reached Newport and the Oregon Coast Aquarium, they were primed to actually stop and read the signs and information on the displays for the marine mammals. We had printed out the aquarium guide ahead of time and this helped them to go on their own through the aquarium. This was a first for our family. The boys went on their own and my husband and I enjoyed the aquarium by ourselves.

We met three times during the day and each time they were full of things they wanted to talk about and to actually take us to see. The last hour was spent with the boys being the tour guide through the aquarium showing us their favorite things.

Number one on their list were the sea otters. They could have filled a whole research report with the observations they had made watching the sea otters play and be fed and then groom themselves. It was a big lesson for me. They obviously had spent quite a bit of time at the sea otter tank just watching and joyfully getting to know this wonderful creature.

I hope that you will learn from my experience. Nature study can become totally driven by the teacher and become a chore and a drill or it can be a source of excitement and joy as you explore and learn together.

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Sitka Spruce in Oregon: Outdoor Hour Challenge #37

Sitka Spruce

We had our eyes open for a spruce when we were traveling in Oregon and we discovered that the Sitka spruce was in just about every campground that we stayed in this time around.

The cones are interesting and the tree itself is very pretty. If you look closely at this photo, you will see the cones hanging on the branch.

One night we had our tent under a spruce and a storm blew in after we had crawled into our sleeping bags. The trees howled and the rain poured and it was sort of a wild night. In the morning the rain had stopped but we still had the drip, drip of the raindrops from the tree falling on our tent. We at first thought it was still raining until we unzipped the rain fly and realized the sun was peeking out and our “rain” was really just left over drops coming from the spruce.

I guess that’s what happens when you go camping in Oregon during the month of October.

Here are some other photos from that trip that are interesting.

I think this is the perfect mushroom. We saw lots of these when we were hiking and they were something new to me. I think this sparked my interest in “flowerless plants” so that is why they are going to be included for a few weeks in the Outdoor Hour Challenges. The boys and I would like to learn a bit more about mushrooms.


These two are such great travelers. Can I just say now how grateful I am to be able to homeschool them through high school? I think that so many of us get overwhelmed at the idea of homeschooling in the teen years but this is the best part of the whole experience. It is hard, don’t get me wrong. But here we are on a school day in October, standing and taking in the fresh ocean air and the peace of the moment. Right after this they had to find a way to hike down and throw some rocks in the water. There actually was a trail if you looked hard enough. Of course there was some sort of sea cave and that spurred on some more discussion about the power of waves.


This photo shows that not all our time outdoors has to be about nature study. We actually do spend time just throwing the frisbee around the campsite. That is a spruce tree in the background.

Here is something interesting from our trip as well and it tied into our study of trees during this time.

One campground we stayed at in Northern California had a recreated Native American village. This is one of the structures that was a family dwelling and the boys were fascinated by the circular door openings. This area was inhabited by the Yurok tribe and the buildings were all built of local redwoods.


Here is the sweat house in the village. They actually still use this for ceremonial activities.


I am not sure what kind of tree this is but I thought it was just so interesting growing right there out of the cliff along the Pacific Ocean. It was just so nice to look at and enjoy as we took in the horizon.

Okay, enough about trees. This was a great challenge for us and I know I had the advantage of knowing ahead of time that we needed to be looking for spruce trees. Challenge #38 is going to take some ingenuity to find an elm, hickory, or chestnut tree. We are up to the challenge though.

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Various Tree Musings

I realized as the weekend went by that I have started noticing tree trunks and how they are all so different. Someone mentioned this in a post and if I remember who it was, I will link to her. She was talking about how she wonders why we always color a tree trunk and branches brown when they are nearly all some other color. I thought this was interesting and ever since reading her thoughts I have been fascinated by the different colors and textures of tree trunks.


Magnolia trunk

Birch trunk

Oak trunk

Our trip to Oregon gave us some good tree memories. Here are a couple of photos and thoughts to go along with them.

Here is one of the tallest trees in the world, if not the tallest. Apparently, the tallest tree changes from time to time and I couldn’t find any solid evidence online to point to this particular tree but we will just say it is one of the top ten tallest trees in the world. Most of the tallest trees are found in Northern California among the redwoods. (Giant sequoias have more mass but are not taller.) I enjoyed the tree no matter how tall it was and just standing at its base, I was humbled. My thoughts turned to how long it has been growing and all the things that have changed in the world since it was a seedling.

This beautiful madrone tree in Oregon caught my eye. I wish now that I had taken a few extra steps to really examine and photograph the color of its bark in light of my current thoughts on trunk colors.

How about this beauty of an oak along the Rogue River in Oregon? It was just perfect for gathering acorns under and for a little shade on a warm autumn day. There were plenty of blackberries still waiting to be picked along this trail as well. We took a long walk along the river and enjoyed the solitude.


As we wind up our study of trees in the next few weeks, I am going to try to focus on the changing of the landscape due to the falling of leaves. I did notice this morning that the weekend’s rainstorm had hastened the falling of many leaves. I have a better view across our little valley and can see more clearly the neighborhood because the view is not obstructed by so many leaves. It is a different landscape…changing but still pretty.

Trees seem to frame my life.

My boys have become more aware of trees these past eight weeks. Having a focus draws attention to a certain aspect of something that we see every day. My middle son takes his dog for a walk each morning and each morning he finds a special leaf to bring to me as I cook breakfast. He always has an explanation for why he picked the leaf and then lays it on the table at my spot for me to enjoy. Something so simple but it has touched me that a fifteen year old boy takes the time to focus his eyes at least for a few minutes each day on something most of us don’t take the time to notice and then make it special for his tree lovin’ mama.

I find myself feeling grateful for these little gifts that nature study has brought into our family’s life.

https://naturestudyhomeschool.com/2008/10/outdoor-hour-challenge-36-autumn-tree.html

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Autumn Tree Study: Our Family Outdoor Hour Challenge #36

Autumn Tree Study
We continued our tree study with the Sweet Gum or liquidambar tree in our backyard.


We had a huge wind and rain storm last night so the tree has lost most of its leaves.

Here were his observations:


The tree has just about lost its leaves. If you look carefully, perhaps clicking the photo to enlarge it, you will see a little bird on the branch of his tree- just the behind section.


The bark is ragged and rough.

I saw ants and a bit of moss on the trunk.

It didn’t smell like anything.

The leaves under the tree were mostly yellow but some were reddish.


I saw the sticker balls on the ground and some were brown and a few were green and heavy.


Where the leaves have fallen off, there are little buds on the tree.

I think he did a pretty good job of observing his tree. He completed the Seasonal Tree Study notebook page for his journal and it is filed away with the other two pages.

One more season to go.

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Bored in Nature

“Some children are born naturalists, but even those who aren’t were born with natural curiosity about the world and should be encouraged to observe nature.”
Charlotte Mason, vol 2 page 58

“They get so used to reading about marvels of nature and never seeing it for themselves that nothing interests them. The way to cure this is to let them alone for awhile and then start something totally different. It’s not the children’s fault that nature bores them; they are naturally curious and eager to explore the world and everything in it. There’s a poem that says that the person who can best appreciate God is the one who is familiar with the natural world He made.”
Charlotte Mason, vol 2 page 6

Sometimes, despite all my efforts, my boys just are not as interested in nature study as I am. I can take them to the most fascinating places to explore and they just want to sit and talk or take a walk by themselves. The setting is perfect and the subjects abound but they are more interested in throwing rocks or digging a hole.

I can’t force them to be interested when this happens.

How have we learned to handle this? I allow them the space and time to experience nature on their own terms.

It may look like they are not taking much interest but later on when we are driving in the car or talking at the dinner table, they relate things that they noticed as they had a little freedom.

They learned a lot about the properties of bullwhip seaweed as they tried to use it to tie the driftwood together for this beach structure.

They experienced the redwood forest on their own terms as they searched out Big Foot beyond every bend in the trail.

On every beach they made circles in the sand. It became a tradition.

Nature study does not always go according to my plan. I have learned to keep my options open and let things happen as the day unfolds. Honestly, I learn more as well because they most likely will find something that I wouldn’t because they have their own eyes. My eyes see one thing and they see something completely different if I allow them the space and time to find what interests them in our nature study.

More Nature Study Book 3 Cover image

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Outdoor Hour Challenge #36 Autumn Tree Study

Autumn Tree Study handbookofnaturestudy

“Children should also become familiar with trees at an early age. They should pick about six in the winter when the leaves are gone, perhaps an elm, a maple, a beech, etc, and watch them during the year. In the winter they will see the color of the bark, the way the branches grow and the thickness of its build.”
Charlotte Mason, volume 1, page 52

The Outdoor Hour Seasonal Tree Study started in the spring and will complete its cycle in the winter. Our family has been anticipating the changes that come with fall. The last week or two has brought about some *huge* changes in our tree and we are anxious to focus this week on our journal pages.

Outdoor Challenge #36
Seasonal Tree Observation-Autumn

1. We started a tree study project way back in Challenge #11 and made our first observations of our tree. Then during the summer we completed a summer observation of the same tree in Challenge #20. If you would like to review this section in the Handbook of Nature Study, you will find it on pages 622-626. This week the challenge includes making the next seasonal observation of your tree. Lesson 172 on page 623 includes five suggestions for studying your tree during autumn. If you are just joining the challenges, pick a tree from your yard, your street, or a near-by park to observe over the course of the next year. Check in the Handbook of Nature Study to see if your tree is listed there and then do the reading about that particular tree. There should be some suggestions for observations that you can follow. You can use the prepared seasonal tree study page to record your observations.

2. Take your 10-15 minute outdoor time to study the tree you are going to observe over the next year. You can take photos of your tree to put in your nature journal or you can sketch the tree in your journal. If you need help with tree sketching you can use this resource.
Clare Walkers’ Tree Guide

3. After your outdoor time, complete your Seasonal Tree Study notebook page or record your tree observations in your nature journal. Take a few minutes to talk about your time outdoors to see if there is anything that your child wants to learn more about. Follow up any interest shown.


You can purchase all of the first ten challenges in a convenient ebook along with custom notebook pages.

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Sea Lions in the Morning

Here is one of my nature journal entries from the week we were gone:

Oregon Coast Trip

I felt like a little kid today. The excitement of seeing something new and interesting always makes me feel young again.

Our morning drive brought us to a spot along the Oregon Coast where you can stop and look over a place called Shell Island.

As we opened the door and got out, we all could immediately hear barking…not a dog’s bark but a sea lion’s bark.

The islands were covered with California sea lions, Stellar Sea Lions, and Harbor Seals,. Thousands of animals were relaxing, playing, and swimming in and around the islands. We were there a long time looking through our binoculars at their antics.

They are so awkward on land but very graceful in the water.

Another great day related to our study of marine biology.

I am hoping you can click the photos and have a good look at these creatures.

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Aspen Trees in the Fall-Salmon-And a Bear

What a wonderful afternoon drive we had yesterday! The fall colors were popping out all around us and we were pointing out the car windows, totally amazed at the colorful show we could see as we drove along.

The aspens were glorious and the sun even made a brief showing in the late afternoon.Walking along the path under the aspens, I remembered why I love this variety of tree.

Here is our regular stretch of beach at the lake. We indulged in a picnic dinner of roast chicken and salad and then realized that we were all alone at the beach for the first time ever. It was quiet except for the Stellar’s jays.

The three boys were erecting driftwood and rock sculptures while the rest of us took a walk out onto the dock. The sun was beginning to set and we very reluctantly started back to the car.

Earlier in the afternoon, we also went to see the Kokanee salmon spawning in the creek and these signs were something new in the last few weeks. Apparently there are three mama bears with cubs in this area and they are feasting on salmon during the spawning period.

While we were observing the salmon in the creek….a bear was spotted on the opposite side of the water. The bear was totally and completely uninterested in us humans and she went about its business of eating and foraging around in the bushes. We did get a really great view of the bear and I was too busy watching her to take a photo. I do not have a very good zoom on my little camera so it would probably not have turned out very well anyway. Take my word for it, this was not a scary encounter at all. There were a lot of salmon to occupy the bear and a lot of water inbetween us. We watched for a few minutes and then hiked along the path.

There is nothing mentioned in the Handbook of Nature Study about the salmon but I was surprised to find a section on goldfish. I read over the observation suggestions and they were quite good so we will be including a study of our goldfish when the weather is too yucky to go outside. There is always some way to fit nature study in if you are diligent.


We found a lot of interesting feathers on this hike. I love this polka dotted one the best. I am guessing it is a woodpecker feather but I am not sure.

“The color of feathers and often their shape make some birds more beautiful; while in others, the color of the feathers serves to protect them from the observation of their enemies.”
Handbook of Nature Study, pages 31-32 about feathers as ornaments

What a great day for a family drive, hike, and picnic.

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Coastal Marine Biology: Family Style at the Tidepools

We were able to fit in some time at the tide pools along the Oregon Coast. We have started a study of marine biology this year and it was a perfect time to investigate up close the life in these pockets of water and at the rocky shore line.

The first thing we learned was that we needed to know the high and low tides for each day. It made a big difference in what we would see. One day we timed it just right and we found ourselves all alone at a great area of tide pools.

There had been a storm during the night before and the area was covered in seaweed. The whole beach area was filled in with piles of kelp….mostly bullwhip kelp.

The boys quickly learned how to look carefully in and around the crevices of the rocks for interesting things to view.

We saw anemones.

Hermit Crabs

Snails.

Sea Stars

Periwinkles

Someone in our family got wet because he was not paying attention to the waves coming in. I thought he was going to be stranded out on the rocks but he made it in safely……a little wet though. If you look closely in the photo above, you can see him way out on the rocks.

We all learned so much from this experience and now when we read in our textbook about marine life, we have a better understanding of just what they are talking about.

The Handbook of Nature Study has a few pages of information about marine invertebrates. Page 418 talks about shells of Florida and the East Coast and page 430 has a little information on seashore creatures.

After our tidepool adventure, the boys decided to build a structure with driftwood, rocks, and seaweed. This became a tradition on this trip and they came up with very elaborate ways to build on the beach.

Great memories and a lot of learning.

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Marine Invertebrates Notebooking Pages

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Family Outdoor Hour: California and Oregon Coast


All photos from Patrick’s Point State Park, California

Patrick’s Point State Park

Some of our Outdoor time this week was spent at the ocean. We took a few days and drove along the California and Oregon coast enjoying the views and the outdoor life that early October allows. We were sprinkled on a few times but nothing that really dampened our spirits too much. We had anticipated the weather and came equipped.


Our first beachcombing adventure gave us some things to be excited about. We saw three sea otters in the surf playing and diving as we watched. Then out past the waves, we saw another creature pop up….a sea lion. He didn’t come too close but we had a clear view of him from the shore.


We hiked around the cove a bit from where we were camping and found lots of interesting items. We saw several colors of sea stars, some brightly colored crabs, some bones, and lots of sea kelp.


The beach was covered in an area of rocks and this area is known for its agates. We joined in the hunt for our favorites and soon had a whole collection in dad’s sweatshirt pocket.


We also found this driftwood with barnacles on it which was interesting to me at the time but now that I zoom in on the photo, I realize there was a creature on the driftwood too….don’t know what it is.

On the hike back up the trail from the beach, I was able to spot two new plants to identify. One is twinberry

and the other is pearly everlasting.

We had a fantastic time on the beach and there were so many things to explore.