The following was originally posted on PeaceLedge. More about the first WHHE meeting and Nature Study, including Sandra's notes on dry-brush, photos from the meeting, etc., will be posted within a few days.
Tonight two sweet friends and I led the application portion of our Charlotte Mason study group meeting. We were asked to speak about Nature Study and to teach the dry-brush technique that we had learned at the ChildLight USA conference in June. What follow are portions of my notes from my part of that talk.
Nature Study
As the we were preparing this section of the meeting, we were struck by how much Karen Andreola’s chapters [33-35 in A Charlotte Mason Companion] reminded us of a session on Nature Study that S. and I attended at the ChildLight USA conference in June, led by Deborah and HollyAnne Dobbins, mother and daughter nature study teachers at a CM school in the south. So as I talk about these chapters, I’d like to weave in things from the Dobbinses, leading up to S's instruction in a dry-brush watercolour exercise that we experienced at the conference.
First of all, why do we do Nature Study? Karen says that in a Charlotte Mason education, there are two main reasons.
The first is that it establishes a relationship between a person and creation. On page 255, Karen quotes Charlotte Mason:
"We are all meant to be naturalists, each to his own degree, and it is inexcusable to live in a world so full of marvels of plant and animal life and to care for none of these things."
And the second reason is because it points us to the Creator. Karen quotes Audubon, also on page 255, to illustrate this:
"When I had hardly learned to walk, and to articulate those first words always so endearing to parents, the productions of nature that hay spread all around were constantly pointed out to me. . . My father generally accompanied my steps, procured bird and flowers for me, and pointed out the elegant movements of the former, the beauty and softness of their plumage, the manifestations of their pleasure, or their sense of danger, and the always perfect forms and splendid attire of the latter. He would speak of the departure and return of the birds with the season, describe their haunts, and, more wonderful than all, their change of livery, thus exciting me to study them, and to raise my mind toward their Creator."John James Audubon quoted in A Charlotte Mason Companion by
Karen Andreola, page 255
Always looking at the creation and the Creator, nature study is not inteneded to be intense scientific investigation but to build a relationship between the student and the one (or One) being observed.
The next question becomes HOW? How do we do nature study?
Sometimes it comes about informally, as you’re going for a walk to friends and one of the children sees a bird, or an insect, or a leaf skeleton along the sidewalk. Take a moment or two, observe it, and when you get home, try to describe it and locate it in a field guide or draw it in a nature journal.
Karen’s book has lots of suggestions for small nature study projects that you can do with your children whether you are in town or country. Chapters 34 and 35 are full of ideas. A key element in each one, though, is the Nature Journal. It is here that observations are recorded – dated entries that include drawings, poetry or prose, personal reflections about the item being journalled. This is simply a book, any kind will do, really, as Karen tells us in chapter 33: blank or lined, hard bound or soft cover; Karen even says that small children might prefer to work on loose paper and mount only the entries they choose to keep into their notebooks.
We have kept nature notebooks sporadically since my oldest was about 5, and you can look at my family’s samples as well as S and L’s after the meeting (you can see some of our samples by looking at the Nature Study topic here at PeaceLedge. L's are posted at "the world as we see it". I'll see if S will offer photos or a links for hers). These things do become treasures to the children over time. They see how their observation skills are expanding, and how their ability to accurately represent what they observe is growing, too.
You’ve heard me use the word observation many times already. Well, Karen points out in her first paragraph on page 253, the importance of observation when it comes to nature. Observation is how we come to know the natural world, how we come to care about it. Without observation there is no chance of a relationship.
I found this passage written by Charlotte Mason:
Sometimes it comes about informally, as you’re going for a walk to friends and one of the children sees a bird, or an insect, or a leaf skeleton along the sidewalk. Take a moment or two, observe it, and when you get home, try to describe it and locate it in a field guide or draw it in a nature journal.
Karen’s book has lots of suggestions for small nature study projects that you can do with your children whether you are in town or country. Chapters 34 and 35 are full of ideas. A key element in each one, though, is the Nature Journal. It is here that observations are recorded – dated entries that include drawings, poetry or prose, personal reflections about the item being journalled. This is simply a book, any kind will do, really, as Karen tells us in chapter 33: blank or lined, hard bound or soft cover; Karen even says that small children might prefer to work on loose paper and mount only the entries they choose to keep into their notebooks.
We have kept nature notebooks sporadically since my oldest was about 5, and you can look at my family’s samples as well as S and L’s after the meeting (you can see some of our samples by looking at the Nature Study topic here at PeaceLedge. L's are posted at "the world as we see it". I'll see if S will offer photos or a links for hers). These things do become treasures to the children over time. They see how their observation skills are expanding, and how their ability to accurately represent what they observe is growing, too.
You’ve heard me use the word observation many times already. Well, Karen points out in her first paragraph on page 253, the importance of observation when it comes to nature. Observation is how we come to know the natural world, how we come to care about it. Without observation there is no chance of a relationship.
I found this passage written by Charlotte Mason:
Do you see the emphasis on observation, of accumulation of visual details which get sorted, collated, arranged, and categorized by the children on their own? This is the ‘common knowledge’ that precedes science teaching – and continues alongside it. This was something emphasized by Deborah and HollyAnne. They would take their students to the location they had selected for observation, and each student would choose a specimen. Then the students would return to their seats (or, if the whole class period was being held out of doors, they’d find a spot to sit) and they would silently investigate their specimen for a full minute. They would carefully turn their flower, looking at it from every angle, seeing what they could discover about it, handling it gently so as to preserve its beauty."In Science, or rather, nature study, we attach great importance to recognition, believing that the power to recognise and name a plant or stone or constellation involves classification and includes a good deal of knowledge. To know a plant by its gesture and habitat, its time and its way of flowering and fruiting; a bird by its flight and song and its times of coming and going; to know when, year after year, you may come upon the redstart and the pied fly-catcher, means a good deal of interested observation, and of, at any rate, the material for science.... They notice for themselves, and the teacher gives a name or other information as it is asked for, and it is surprising what a range of knowledge a child of nine or ten acquires."
After that minute of observation, they would tell a partner what they had seen. During this time, the student listening was required to remain silent and attentive – his turn to share would come. It was amazing when we did this in the workshop, the number of details that our partners came up with that we hadn’t – and vice versa. There is a world of beauty and detail in each specimen, just waiting to be discovered!
I want to quickly add that Nature walks and nature journaling are not Science instruction time.
Charlotte writes in volume 3:
Nature study is a gentle time, a calm time of observing creation, and having our eyes raised to the Creator."The teachers are careful not to make these nature walks an opportunity for scientific instruction, as we wish the children’s attention to be given to observation with very little direction. In this way they lay up that store of ‘common information’ which Huxley considered should precede science teaching; and, what is much more important, they learn to know and delight in natural objects as in the familiar faces of friends. The nature-walk should not be made the occasion to import a sort of Tit-Bits miscellany of scientific information. The study of science should be pursued in an ordered sequence, which is not possible or desirable in a walk."
We want to give you an opportunity to try the dry-brush technique that we learned from the Dobbinses in June. I had been very intimidated about entries in our nature journals – I’m not an artist, our pictures were poor representations of the specimens we were choosing, and painting? Well, painting sounded like a lot of effort, so we stuck to pencil, pencil crayons, even going as far as watercolour pencils and crayons, but sometimes not even adding the water afterward! I wanted to try it, and having done it in the workshop I realized how very accessible it is. We considered demonstrating it only or having an opportunity to try it after the meeting if people chose to, but felt that the greatest benefit would be in trying it yourselves, seeing how easily it can be done.
A couple of things to keep in mind are that ideally the students should be silent during the dry-brush time. This is a time for quiet work – observing, reproducing. Sometimes Deborah and HollyAnne play soft music, other times there is complete silence. When the painting is done out of doors, the sounds of the environment naturally provide the backdrop.
The children’s work is not to be criticized or corrected, although using a step-by-step method to label the drawings, and so on, will encourage careful work and accuracy.
Always remember that the goal of this exercise is observation and a greater reverence for the Creator, not perfect representation of the specimen. If we wanted that, we’d take a photograph, and even that wouldn’t be perfect. No, the point is that the children spend time looking, learning to love what they see and the One Who made it.
For more on the Nature Study topic at the WHHE meeting, including S's notes about dry-brush technique, visit the post on the WHHE blog. Those items will be posted in a couple of days.
I hope some will send in samples of their watercolour work. I'm so looking forward to seeing how people will use this in their families.
ReplyDeleteLaurel