The Bounty of the Outdoor Life

A variety of commitments have kept me from blogging. I have a little breathing space and yesterday's episode of the outdoor life gave me something worth sharing. Even though we've not homeschooled much in the past two weeks, we've made time for nature study. One can't help it with all the beautiful things blooming and the unpredictable weather.

This week, my heart has been turning over Carroll and Andy Smith's post on nature study and how to live it.

Education, including Nature Study, as Mason told the young lady whom she interviewed to attend her college, is about living. I have thought about it and I have asked myself the question, “Are these (mentioned above) ways of teaching Nature Study more about “doing” Nature Study weekly or are they about “living” Nature Study. We are to develop the habit of living fully and part of that living is relating to nature and knowing the places where we live, not just doing activities, even Mason inspired ones!"

Ouch! Even the best of intentions can end up focused on doing rather than being, especially during busy times like this past month!

I told Pamela I was heading out to do nature study, but I didn't tell her to join me. I wanted to see if she would come on her own initiative. While she was wrapping up whatever she was doing on the computer, I was outside, painting wisteria shoots. While we planted seven seeds at the same time, three have sprouted and emerged, one by one, and they illustrate stages of shooting up. I wanted to capture the differences a few days makes. The thought occurred to me that even seeds remind us of something about child development: it happens at their own pace and in their own time, no matter how much we yearn to rush it. By the time I began my notes, Pamela was sitting on the brick steps with me, admiring the seedlings.

Last night, a storm blasted our town, knocking out power for five hours, which killed our elderly algae-eating fish. Today, we found pieces of pecan branches on the ground. I picked them up and noticed a jelly-like fungus that I later learned goes by many names Auricularia auricula, wood ear, cloud ear mushroom, Judas ear, and a few others I bet. The fungus intrigued Pamela, and she began picking it off the branch. It almost looked like a cross between a golden raisin and a dark raisin after being soaked in water for a few hours. Pamela didn't seem to mind the squishy texture one bit!



For the past few weeks, I've been trying more "sight-seeing" with Pamela. By "sight-seeing", I mean looking around for something outside that is small and within reach and studying it carefully enough to supply a detailed description (pages 45-48). This activity trains observation skills and expressive language and builds vocabulary. Just like picture study, Pamela spent a few minutes observing the attributes of the fungus, knowing a narration will follow.



When she was ready, I asked her to turn around and narrate a description from memory, which I recorded in the video below.

I noticed a couple of interesting things.

• She illustrated nominal aphasia quite well: Pamela knows the word branch but what came out of her mouth was bench. Word retrieval glitches are part of her language challenges and thankfully she doesn't feel self-concious about it. We value communication over perfect speech. I understood what she meant and I respect her efforts.
• Her eye movements shift to the right most of the time when she is speaking. She is concentrating so hard on verbalizing what she saw that she can't look at me while figuring out what to say. Lateral eye movements are a sign of answering difficult questions. Just talking requires her to overcome the neurological barriers we feel when asked a challenging question.
• She processed well enough to look up at the tree when I pointed up. RDI gave her another channel of communication and understanding when language fails her. Tapping into nonverbals must be such a relief for her!
• When we had more of a conversation, going back and forth, she attempts to shift attention to me and then quickly looks away as she processes what she is going to say. When she realizes I am going to give her the name of what she described, she is better able to share eye contact because she doesn't have to talk. Once she starts repeating the word fungus, her eye contact becomes uneven again. It reminds me of how far she has come. Ten years ago, listening was just as challenging as talking for her!

Pamela sat down to draw the wisteria, and then she began writing. My jaw dropped when she asked me how to spell fungus, a word that isn't a regular part of her vocabulary. Her easy recall of a fairly unfamiliar word pleasantly surprised me--aphasia gets in way of even well-known words.

A thought struck me that the outdoor life’s bounty provided therapy for her as I alluded to in my ChildLightUSA blogpost called Rethinking the Culture of Therapy. Picking off the fungus worked on her fine motor skills, the domain of occupational therapy. Learning a new word in a contextualized way and expressing what she saw verbally was speech therapy. Touching this squishy gooey stuff—something she could not do fifteen years ago because of her tactile defensiveness—falls under sensory integration therapy. Anyone who has purchased materials for a sensory diet knows how expensive that stuff can be, and the outdoor life offered it for free! Keeping a nature notebook is an artful blend of science, language arts, and art.

If the child is left to himself he will think more and better, if less showily. Let him go and come freely, let him touch real things, and combine his impressions for himself, instead of sitting indoors at a little round table, while a sweet-voiced teacher suggests that he build a stone wall with his wooden blocks, or make a rainbow out of strips of coloured paper, plant straw trees in bead flower-pots. Such teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experiences.
~ Anne Sullivan, May 8, 1887

Semi-Wordless Wednesday: Nature Notebook Pages

An update to what we have been doing with our nature notebooks and I have enjoyed keeping my own as well!

Dead Black Swallowtail Butterfly

In early August, Steve found this beautifully formed dead butterfly in our yard. I thought it would make a great kick-off to our nature notebooks. Pamela made her entry at the beginning of the school year, but spilling coffee all over my laptop last month got in the way of editing the video clips. OOPS! My bad!

Natural Lighting:


Unnatural Indoor Lighting:


Pamela's Nature Notebook Entry:


What the Dobbins Taught Me:



Nature notebooks are a great way to work on dynamic intelligence because they are rich in opportunities for dialog and inter-subjectivity (the fancy word for one person relating to another). Not only that, nature study is good for the brain and, if you don't believe me, listen to what Dr. Carroll Smith has to say on the topic (one of my favorite talks at the 2007 Charlotte Mason Conference). I am grateful to people like Jeannette Tulis and Deborah and Holly Anne Dobbins who have guided me in learning more about how to paint with watercolors (check out their article on nature study).

I am going to share with you clips that show you step by step how I guided Pamela in painting her butterfly. We spent fifteen minutes on one day and fifteen minutes on another day doing this watercolor. I wanted to spotlight a couple of points:

• Cardstock paper works well: you can cut one sheet into four mini-paintings. That is the perfect size for beginners. The picture I painted of the lantana leaf was on a sheet of cardstock of that size!
• Most people recommend Prang watercolors. I think they are great!
• You need more variety of brushes: thick ones are for mixing colors and wide expanses, the thin ones are for details and outlining.
• Never use the green in the tray. Nature has a wide variety of green. If you use the prefabricated one in your tray, your paintings will get boring before long.
• Have a paper towel available to blot mistakes and dry your brush. Too much water will cause your paper to wrinkle.
• Outline in yellow before you start painting. If you mess up, it will be less obvious!
• Think of ways to scaffold your child: I help Pamela with mixing. She has a tendency to use the colors in the tray and not make her own.
• Here is a cheat for white. There is no way I can scaffold the idea of leaving white space, so I bought a set of thick watercolor paints that includes a tube of white!
• Talk about what you see before doing anything! Spend a couple of minutes observing and sharing perspectives.
• If you have never done this before, try making your own watercolor attempts first. It is hard to guide someone in something you have never done. It can be fun!
• Do not paint while your child is painting. It is hard to be a guide when you are trying to be the next Van Gogh!

Talking about the Nature Specimen


Outlining in Yellow


Painting the Black Base


Painting Orange Spots


Adding Brown to the Base


Adding White Spots


Adding Blue Spots


Finishing Up


One tip I got from the 2007 Charlotte Mason is to take advantage of technology. If that butterfly is flitting around too fast to draw, take a picture, transfer it to your computer, and zoom in for a closer look! Here are two memories Pamela and I made from pictures taken on a visit to Cypress Gardens.

Pamela's Cypress Gardens Entry


My Cypress Gardens Entry

The Value of Nature Study

Nature study accomplishes many educational goals: in addition to building a foundation for science, carefully studying nature builds the habit of attention and hones observational skills. You start asking questions about what you see and begin looking up information to answer your questions. You become more resourceful about figuring out what you see by going beyond appearance: sounds, location, behaviors, patterns, movement, etc. You get exercise and fresh air, especially if your nature study involves a hike. You learn to appreciate the design, order, imagination, and beauty of God's handiwork!

When you start exploring nearby parks, you add to your knowledge of geography and history. For example, a nice park up the road from us is Poinsett State Park, which has interesting geographic features like sand hills and swamps and mountain laurels festooned with Spanish moss. The Civilian Conservation Corps built a coquina bathhouse in the 1930s as part of FDR's New Deal. The park's name honors Joel Roberts Poinsett, our first ambassador to Mexico, who introduced the poinsetta plant to the United States. When you participate in formal programs like the upcoming Owl Prowl, you build relationships with other naturalists, scientists, and artists.

Keeping nature notebooks involves art, language arts, and science, all rolled into one. You add words to your vocabulary as you learn to express yourself orally and in writing. Because you date your entries, you become intimate time, seasons, weather, and calendars. You may even dabble with some poetry or Bible reading as you search for the write quote to go with a sketch.

Materials are quite inexpensive: a sketchbook with 80 pound paper, watercolor pencils, watercolors, and brushes. If you are unsure of how to get started, you could find information online about dry brush and other techniques. My biggest tip--be very sparing with water--I ruin most of my pictures with too much water! A seventh grader from the Perimeter School in Duluth, Georgia described the process extremely well in the Spring 2007 issue of The Review (page 27). Teachers describe how they teach first and second graders nature study in the Winter 2007 issue of The Review (pages 29-31). Charlotte Mason herself spent a good portion of her first book describing nature study and the outdoor life for young children.

Do not be afraid to use a little technology in your nature study. At the 2006 Charlotte Mason Conference, Amber Benton gave a great talk about how to take advantage of technology in this philosophy of education. David and I learned this lesson on Saturday. We were filming inside a thicket next to our house and thought we heard a cardinal. We did not see a thing, but our camcorder caught a flash of a cardinal quietly waiting for us to get lost. We did not see it until we reviewed the recording. We are able to make better drawings of shy critters by pausing the recording and soaking up every detail. The picture on the television is a chipping sparrow we drew.

Nature study involves nearly all of your senses: beyond seeing, you listen for sounds and pay attention to smells. If you can tame a chickadee or chipmunk, you incorporate touch. At the 2007 Charlotte Mason Conference, Carroll Smith pointed out how nature study involves many areas of the brain (check out the diagram of the brain in his slide show)! Nature study done right involves the frontal lobe because it requires executive function (thinking, organizing, planning, and problem solving). It involves the motor cortex (movement), sensory cortex (sensory processing), occipital lobe (vision), and cerebellum (balance). It tasks the parietal lobe in making sense of the world (and spelling) and the temporal lobe for memory, understanding, and language. Carroll wrote, "Memory is frequently increased by using multiple pathways of the brain," and nature study provides great scope for making memories.

Nature study provides wonderful and exciting opportunities for RDI therapy. While filming four chipping sparrows in a hydrangea bush yesterday, Pamela and I took turns speaking declaratively about what we observed. I captured several minutes of digital recordings of the sparrows, searching for food. Even though we maintained our distance from these shy guys, I zoomed in on one of the birds. Imagine our delight when we reviewed the footage on television today and noticed that the sparrow was pecking at a pecan from our very own tree.

I framed Pamela's nature notebook entry for two objectives: (1) paying attention to color and (2) using more descriptive language. We paused the recording to freeze the bird and allow time for careful observation. At first, Pamela made the beak and legs black. When she finished drawing her sparrow, I pointed to the television asked her what color the beak and legs were. She told me yellow, so we erased the beak and legs and she redid them in bright yellow. I pointed to the tail and asked her if her bird had a tail. She grabbed some pencils and added a tail. I pointed under the beak and said, "This is called the bib. What color is it?" She said it was white, so I erased the gray bib and she colored it white.

On Friday, Pamela had written a very sparse description of two crows, completely lacking in adjectives with very little action:

The crows say, "caw." It has some feathers. It has some feet. It has some beaks. It has some eyes. It has some wings. It can fly outside. I saw some crows. The crows are sitting on the tree.

I did not want to dominate the writing of her entry about the chipping sparrow, so we talked about ways of improving the crow entry but made no corrections. First, we read her story, adding adjectives as we went. She said, "It has some black feathers," while I said, "It has some shiny feathers." Then, we talked about the actions of a crow: "The crow is flying high in the sky," or "The crow is walking on the ground." Because I wanted to see how much she took in from our dialog, I left the room while she wrote the following, delightful entry:

It can stand under the bush. It can eat a nut. It can sit on the ground. It has a yellow beak. It has some sharp feet. It has some brown and black feathers. It has a white, black, and grey head. It has some black wings. I saw a chipping sparrow.

As you can see, there is no end to the value both educator and children receive from nature study.