Curricula and Learning Links - Charlotte Mason Method
Nature Journals
Lynn: Please share your thoughts on nature journals!
Briva: My daughter's favorite was Bienfang's sketchbook, it's half-ruled so she could write stuff in it. It's spiral-bound. Good for light washes of watercolor, especially watercolor pencils. You can leave them dry or wet them with a brush.
At first we'd go out almost everyday...to the backyard mostly, then around the neighborhood. Then I started making once a week trips to a different park.
My first goal with the nature study was to find something new. There were some books in our library about our local trees, shrubs and flowers that helped us identify them later. We kept some records about date, time, temp. I'm the only one keeping one now and it's turned into an artist's sketchbook. Just quick drawings or watercolors of whatever catches my eye. I have a little 6 year old who needs to be inspired. Have you seen a copy of Edith Holden's The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady?. She's got poems interspersed with her drawings. I'm not that creative. Maybe someday I'll add some thoughts and poems to mine.
Heidi in IN: We have spiral bound art notebooks with thick paper. We do a large variety of things-- draw, watercolor, color pencil, pastels, or tape in pressed flowers, leaves, bark, feathers, dead bugs (my son--LOL)--anything that is meaningful to them. Sometimes we add poetry or just observations or just the date.
My favorite thing I did in my nature journal was a series of watercolor paintings of one of our flowering bushes--what it looked like each season.
Yes, I do one too, it seems to keep everyone's interest better if I join in-otherwise, my son is done in 2 seconds and it is sloppy. But if it is done together at once, everyone has more fun and slows down to enjoy the time together and to comment on each other's work.
Sometimes we sketch it, then add watercolor or colored pencils later. At a workshop I went to by Penny Garner, she said if you are trying to capture birds, sketch it quickly before it flies off then use a field guide to get the colors, patterns, beak, etc right. Great idea, huh?!?
We get our ideas from our backyard, visits to parks, field trips, nature walks at Grandma's.
At this age (6 and 11) we don't bother with the scientific stuff--I want my kids to enjoy doing this and if they have to look up a bunch of stuff and learn latin just to do a nature notebook, it may not be as fun anymore and I may meet with resistance when its time to do it. I want them to spend time being amazed at God's creation, not man's ability to name and categorize it.
My daughter is very artistic and her journal is very pretty, full of flowers and butterflies, mine isn't as pretty but neatly done and organized, and my son's is lumpy because it is full of dead stuff--bugs, leaves, feathers, egg shells, bark as he isn't artistic in anyway but enjoys collecting and taping things in his book.
Mainly, let each child make it THEIRS. It doesn't have to look like anyone else's or have to have anything specific in it--it should be the joy of doing it that counts.
My child hates drawing! How can he do nature journals?
Jill MN: My 11 year old daughter had been saying "I hate drawing" and was very much frustrated anytime I asked her to draw ANYthing, and I also want to implement more CM methods, including nature-study with drawing. SO, I asked at another site for advice on the drawing thing, and several ladies suggested the "Draw Right Now" series. These contain very simple (but absolutely the CUTEST!!) pics that you have your dc draw - it is all laid out, in order, step-by-step, and you can hardly go wrong. EVERY pic my kids have made so far, using these books, has turned out great, and have been pics that they have actually been pleased with and PROUD of!
Another great book for drawing basics is The Drawing Textbook by Bruce McIntyre - this is a very inexpensive, small book, with small/short lessons covering drawing basics/fundamentals. As my kiddos are learning better powers of observation (really *looking* at exactly what the item looks like that they are attempting to draw), their drawing is improving, and with each one, they gain confidence, and I have had less and less resistance with every drawing lesson we've done. My 11 year old daughter has even started drawing on her own, and now says she LIKES (dare I say LOVES) drawing!
SO, my advice - get a couple of good, basic drawing technic books, and have MANDATORY drawing lessons with VERY EASY, confidence-building, drawing assignments a couple times a weeks, and stick with it - be very stubborn - more stubborn than your son! ;) In time, as he sees improvement, he will develop a better attitude - just don't give up and don't let him off the hook on it - drawing is actually an important skill.
SoCalPam Try a digital camera! My older son took digital photos of jellyfish at our local aquarium and incorporated them into an excellent nine page report that he wrote and typed himself. It was really great! I remember doing reports as a kid, laboriously handwriting them out and drawing pictures for them. It was a lot of work, yet satisfying. My son was able to derive quite a bit of satisfaction in his own way. He ended up exhibiting the report at our local homeschool fair. For display he made jellyfish out of fabric and created an ocean backdrop for them.
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