Nature Journals

The first photos here are from My Girl's Nature Journal. She's been keeping one since 2003, but our efforts until this summer have been intermittent. This year one of our focus areas for school is Nature Study, and so we have become much more active with our Journals. It's wonderful to see the pages fill with glorious colours, thoughts, notes, and shapes.

Entry following a nature walk with friends.

Trying out the dry-brush technique at the WHHE meeting. She had come along to help with serving tea and with set up and take down for the painting time.

A Chalk Maple leaf from our back yard. I had sat at the picnic table to work on mine (at bottom of this post) while the children played in the yard. Soon they were all sitting with me, painting leaves. My Girl is the only one who stuck it out to complete a specimen, though. Little Man and Brown-Eyed Boy were quickly lured back to the bikes and garden tools.

Monarch butterfly chrysalis and Milkweed caterpillar from our monarch rearing and tracking kit

This one is from my Nature Journal. I like to add more writing to my page, describing a bit of the setting where the specimen was found or other details that I've learned about the specimen since beginning to observe it. I'd like to add poetry, too, but I haven't gotten that far yet.

Chalk Maple leaf from our back yard done using dry-brush watercolour technique

Common Milkweed

3. Asclepias syriaca - Common Milkweed

Our nature walk last week revealed many things that I didn't realize I knew! One was this, the common milkweed. I'm not sure I would have been so quick to recognize it had I not been immersed in milkweed caterpillar readings, but I'm pleased that I did, anyway!

The large pods are quite distinctive, thick and heavy-looking, with spiny protrusions in rows along its sides.

The leaves are broad, flat ovals, with slightly wavy outer edges. They have a reddish mid-rib (some less red, however) and pale green veins coming out almost perpendicularly to the mid-rib. When broken, the leaves produce a sticky, milky-white substance.

The stem is hairy.

Under this leaf we discovered a collection of Milkweed Tussock Moth Larvae.

My guide says that the common milkweed likes sandy soil with lots of light; this one was near a river and stream, sheltered by trees, but not completely enclosed.

Dry-Brush Exercise - Nature Study in Progress

Our specimens, laying out and ready to be chosen: Maple leaves and Black-Eyed Susans.

The tools of work in progress: specimens to choose from and observe, sketch or watercolour paper, pencils for labelling the painting, masking tape to hold the sketch paper to a hard surface when not working at a table, #2 watercolour paintbrush. The only thing not shown here are the watercolour paints.

A leaf outlined in yellow , ready to have colour added. Yellow is used for this first step as it is easy to cover over with green. This way you have an opportunity to perfect the details of size and shape before going to a less forgiving colour.

A Black-Eyed Susan in process. See how the stem was done in pale yellow first, then the light colours were painted. Green will come soon.

A red Maple leaf. Mixing the right shade is one of the trickiest parts, and intense colours can be achieved by layering the colours.

Careful work placing shading and definition marks.

The colour testing paper can be a beautiful thing in and of itself. There is no end to the variations of colour that can be achieved, and it's nice to have a scrap to test the colour on before it's applied to the painting.

This Black-Eyed Susan is almost complete. Light colours are finished, the small leaf and straight, narrow stem are done, too. Details of shading and colour variation have been added. Now for the black centre.

An autumnal leaf - just changing from green to golden-orange. This one has had details of shading added as well as dark edges for definition.

A completed Black-Eyed Susan. Lovely in its simplicity.

This leaf, heavy in reds, has striking green highlighting the main vein. Notice the lighter spot on the top of the leaf? See how the painter of this specimen tried to capture that in the painting?

::

Thank you to everyone who allowed their photos to be taken for this post. What a wonderful evening we shared together. We'd all enjoy seeing samples of how you've tried dry-brush with your family, so, if you have photos, please email them to Jennifer.

First WHHE meeting of 2008 - Nature Study Notes by Jennifer Talsma

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."

Volume 1: Home Education, Page 61

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:

"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."

Volume 3: School Education, page 236

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.

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:

"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."

Volume 3: School Education, page 237

Nature study is a gentle time, a calm time of observing creation, and having our eyes raised to the Creator.

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.

Notes for a Talk on Nature Study at WHHE Meeting

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."

Volume 1: Home Education, Page 61

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 (note for blog - 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:

"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."

Volume 3: School Education, page 236

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.

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:

"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."

Volume 3: School Education, page 237

Nature study is a gentle time, a calm time of observing creation, and having our eyes raised to the Creator.

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 the 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.

Impatiens pallida - Jewelweed

2. Impatiens pallida - Pale Jewelweed or Pale Touch-Me-Not

We saw this flower on a nature walk with dear friends last Thursday. My friend suggested that it might be a Spotted Jewelweed (also known as touch-me-not). My research on the eNature.com (I couldn't find it in my wildflower guidebook) indicates that it is likely an Impatiens pallida, or Pale Jewelweed. The spotted version has a more golden-orange colour than this yellow, and its spotting is much more extensive on the lower petals.

This plant's blossom reminds me of a fluted goblet, the fluting being quite extravagant, yellow with reddish-orange spots on the petals where they direct the attention to the centre of the cup. I suppose that's to draw insects deep inside toward the pollen so they can participate in propagating the plant. Some of the flowers in the images I found online show more separation between the two lower petals, and there seems to be a range from not-at-all-spotted to spotted like the one I have pictured above within the range of Impatiens pallida.

It was in a wet area near a stream, well sheltered by trees. The stem is tall with viney branches supporting multiple leaves.

Now that I've looked at it a bit online and here in my photos, I realize that I've seen this flower along the river when we've gone walking, too. It has the lovely little seed pods that plump up and, when ready, explode when you touch them. (Hence the other name, Pale Touch-Me-Not.) I believe that those ones are even paler, and not spotted, although I'm going on memory here and I should really go check it out to be sure.

Here's what I've learned about it since identifying it. It is sometimes used as a home remedy for poison ivy, but scientific studies have shown no anti-itch properties. Jewelweed also contains the same dye found in Henna that is used for hair colouring and skin colouring in Mehndi.

Here is the plant growing along the path where we walked.

I hope to post lots more photos from that walk - it was a beautiful afternoon! (I might even post an entry from one or more of our nature journals...if I get ambitious.)

Theatre Goers

Twenty people, all connected in some way with WHHE, attended a matinee performance of Romeo and Juliet at the Stratford Festival Theatre on Wednesday, September 3. It was a great pleasure to be able to start of our year of living education with such a treat!

(one family left before the photos were taken)

If you're interested, you can read my brief post about the production at PeaceLedge.