To Totality and Back Again

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Our family doesn’t completely follow the Ambleside Online (AO) free curriculum, but we pull heavily from it for our book list, among many other things.

One of those other things is their Nature Study schedule. If I want to pick a particular topic of nature study for us to focus on for a while, why not start with their suggested schedule and tweak it along the way, if need be? This way there is less choice-fatigue for me and I can find some community around what we are studying, whether with other AO families I know in real life, on the AO forums, or on the Facebook group.

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This summer and fall is for the birds, so I’ve been doing a bit of research and collecting materials that will prepare me to assist and inform my children in their own observation and enjoyment of our feathered friends over the next several months.

I’ve seen a lot of materials for purchase on the interwebs, and many of them were quite tempting, but I wanted to see what was available to me for free before punching in credit card numbers.

First, I searched my own shelves.

We already own the Handbook of Nature Study, which will serve us for many years and topics to come, making the purchase price slim over the long haul.

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Birds are covered on pages 27-143. The pictures are not the most impressive, but this book is chock full of information so that you, the parent, can be a literally walking resource for you children on the trail. Types of birds, parts of birds, migration of birds, lessons with suggested questions, pictures, diagrams, and even related poetry are included. I plan to read this section for my own knowledge and make a few notes on particular questions or topics to raise while I’m out with the kids.

Remember, the purpose of Nature Study is to get the child in touch with the world and creatures God has made and to enjoy it. The Handbook of Nature Study is NOT a textbook of information you have to cram into your precious children’s little heads. It’s a tool to aid the work of observation that the kids ought to be doing and delighting in on their own.

I found another volume that I may reference over the next few months: Living with Wildlife: How to Enjoy, Cope with, and Protect North America’s Wild Creatures Around Your Home and Theirs. I don’t think there’s much to say about this book now since the title is so descriptive! We found this gem at a library cast-off sale for probably about 50 cents.

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The point here isn’t so much that any of you need THIS book, but that if you keep your eyes open, you may find something similar. If I didn’t have the Handbook of Nature Study, this book (or some other like it) would suffice quite nicely. Birds are covered on pages 180-252, if any of you by chance come across this guide or find it at your library. There aren’t so many pictures or diagrams, and it’s not aimed at teachers or parents to instruct their children, but the information is valuable and would do the trick of providing a parent with both a general and some specific knowledge of birds.

My oldest has read many chapters in The Burgess Bird Book for Children, one of the great selections found on the AO booklist.

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It’s a narrative introduction to all kinds of birds, with animals talking and acting consistent with their particular habits and personalities. Each chapter covers a different bird, and we may just read one here and there for fun if we’re interested.

My mom gave us a laminated Pocket Naturalist Guide of Arkansas Birds for Christmas several years ago. This guide isn’t particularly detailed, but it does provide color pictures of a variety of birds, including their Latin names, size, and an occasional special note. Listed on the back are bird viewing areas and sanctuaries, as well as a state regional map.

For very young children, a laminated field guide is almost a necessity! Even when they can’t read, they love feeling like real explorers with a guide in their pack that they can pull out at will. And you as the parent love feeling like it won’t be destroyed on the first expedition! If you don’t live in Arkansas, you can look up the Pocket Naturalist field guide for birds in your state.

Even just one or two of the above resources is more than enough to get started with nature study. Actually, all you really need to do to get started is step outside and pay attention, and maybe take along a notebook and a pencil! But we’ve been at this for several years now and I wanted to add to our resource collection (and convince myself that I didn’t need to buy anything new or shiny in order to do so).

So…where did I go for new FREE resources?

I went online.

Many of the paid resources I’ve seen lately were all ebooks and video courses anyway, so I thought I’d search in the same format–starting with websites specific to my home state of Arkansas.

The Audubon Society of Arkansas and the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission have a wealth of free resources for studying birds, among many other kinds of wildlife! There’s a searchable database where you can find pictures, details, and songs of birds when you search by color, size, habitat, and more. The Game and Fish Commission provides free printable brochures on birds and so much more, but they will also send you a hard copy for free if you send them your mailing address!

If you’re outside of Arkansas, check out the corresponding organizations for your state.

All I asked for was the Arkansas Backyard Birds booklet, but they sent the other three as well! I suppose they figured someone like me would eventually ask for more booklets and they could save on shipping by sending them all at once.

There are two more ways I’d like to complement our focus on birds, and both can be achieved without spending a dime.

I’d like us to improve our artistic abilities in the area of drawing birds, so that our nature journal entries can better represent what we see out in the field. Enter YouTube. There are TONS of FREE video tutorials to help us hone our skills. I think we’ll get a start with watercolor painting a saucy little wren like the ones we see every day around our house.

Finally, one of the greatest gifts I can imagine giving my children when it comes to nature study is to tie God’s truth to what they see. The heavens are declaring the glory of God, and I want them to see it. I just read the Sermon on the Mount this morning, and I think we’ll incorporate Matthew 6:26 into our memory work as we observe the winged creatures around us:

Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?

I hope this has been helpful to you, my friends.

Do you have any other super awesome free resources for bird nature study? If you’ve studied birds already with your kids, what did your family enjoy most?

The Friday Five: “Special Events” First Edition

05 Friday May 2017

Posted by Lauren Scott in Friday Five, Home Education, Nature Studies

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

children, engagement, homeschooling, marriage, motherhood, Nature, pink eye remedy, Scholé Sisters, Special Events, The Friday Five

Today seems like an appropriate time to write my first “Friday Five” post. After all, it’s not every year that the first Friday of the fifth month falls on the fifth day of the fifth month. If I were really good, I’d have posted this at five this morning.

Don’t you just love the alliteration?

It’s my hope that “The Friday Five” will be a fun addition to the blog. Some weeks it may be five related things, and other weeks it may be five completely random things. And, just being real, some weeks it may be non-existent because life happens. But when I do get to eek out one of these list posts, I plan to include spiritual encouragement, practical tips, personal anecdotes, and much more.

For now, we can call this a “Special Events” edition. Here goes!

My boys recently participated in their first musical stage play, “No Strings Attached: The Musical Adventures of Pinocchio.” They had a fantastic time playing 19th-century school boys, donkeys, a marionette, and singing fish. They were the youngest in the production, so the five-hour-long dress rehearsal was pretty exhausting for them (and their parents), but they absolutely had a blast.
When the last performance was over, our five-year-old shed a few tears. I assured him that he would have the opportunity to be in another play sometime, but he was quite upset that it would likely not be Pinocchio again. “I like THIS play!”
He later had a dream that they did the play again, and he reported the following morning with a beaming smile, “It was the most wonderful dream!”
Pink eye isn’t exactly the kind of visitor that you usually want to celebrate as a “special event,” but it’s been a guest at our house for a couple weeks this spring so it’s at least worth a mention. We’ve had pretty good luck getting rid of it by mixing a 1/2 teaspoon boric acid in one cup boiled water. Once it has completely cooled, you can place a few drops into each eye. We had our kiddos lay down on a table and close their eyes while we dripped a bit of the water onto each eye near the tear duct. Then they could open their eyes so that the water could come in. This is way easier than holding a spoon over open and very frightened eyes.
I invited my local Scholé Sisters group over for a Nature Study Day at our place. We live on seven mostly-treed acres, have a creek running through our property, and last fall seeded a part of our land for wildflowers. We feel so blessed to have such a lovely slice of creation right outside our door, and it was so much fun to share it with friends! We identified trees and flowers, had a picnic lunch, and the kids spent the rest of the time playing in the creek. Having other curious moms around with their various field guides also meant that we now know a little bit more about what’s growing on our land than we did before.
We also had our last day of co-op classes a week ago. In the first hour, my youngest got a cookie in his Hands-on-Science class, and my oldest enjoyed a cupcake complete with his own personally-decorated edible stamp for his Stamping Through History class. As if that weren’t enough of an end-of-year celebration, the much-anticipated Book Club Party awaited them after recess. Each family was to choose a favorite book and bring a snack and an activity to share with the whole elementary group. We settled on Stuart Little the morning of, and I like to think our little table-top presentation turned out alright considering the high level of procrastination. After so much excitement the kids fell fast asleep in the van while I ran errands.
Unfortunately when we got to the library and I actually had to get out of the van and take the kids with me, my little guy didn’t wake up happy and said he didn’t feel that well. I knew we only needed to go inside for five minutes, so I carried him–the five-year-old on my right arm, purse and bag of books on my left. Well, that did it, apparently. Just as we stepped up to the front door of the public library the poor little man puked all over my left side. And my purse. And on the bag of books. And all over the steps.

Maybe eating all those cheese cubes after an equally large amount of sugary treats wasn’t such a good idea after all.

Again, I wouldn’t normally consider sharing a puke story as part of a “special event,” but how often do I get to be “that mom” with the sick kid who just made a horrid mess for everyone else to walk through? I’m at least hoping this was a “special” occasion–and not a new norm.
And, when I think about it, I am so incredibly thankful that the mess happened outside where a kind man washed it off with a few buckets of water. A few more steps and it would have been inside the library itself: on the carpet, smelling up the whole place for who-knows-how-long. Or it could have happened in the van. God was merciful. And I was thankful. With no fever and the sick feeling lasting only about six hours, I also thanked the Lord that this was apparently just a response to way too much junk food and not a virus.
Our last day of co-op sure was fun–a real blowout!
This isn’t a last-but-not-least kind of #5. No, this is a save-the-best-for-last #5. Ten years ago today it was Saturday. I was studying for the last finals week of my senior year of college. Later that afternoon, I played paintball with a few friends, including this guy named Nathaniel. After the game we all returned to campus and discussed dinner plans. My dad had told me to go to a local Italian restaurant to try a few dishes so he could plan for an after-graduation lunch for our family and close friends when they would all be up for the ceremony the following weekend, so I lamented that I wouldn’t be joining the group for dinner. Nathaniel said he had a project to work on. We all parted ways.
But an hour later Nathaniel asked if he could borrow my camera for this project of his. I obliged.
After cleaning up for the evening, I grabbed some books to study at a local coffee shop after dinner and headed to the restaurant. I asked for the manager, just as my dad had instructed, and she curiously led me to a table in the back. A table set for two. A table where a cleaned-up Nathaniel sat with his Bible open to the verse that says, “He who finds a wife finds a good thing…”
After a few nervous words and a question from him, I said, “Yes.” And he said he loved me for the first time. He pulled out a ring and my camera.A “project”, huh?!?

If I had known what his “project” was, I would have probably worn some make-up. 😉