Getting Started With Exploring Nature With Children

If you are new to Exploring Nature With Children, welcome.

Perhaps you have been longing to spend more time out of doors with your children, maybe nature study is something you have admired from afar, but you are not quite sure how to begin, r perhaps you have opened the curriculum, seen all the lovely possibilities within it, and wondered how to fit everything into your week.

The first thing I want you to know is this:

You do not need to do everything! Exploring Nature With Children was written to be used year upon year for layered learning, and was created to make nature study easier, not to give you another list of things to keep up with. It is there to guide you, inspire you, and to help you to notice the natural world alongside your children, one week at a time.

What is Exploring Nature With Children?

Exploring Nature With Children (ENWC) is a complete, 48-week nature-study curriculum designed especially for Charlotte Mason home educators.

Each week has its own seasonal nature theme and includes:

• a guided nature walk
• poetry and art selections
• a themed booklist
• references to The Handbook of Nature Study
• authentic extension activities to help you to explore the week’s subject a little further

The curriculum follows the changing year, so the things you are studying are connected, as far as possible, with what is actually happening out of doors.

However, ENWC is not intended to turn every nature walk into a lesson, quite the opposite, it gives you knowledge and direction to help you and your children to look at the natural world more closely.

Begin With the Nature Walk

If you do nothing else during your first few weeks of ENWC, begin here. take the week’s theme, read through the nature-walk guidance, and go out of doors. That really can be enough!

You do not need a beautiful woodland or acres of countryside; use your garden, a local park, a nearby footpath, the lane behind your house, or somewhere you already visit regularly, and you certainly do not need to know the answer to every question your children ask. One of the great joys of nature study is being able to say:

“That’s interesting, I don’t know. Let’s see if we can find out.”

The aim is not for the parent to become the expert dispensing information, instead, it is for parent and child to become fellow observers of the world around them.

Follow the Week, Rather Than the Checklist

When you open an ENWC week, you will find several different ways to explore the theme, so please don’t look at these as a list of assignments, but consider them as a table laid with possibilities.

One family may take the nature walk, read a poem and spend the rest of the week talking about what they found.

Another may borrow several books from the library, look closely at the week’s artwork and complete an extension activity.

An older child may want to investigate the subject completely independently, whereas a younger child may be perfectly content in watching a snail for twenty minutes – all of these are nature study! Simply choose what suits your own family, your season of life, and the week you are actually having.

You Cannot Fall Behind in Nature Study

You really can’t; there is no such thing as falling behind. If rain, illness, appointments, babies, tired parents or simply ordinary family life mean that you miss a week, you have absolutely not failed the curriculum. You can choose to move on to the next theme, or you may linger with the missed week.

You can return to a missed subject another year, spend two weeks on something your children adore, abandon a planned nature walk because somebody has discovered frogspawn beside the path.

As I mentioned earlier, ENWC is intended to be returned to year after year. A five-year-old may notice something completely different than a ten-year-old, and a child who watched a butterfly one summer may return several years later ready to understand its life cycle in much greater depth. Simply put, the curriculum grows with your family because nature study itself grows with your child.

Keep Your First Weeks Very Simple

If you are beginning ENWC for the first time, I would suggest making your first few weeks deliberately uncomplicated.

Read the week’s nature-walk guidance to yourself. Go outside. Notice what you can find.

Look at the recommended art. Read the poem together. Choose a book from the booklist if one is easily available.

And then stop, you can always add more later.

There is no prize for completing every suggestion in the curriculum and the richest nature study often comes from doing less, slowly enough to actually notice.

What About Nature Journals?

A nature journal can be a beautiful companion to ENWC, but it does not need to become another source of pressure. Children might draw something they noticed, add a date and location, copy a line of poetry, label a specimen, paint a leaf or simply record one interesting fact. Some weeks they may fill a page, whilst weeks may fly by and they may not journal at all. Observation comes first, and the journal gives somewhere to process and keep a little of what they have noticed. As a parent, you may find the Guided Journal helpful to give your child some structure, and often parents of littles use it to create a scrapbook of sorts, a combination of learning & memory keeping.

The Most Important Thing

If there is one principle I would love every new ENWC family to carry with them, it is this:

You are not trying to get through a nature curriculum, you are building a relationship with the natural world.

That happens slowly & faithfully

One familiar tree, a bird known by its song, a child who suddenly calls you outside because “You have to come and see this!”

Over time, those small acts of attention accumulate into something very precious: children who know how to look, who are curious about the world around them, and who feel at home outdoors.

So if you are wondering where to begin with Exploring Nature With Children, begin simply:

Choose this week’s theme, open the door, and go and see what you can find.

Happy exploring!