Next week is a Break Week this week in Exploring Nature With Children.
Here are some quizzes for you for a little bit of fun:
Autumn Leaf Crafts and Activities
If you’d like to use this week to brush up on your nature photography, here are some smashing pointers:
Top Tips for Nature Photographs
Happy exploring!
Today is the autumnal equinox: one of those turning points in the year when it is worth pausing long enough to notice that the season has changed; the light is different, the evenings are drawing in, and the laves are beginning to turn. Later this week the glorious Harvest Moon will rise.
For those of us who practise nature study with our children, these changes are our curriculum.
Charlotte Mason understood that a child’s knowledge of the natural world is not built primarily through facts to memorise, but through a growing relationship with the real things themselves, such as a particular tree known through all four seasons, the changing position of the moon, and the first frost noticed because a child has been watching out for it.
This kind of knowledge grows slowly, and that is one of the loveliest things about nature study: you do not need to keep up. If your nature notebooks have been neglected, just pick up and begin again. If you haven’t managed a nature walk for weeks, go outside today. If your child doesn’t know the names of local trees, choose one, and look it up, and observe how it changes (or not!) over the coming weeks.
Look closely, wonder about something, find out a little more when you return home. That’s it!
This week in Exploring Nature With Children, we are studying the Harvest Moon, and it is a wonderfully simple study because everyone can take part; step outside together and look up.
Notice where the moon rises, watch how it changes over several evenings. Talk about why this full moon became associated with harvest time. Younger children may simply draw what they see; older children might want to learn more about the moon’s orbit, phases, or the traditions that have grown around the Harvest Moon, and allow the study to grow according to your child’s interest rather than feeling that every possible avenue must be explored.
That is very much the spirit of ENWC.
The curriculum provides a gentle framework for a whole year of nature study, and is written to be used year upon year for layered learning, helping families to notice what is happening in the natural world week by week, without turning those encounters into another heavy school subject. And because nature study begins with observation, you need very little to start:
A little time to spend out of doors, the willingness to pay attention.
To accompany this week’s study, I also have free Harvest Moon journal pages available for you to download. You might like to use them after an evening moon watch, add them to your nature notebooks, or simply leave them on the table with pencils and watercolours and see what your child chooses to record.
There is no need to produce a perfect page, and the purpose of the notebook page is not the page itself. it is the looking and the noticing that comes first.
The equinox is a lovely marker in the year, but nature study does not require a perfect September beginning, or indeed a perfect anything! We begin with the season that we are in.Perhaps that is one of the greatest gifts we can give our children: the habit of looking closely at the world around them, and the sense that the natural world is something that they belong to, delight in, care for, and continue discovering throughout their lives.
Exploring Nature With Children is there to help you to begin, and to help you to keep on returning.
Happy exploring!
It’s almost here! Next week is quite an exciting week: Harvest Moon Week in Exploring Nature With Children! with the Harvest Moon falling on the 26th of September.
Here are some useful links to help with your studies:
And here’s a free Harvest Moon Nature Journal resource for you to download in preparation for next week.
Exploring Nature With Children is an open and go curriculum. To make it even easier, I have created a free calendar for you to download.
If you’re following along with the community over on Instagram, do pop over and say hello! Think of it as your virtual home school co op!
To enable you to connect with other families working through the ENWC curriculum, this week’s hashtag will be: #ENWCharvestmoonweek
Happy exploring!
Next week in Exploring Nature With Children we are studying the Autumn Equinox, the equinox itself falling on the 23rd.
Here are some helpful links to help with your studies:
Exploring Nature With Children is an open and go curriculum. To make it even easier, I have created a free calendar for you to download.
If you’re following along with the community over on Instagram, do pop over and say hello! Think of it as your virtual home school co op.
To enable you to connect with other families working through the ENWC curriculum, this week’s hashtag will be: #ENWCautumnequinox
Happy exploring!
September rewards those who pay attention. The hedgerows are changing almost by the day; blackberries darken, rosehips redden, spiders stretch their webs between stems that only a few weeks ago were thick with summer growth. The mornings feel different, sunlight slanting at a slightly different angle, and somewhere overhead, birds are beginning long journeys.
And very often, it is a child who notices first.
“There’s a feather here.”
“That leaf has gone red.”
“Listen, what bird is that?”
We can be tempted to think of these moments as little interruptions to the real business of education, but Charlotte Mason might encourage us to see them quite differently, because one of the most valuable things we can give a child is not information, it is attention.
The ability to look carefully, to listen, and notice. To remain with something long enough for it to make an impression, and perhaps, ultimately, to recognise that the world is worthy of their attention.
When we speak about attention in education, we often mean the ability to sit still and complete a task. A child who finishes a worksheet without wandering away is described as attentive. However, the Charlotte Mason’s understanding of attention is much richer than simple compliance; attention is the habit of bringing the mind fully to something. Perhaps a story, a painting, a mathematical idea. Maybe a bird at the feeder, a piece of music on the radio, another human being. So rather than continually skimming across the surface of things, the child gradually learns to stop and to truly encounter them, and this is one of the reasons that a Charlotte Mason-inspired education can look deceptively simple from the outside.
A child listens to a chapter of a living book, and they narrate what they remember.
They study a painting.
They take a walk.
They observe a plant.
They listen to a piece of music.
None of these things necessarily looks spectacular, but indeed, something very important is happening beneath the surface: The child is learning to attend.
Narration is one of the clearest examples. When we constantly interrupt a reading with questions, explanations and prompts, a child quickly learns that somebody else will decide what matters, but narration asks something completely different. The child listens because the responsibility for knowing has gently been placed into their own hands, and afterwards, they tell what they know.
Not what the workbook writer thought important, or the answer hidden at the bottom of the page, they tell us what they noticed. What remained present for them, what connected, and this changes the way a child listens. They begin to meet the author directly, and over time, attention becomes less something imposed from outside and more of a habit that grows within them.
Nature study may be one of the loveliest schools of attention that we can offer! A child can walk past the same tree every day without ever truly knowing it, but given the time, gradually they recognise the shape of its leaves, the texture of its bark, the way its buds appear at the end of wintertime, and which particular birds favour its branches. They come to know the month when its leaves begin to turn, and the places beneath it where fungi appear after rain. No longer merely a tree, it has become something known.
In a world filled with information, our children have the ability to identify hundreds of things with a quick search, but knowledge is not always the same as relationship, and nature study teaches children to look before searching, to wonder before naming and to become familiar with the living world immediately around them.
Charlotte Mason’s use of short lessons can sometimes be misunderstood as simply a way of making school easier for young children, but something much more thoughtful is happening. Attention is a habit, and habits are strengthened through wise practice. We do not strengthen attention by repeatedly pushing a child beyond the point at which their mind has wandered, instead, we ask for genuine attention for a manageable period and then move on. Ten truly attentive minutes may accomplish far more than forty minutes spent staring unhappily at a page, and as children grow, their capacity grows too. This may be particularly important in a culture that constantly competes for our attention, and protecting a child’s attention has become even more important than it was in Charlotte Mason’s day.
There is another part of this which can be surprisingly difficult for adults, in that we must resist explaining everything. We are enthusiastic, we know things, and we love our children! And so when a child notices something, we immediately want to tell them all about it: That flower is called… that bird does… did you know… and so on, and sometimes our explanation arrives too quickly, with the child’s small moment of wonder becoming an adult’s lesson.
Masterly inactivity asks us to practise restraint, and to be present without always inserting ourselves. Perhaps a child finds a snail; we can simply crouch beside them, looking at the shell and watching it move, wondering where it is going. And then carry on with our own walk. Not every beautiful encounter needs to become “productive”, sometimes learning happens because we allowed something to remain interesting.
One of the great beauties of a Charlotte Mason education, is in my opinion, that the child is gradually forming relationships. With books, ideas, people, places, the natural world, history, art, music, with all of these things! And relationship requires attention as we cannot truly know something while continually glancing away, and this is why a generous education is not simply about covering enough material. The question is not only:
How much did we get through?
It is also:
What did my child meet?
What caught their imagination?
What did they notice?
What idea followed them away from the lesson?
What bird do they now recognise from its call?
What character from a story has become almost a companion?
What painting can they close their eyes and remember?
These are small signs that knowledge is becoming alive.
There is an important gentleness here too, as children are human beings who become tired, and daydream, and have difficult days. The habit of attention is not built through constant correction or anxiety, and childhood must never become an endless project in self-improvement. Instead, we simply create conditions in which attention can grow, by choosing worthy books, keeping lessons appropriately short, and removing unnecessary distractions where we can. We give children plenty of time outdoors, we allow quiet, we ask them to narrate, we place beautiful things before them, and then we trust that, over years, these ordinary practices are shaping a person.
There is a reason that this matters so deeply to me, as a child who has learned to attend may one day become an adult who notices.
They notice when someone at the table has gone quiet, when the first primrose opening beside the path, when an animal is frightened. They notice beauty, injustice, loneliness, goodness. Their attention says: You are worth my noticing. Perhaps that is why attention feels like something far greater than an academic skill, as it is a way of meeting the world, and, in its quietest form, is a kind of love.
This month, we might resist the urge to add another curriculum, printable or project, instead, perhaps we can simply practise noticing.
On your next walk, ask nothing at first, and see what your children find.
At the end of a reading, allow a moment of quiet before narration begins.
Put a beautiful painting somewhere it can be seen often.
Watch the same tree through the coming weeks.
Leave room for questions that you do not immediately answer.
Notice what your child notices.
And perhaps we might practise the habit alongside them.
Charlotte Mason’s philosophy does not only educate children, but again and again, it invites us to become more attentive ourselves. To look more closely, and listen more carefully. To hurry past fewer things. The world is full of things worthy of our attention, and one of the greatest gifts that we can give to our children is to help them discover that for themselves.
From my home to yours,
Next week is ‘Mini-beast Week’ in Exploring Nature With Children!
Here are some helpful links to help with your studies:
Exploring Nature With Children is an open and go curriculum. To make it even easier, I have created a free calendar for you to download.
If you’re following along with the community over on Instagram, do pop over and say hello! Think of it as your virtual home school co op!
To enable you to connect with other families working through the ENWC curriculum, this week’s hashtag will be: #ENWCminibeastweek
Happy exploring!
September has arrived, carrying that curious mixture of beginning again & also of beginning to gather in. The mornings have a noticably different feel now, & even when the day turns warm, there is a coolness at the edges; the light falls lower across the kitchen, spiders have begun stringing their webs between the plants, apples are dropping, berries are deep dark jewels tucked into the hedgerows, & here and there, the first leaves have changed colours.
September has always felt like a threshold month to me; it’s not quite summer, not quite autumn, but a little of both. And for mothers, of course, it can also be extraordinarily busy. There are routines to find again, books and lessons to begin, appointments to remember, meals to make, clothes suddenly outgrown, and all those ordinary household jobs that did not politely disappear simply because a new season arrived. September can bring with it a strong urge to sort everything out: new rhythms, habits, & systems. A fresh start in every possible corner of life!
And perhaps we do need a little reordering after summer, but we do not have to remake our whole lives before Michaelmas. September can simply be a month of returning.
Returning to the table, to familiar rhythms, to books left waiting on the shelf, soup on cooler evenings, cardigans by the door, an earlier lamp lit in the sitting room. Returning, too, to the small practices that make our homes and days feel like our own.
So I have made another little free September Joy page for you.
It is only one page, & deliberately so. There are a few gentle permissions for the month ahead, some cosy September pleasures, small nature-noticing ideas, three very short journal questions, and a September blessing. Nothing needs to be worked through in order, and there is absolutely nothing to keep up with. This is not a September reset, nor a challenge, a routine, or a list of things that we ought to be doing. It is simply a small reminder, from one busy mother to another, that beginning again does not have to mean beginning everything again.
You might pin the page beside your calendar, slip it into your planner or morning basket, or leave it somewhere you will happen upon it during a busy day.
May September bring you golden afternoon light, and the grace to find steadiness without asking more of yourself.
You can download the free page here: September Joy
From my home to yours,
Next week we begin a brand new year of Exploring Nature With Children!
I am thrilled to welcome families back to another year of ENWC, and my warmest wishes to our new families! Thank you for joining us.
Next week we begin with Seed Week, which really is a smashing week with which to get started studying nature. Here are some links to help with your nature study:
Exploring Nature With Children is an open and go curriculum. To make it even easier, I have created a free calendar for you to download.
If you’re over on Instagram, do pop over and say hello! The Instagram page is very much about community; think of it as your virtual home school co op! Our community uses the #exploringnaturewithchildren hashtag, & also specific weekly hashtags to enable you to connect with other families working through the ENWC curriculum. This week’s hashtag will be: #ENWCseedweek
Happy exploring!
If these words resonate:
Pause. Breathe deeply. Let go of the rush.
Take joy in the little things.
Follow the rhythm of the seasons.
then you may be encouraged by The Sanctuary of Home ~ Autumn Edition.
Autumn can so easily become another season to organise, curate and fill, with lists to make, traditions to remember, meals to plan, rooms to cosy, candles to light, books to read, outings to take. Even the loveliest of things can begin to feel like one more set of expectations.
But home does not need to become a seasonal performance, in fact, sometimes, the deeper work is simply to notice what is already here. The light changing at the kitchen window, apples appearing in the shops, gardens, and orchards. Perhaps the first evening when you reach for a cardigan, and soup returning to the table. The familiar comfort of drawing inward as the year begins to turn.
There is something profoundly steadying about allowing ourselves to live with the season rather than racing ahead of it, cooking what is plentiful, maybe bringing a few branches or berries indoors. Walking beneath the changing trees, and making ordinary meals with care. Mending something. Baking something. Sitting down with a well-deserved cup of tea before beginning the next task. Not because any of these things will create a perfect autumn, but because small acts of attention help us to inhabit the life we already have.
That is the heart of The Sanctuary of Home ~ Autumn Edition.
It is a gentle seasonal companion for tending your home, and yourself, with greater intention, beauty and gratitude throughout September, October and November. No challenge to complete, or another list to keep up with, just an invitation to slow the pace, notice what is good, and allow the season to shape the ordinary rhythms of home.
Because perhaps the loveliest autumn is not the one in which we manage to do everything, instead it is the one we were present enough to notice.
From my home to yours,
Next week in Exploring Nature With Children is ‘Discussion Week’; the last week of the ENWC year!
I really do hope that you have enjoyed your time with ENWC, and hope that you’ll consider using it again, as it has been written to be used year upon year for layered learning.
We shall be kicking off a new year of nature study on the 2nd of September with Seed Week.
Here are some helpful links for your study:
Exploring Nature With Children is an open and go curriculum. To make it even easier, I have created a free calendar for you to download.
If you’re over on Instagram, do pop over and say hello! The Instagram page is very much about community; think of it as your virtual home school co op! Our community uses the #exploringnaturewithchildren hashtag, & also specific weekly hashtags to enable you to connect with other families working through the ENWC curriculum. This week’s hashtag will be: #ENWCdiscussionweek
Happy exploring!
