Category: Winter

Exploring Nature With Children, Nature, Our Nature Journals, Winter

Candlemas Week ~ Exploring Nature With Children

by raisinglittleshoots2 Comments on Candlemas Week ~ Exploring Nature With Children

This week is Candlemas week in Exploring Nature With Children, and it has come blustering in, all sunshine and wild winds.

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The pigeons were hungry!

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We were thrilled to see that Swiff, the pigeon who had been painted, was returning to normal. We noted that he has also been tagged, which is very interesting. We hope that someone is keeping an eye on his well-being. Here he is; the white bird on the right.

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A few males were ‘strutting their stuff’, puffing up their feathers and chasing the females.

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The geese were particularly noisy today also, so perhaps they are pairing up too?

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I spied the Moorhen nesting over on the far side of the pond, patiently observing the comings and goings of the other birds.

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Glorious daisies fully open to the sun!

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Spring bulbs

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Our nature journals this week

Rose completed two entries. Her favourite pigeon, and slugs.

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I went with the Candlemas theme, including my laundry on the washing line. Such a windy, sunshiny day!

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How was your walk this week?

 

 

Family, Nature, Winter

January Nature Table

by raisinglittleshoots4 Comments on January Nature Table

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I cleared up our advent nature table once Epiphany was over, and the kings had made their arrival (you can see a photo of the December table here.)

We keep our nature treasures in a special box and Rose was keen to add lots of items, so we have a real miss-mash going on!

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Flies that she has bought for fishing, crab shells we found on the beach a few years ago, a gnawed cone from a recent walk

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She found this glorious chunk of lichen recently, which made a handsome addition to our January table.

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And our rainbow fairy. If you read my last Calendar of Firsts post, you will know we had a few last week.

What is on your nature table this month?

Edit: I get asked a lot about the book on our nature table. It is by Elsa Beskow & is called Around The Year. Be aware that there is a mini edition available when buying; ours is the full A4 size.

 

 

Calendar of Firsts, Nature, Our Nature Journals, Winter

A Calendar Of Firsts: 18th~24th Jan

by raisinglittleshoots2 Comments on A Calendar Of Firsts: 18th~24th Jan

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My Calendar of Firsts this week:

  • Tufted ducks on the pond
  • Geese and pigeons in the park
  • Playful sparrows
  • A beautiful, full moon.

My ‘colours’ for the week, along the top left hand page, are blue grey, but have quite a lot of sunny yellow in this entry. Hurrah!

I also included a small print out of a photo of Rose when she was a tiny dolly, that featured a Charlotte Mason quote I posted on the FaceBook group this week.

How is your calendar coming along?

Calendar of Firsts, Nature, Our Nature Journals, Winter

A Calendar Of Firsts: 11th~17th Jan

by raisinglittleshoots5 Comments on A Calendar Of Firsts: 11th~17th Jan

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My Calendar of Firsts this week:

  • Lots of rainbows!
  • Daisies and a squirrel in the park
  • Playful sparrows
  • A robin and a great tit spotted whilst on a shopping trip
  • A beautiful pink sky on a frosty morning
  • SNOW!

My ‘colours’ for the week, along the top left hand page, are rainbow-inspired, with hints of splashy rain!

How is your calendar coming along?

Calendar of Firsts, Nature, Our Nature Journals, Winter

A Calendar Of Firsts: 4th~10th Jan

by raisinglittleshoots3 Comments on A Calendar Of Firsts: 4th~10th Jan

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My Calendar of Firsts this week:

  • Our first garden Goldfinch
  • Magpies and crows in the park.
  • One of Rosie’s favourite pigeons, Swiff, that has been tied up (we found the remains of a string, tied around his foot.) and coloured by someone 🙁
  • The movement of wind across the grass
  • The New moon

I added a photo of Rose with the pigeons and a printout of a Charlotte Mason quote from my FaceBook page.

My ‘colours’ for the week, along the top left hand page, are splashy grey with a hint of blue! Hurray!

I have created a page especially for keeping track of all the calendar of firsts. You can find it in the tabs at the top of the screen. You can also look in the categories in the right hand side-bar. Hopefully this will make looking for posts much simpler.

How is your calendar coming along?

Exploring Nature With Children, Nature, Our Nature Journals, Winter

Moon Week ~ Exploring Nature With Children

by raisinglittleshootsLeave a Comment on Moon Week ~ Exploring Nature With Children

Moon Week

This week in Exploring Nature With Children it is Moon Week!

Tonight is the new moon, so a great time to begin your journaling.

Do let me know what you get up to in your nature studies, in the comments below.

Apologies to everyone for not getting a weather week post up last week; we had a lot going on at home, so I didn’t get to post. What did everyone get up to?

Lynn x

Calendar of Firsts, Keeping A Nature Journal, Nature, Our Nature Journals, Winter

A Calendar Of Firsts: Lists

by raisinglittleshoots17 Comments on A Calendar Of Firsts: Lists

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How are you getting on with your Calendar of Firsts?

I have begun mine and I am finding it to be a quick, and non-threatening form of nature journaling!

Inspired by Charlotte Mason, who mentions list keeping,  I thought I would share with you some of the list-type entries I plan to keep this year.

“The study of natural history and botany with bird lists and plant lists continues throughout school life, while other branches of science are taken term by term.”

Vol 6 Home Education

Daily Temperature

I will be using the calendar section of my diary to record the daily temperature. As a fun twist, I am going to colour each date according to the temperature. You can see my colour key at the bottom of the calendar:

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If you miss a day, here is a good site to check the temperature of your locality for the last two weeks.

Colours Of The Year

This idea comes from Clare Walker Leslie. It is in one of her books, but unfortunately I cannot remember which one. Please do post in the comments if you know. I have done this previously, and it really does help me to think about the colours in nature through the months of the year. Simple sketch out a circle and divide into twelve, each twelfth representing a month of the year. You then simply paint the current ‘month’ with the colours you see around you in the natural world. Fun!

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Bird List

Simply a list of birds I have seen. I include the following information:

  • Common name
  • Latin Name
  • Location
  • Date

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Flower List

As with the birds, a list of wildflowers I have seen. I include the same information as for the bird list.

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That is all for now; I shall let you know if I decide to add further lists.

Calendar of Firsts, Exploring Nature With Children, Keeping A Nature Journal, Nature, Our Nature Journals, Winter

A New Year, A New Diary. Beginning A Calendar Of Firsts

by raisinglittleshoots7 Comments on A New Year, A New Diary. Beginning A Calendar Of Firsts

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A happy New Year to you!

My goal this year is to keep a Charlotte Mason inspired Calendar of Firsts; to record recurring seasonal events, such as the first snowdrops, the first apple on our tree in the garden, and when our apple tree loses it’s leaves.

I am really pleased to have some of my readers planning to join me in this diary-keeping, which, scientifically speaking, is known as phenology.

Here are some past posts you may find useful:

A Calendar Of Firsts

Setting Up Your Calendar Of Firsts

My Diary Is Ready!

If you plan to add little watercolour sketches to your calendar of firsts, you may find this tutorial helpful:

Creating A Watercolour Nature Journal Page ~ A Tutorial

Sometimes, a brand-new diary or sketchbook can be dreadfully intimidating in its pristine perfection. If you are following along with Exploring Nature With Children, you may find the ideas in there to be helpful. The current focus is the twelve days of Christmas; here is a short prompt to help you along:

New Year’s Day

Take a walk to your special nature spot. Be thankful for this place and look forward to the year ahead. Remember to replenish the food for the birds there.

You could choose to observe what is happening in your special nature spot and record that, or perhaps make a list of things you are thankful for today, (both in nature and as a family). Instead you may decide to focus on observing the birds. Record them feeding, keeping warm, even looking for a mate!

The first January week in Exploring Nature With Children is all about the Winter Sky, so you will find lots of ideas there if you would like a resource to ‘hold your hand’, so to speak, as you begin your calendar-keeping.

Please let me know how you are getting on in the comments below, or on the Exploring Nature With Children FaceBook group. I am so very excited to be sharing this journey with you!

 

Autumn, Books, Family, Learning, Spring, Summer, Winter

Exploring Nature With Children: A Complete, Year-Long Curriculum

by raisinglittleshoots48 Comments on Exploring Nature With Children: A Complete, Year-Long Curriculum

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The last few months have been busy..very busy.

I wrote a book!

I have written the book that I have always wanted to buy; a book that really does take the hassle out of nature study, the book that I can just open and go.

I am so very excited to present: Exploring Nature With Children

Exploring Nature With Children is a complete, year-long curriculum, that will guide you step by step, through an entire calendar year of nature study. It has been a true labour of love, and one that I know will make nature study actually happen for many home educating families out there.

Inside Exploring Nature With Children you will find:

An entire chapter devoted to getting you up and running with nature study. This will get you all fired up and ready to go.
Forty-eight weeks of nature study; four weeks for each month of the year, organised by season. Exploring Nature With Children can be used as a whole year’s study, or dipped in and out of as you please. Each study comes with a complete list of
Each week’s nature study contains the following:

A themed nature walk.
Exploring Nature With Children will take you step by step through a themed, Charlotte Mason-style, nature walk. There is no need to hunt through various books and websites; all the information you need is there, leaving you free to enjoy being out in nature with your child.

References to the Handbook Of Nature Study.
Exploring Nature With Children is completely self-contained, but we have also included references to related pages in the Handbook Of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock, should you wish to delve a little deeper.

A themed book list.
With books for children of all ages, you will find a comprehensive list of living books related to the week’s nature study theme. Again, Exploring Nature With Children is a self-contained course, so the book list is a bonus, not a necessity.

A poem
Related to the nature theme of the week; a classic piece of poetry that can be used for copywork, dictation, or simply to just read aloud and enjoy.

A piece of art
The name and details of a piece of art that relates to the nature theme of the week has been included. This can easily be looked up online, or in art books available from your local library.

Extension activities for your child
Here you will find a list of activities, written directly to your child, that will extend their nature study throughout the whole of the week. You will find ideas for crafts, writing, science and more, with absolutely no busy work.

I have written the book that I have always wanted to buy; a book that really does take the hassle out of nature study, the book that I can just open and go. I have tried to make Exploring Nature With Children as user friendly as possible for all families. The book gives you the necessary scientific information for each week’s nature theme, then the parent can present that information to each individual child as they see fit.

The extension activities included vary; venn diagrams, writing poetry, making models. A child that is old enough to keep a nature journal would get the most out of this book, however, the reason Exploring Nature With Children came to be written, was because I have been looking to buy something like this since my twelve year old was a toddler. I would have jumped at this book, even with such a tiny child, because it would equip me as a mum to talk with my child about nature, without having to go through a pile of different books first! To know what to be specifically on the look out for each week, with out a lot of extra information that overwhelmed me!

If you click on any of the blue links, it takes you to the page where you can buy the book. On that page is a preview page. Click on the preview (the top right-hand corner) and you can view the table of contents, plus a whole week’s activities. It should give you a good idea of whether the book would be a good fit for your family.

Exploring Nature With Children is currently available as a PDF. Click on one of the blue links in this post to see a preview of the book or to go ahead and purchase.

The regular price of the download is $15, but I have a coupon code for 30% off the price that runs until August 31 2015. Please enter coupon code: Earlybird15 for your 30% discount.

Please feel free to join my FaceBook page & do let me know what you think.

Update:

Here is a review from a happy customer:

I am so thrilled to be reading “Exploring Nature With Children: A Complete, Year-long Curriculum” by Lynn Seddon. It came out exactly when I needed it as well, being a first time home educator of a very spirited four year old boy. While Charlotte Mason advocates waiting a few years before starting formal education, I believed my child would benefit from learning about the rewards of patient observation and he could certainly make meaningful drawings for himself in a nature journal. Armed with two other wonderful CM based books on the subject of Nature Study, I thought I was completely ready to deliver Nature Study to my son.

However, I found myself overwhelmed when it came to trying to figure out where to start. I was afraid of missing very relevant details and was unsure about when to commence certain parts of study. For example, its said that winter is the best time for studying bird song. When exactly? What other activities could we be doing in winter? How often should I be taking my son to revisit pond study? What if I completely forget to do this particular nature craft which is holiday themed, in time for that holiday?

I learned a lot about Nature Study from my existing resources as an overview, but when it came to the week by week nuts and bolts of putting a comprehensive lesson plan together, I often found my enthusiasm for natural wonder waning, bogged under the practicalities of actually having to pull it off.

Lynn Seddon’s book solves a lot of problems for me. First, it is written with gentle, loving reverence for the study of nature which makes it an enjoyable read. At every step, she offers suggestions for adapting the lessons for younger children and then for older children. In Lynn’s lesson plans, she asks questions that encourages the use of all of the senses that invites more inquiry and curiosity. The lessons are all laid out complete with equipment lists of everyday, inexpensive items and additional related activity suggestions that build upon what’s being learned, using many different skills from many adjoining disciplines. I find the extensions engaging and I look forward to sharing these with my son.

JGC