5 Simple Nature Study Ideas

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We would like to share some simple ideas for nature study! I hope you’ll join us for this series. We love nature study in our home!! And Winter Promise loves nature study, too! Like Charlotte Mason, we believe that there is much JOY to be found in studying and observing nature and God’s creation all around us! We love making memories together as a family, and one wonderful way to do this is through nature study! But, don’t make it too hard! It doesn’t have to be!

5 simple nature study ideas

 

“As soon as he is able to keep it himself, a nature-diary is a source of delight to a child.”

Charlotte Mason

1. Keep a SIMPLE nature notebook or journal with your child! The key to this is keep it simple. You don’t have to go out and buy anything fancy. Just take a simple notebook, some colored pencils, go outside and EXPLORE. Have your child draw, label and date what they see!

2. Go on regular nature walks. This is as simple as simple gets, but I know that for me, at times, I let all the other “stuff” of our homeschooling day get in the way of what could be the best part of our day! Getting outside, enjoying fresh air, admiring God’s beautiful creation around you, time with your children…these are all fabulous reasons for taking nature walks with your children!

3. Explore your own backyard. I love taking little “breaks” in our homeschool day, walking out into the backyard with my kids and “assigning” them a corner of our yard to explore. Sometimes we take our nature notebooks and I have them find ONE thing to draw in their corner of the yard. Sometimes we just take a magnifying glass and see who can find something interesting to look at. It can be so simple, but so meaningful.

4. Study one something from nature in your own yard. Choose a tree, a flower, an animal, a bug…something you can view regularly in your own backyard. Watch it, draw it, look at it in different seasons, describe it, check out a book from the library on it.

5. Bring nature indoors for study. This is another of my favorite nature study ideas! Create a nature table (or corner, or shelf) in your home. Admire the beautiful flowers, rocks, twigs, leaves, and other items with your children. Bring them inside and set them in a place to explore and admire even more! Start a collection with your children. Discuss, admire and examine many different nature items in your home to build observation skills and admiration skills in your children!

“Children should be encouraged to watch, patiently and quietly, until they learn something of the habits and history of bee, ant, wasp, spider, hairy caterpillar, dragon-fly, and whatever of larger growth comes in their way.”

Charlotte Mason

Be sure to check out our Nature Study pinterest board & Charlotte Mason pinterest board!

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Winter Promise Wednesday

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winterpromisewednesdays

We love sharing how you are using Winter Promise in your homes!

This week I would like to share a few links and pictures with you from around the web…

Leigh, from Little Homeschool in the Woods shares about starting off their new year with Winter Promise!

Amy, from A Nest in the Rocks, had an English Tea party to start off their Children Around the World year!! Read more about their tea party and how they are using Winter Promise in their home on her recent post.

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Amber, from The Classic Housewife, is using our Dinosaur Days program with her science loving son who was eager for more science! It looks like they are having a great time! Read more about their fun with Dinosaur Days AND enter her give away for this program which will end on August 16th.

Winter-Promise-Dinosaur-Days-Science

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10 Easy Ways to a Charlotte Mason Education

We’ve shared here on the Winter Promise blog about Charlotte Mason before. Be sure to read Kaeryn’s post here, you don’t want to miss reading about what Kaeryn personally learned by homeschooling the Charlotte Mason way!

Today we want to share 10 of the simplest ways to incorporate a Charlotte Mason education into your own home. This post is not an all-comprehensive guide to Charlotte Mason. This is just 10 easy ways to get started implementing these fabulous ideas from Charlotte Mason!

10 easy ways to implement Charlotte Mason

1. Accept and even appreciate that you are going “against the grain.” No over-scheduling, no boring textbooks, no exhaustion from trying to “get it all in.”

 

2. Go on a nature walk and discuss what you see. Play in your backyard for hours. Let your child explore. Often.

 

3. Have your child start and keep a nature journal. Nothing elaborate. Just draw, label and date what you see in your own backyard!

 

4. Read a lot of good, living books together.

 

5. Observe and appreciate classical composers and artists. Listen to great music. Look at great art.

 

6. Simple Narrations. Don’t be scared of narrating! All this means is allowing your child to TELL BACK what they have read, heard, studied!

 

7. Short lessons. Yes, really! Most of us know by now that the longer you go on about something, the less your children hear! Charlotte Mason knew this and short lessons were one of the main points of her way of educating.

 

8. Copywork, then dictation. Don’t let this scare you either. Give your child beautiful writings ~ poems, hymns, Scriptures ~ to COPY correctly. This is copywork. Then, a few years into their schooling, begin dictation. Give the child a short passage to study, then read it to them and have them write it. You can work on grammar and spelling with these methods!

 

9. Reading aloud. Charlotte believed in reading to the children daily from the Bible and other great works quite frequently. Poetry, Shakespeare, biographies.

 

10. Morning lessons, afternoon free time. I love this scheduling idea from Charlotte Mason herself! Charlotte Mason knew that children needed to be outside, playing, free to explore, and work on handicrafts for many hours!

 

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Dinosaur Days {Review}

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Amber, from Classic Housewife, did a fabulous review of our Dinosaur Days program on her blog!!

AND…she is giving a copy away at a facebook party Thursday night. It’s called Mommy Time and we wanted to invite you to come along with us! 🙂

Here’s an exerpt from Amber’s review:

Dinosaur Days – Like a big ancient science unit study, and then some!

For our Summer School, the kids and I have been digging into one of the WinterPromise science programs – Dinosaur Days. Dinosaur Days is an ancient science study which begins with Creation, progresses through each day of Creation studying light, air, water, earth, plants, and animals, and then moves on into topics such as simple machines, geology, fossils and dinosaurs.

The program is set up to be worked on two days a week, but since the kids and I were doing our “no math summer school” we enjoyed working through it several days a week. It’s geared for grades 2-5, but even my oldest really enjoyed doing it with us. It’s no surprise that my son enjoyed it most of all. He was eager to get to the experiments and other projects.

Please click over to her blog and read the rest!!

And, don’t forget to join the Mommy Time facebook party for your chance to win your own copy of Dinosaur Days and many other prizes!

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Encourage them to watch!

charlotte mason bug quote

What are some simple ways you can encourage nature study in your home? It doesn’t have to be difficult! We are going to be discussing some ways that you can easily & simply study nature in the coming weeks! We would love to have you join us! And share your ideas with us, too!

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9 approaches in ONE curriculum?

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Would it truly be possible to find NINE different homeschooling approaches in ONE curriculum? At Winter Promise, we believe it is possible! Let us share how…

many methods

 

Winter Promise truly takes the best of all of the homeschooling world and brings it together! Here are the different approaches you will find inside Winter Promise products:

  1. Charlotte Mason ~ joyful learning, journaling, making family memories while learning
  2. Literature Based ~ fantastic living book choices in each program
  3. Hands-On ~ lots & lots of “open and go” activities /projects
  4. Classical ~ history themes that can repeat, with new facets each time
  5. Notebooking/Lapbooking ~ exclusive timeline, note booking, and journaling pages
  6. Unit Studies ~ unified themes and cross-curricular Language Arts programs to reinforce topics
  7. Ebooks ~ digital options for guides, books, and resources allow you to use tablets and laptops for school
  8. Multimedia ~ Internet linked guides, DVD suggestions
  9. Workbooks ~ easy to use workbook options for Language Arts or Math

 

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