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I was wondering about nature studies, which I keep hearing is an important part of a CM education. I was wondering if there is nature study planned in any of the guides? If not, is there a reason? And, how does your family go about nature study and journaling? I'm looking for good nature study journals and haven't found one that I love yet, so if anyone has suggestions I would appreciate them! Thank you!

There is a wonderful Nature Journaling component scheduled in MTMM. It uses a nature journal written by Barry Stebbing that includes art instruction. My son really enjoyed doing it.

We have made it up to Bigger so far, and as far as nature study being laid out for the children, I haven't run across that yet. I can't speak for the older guides, as I have no idea! Bigger does have the children working through the One Small Square books, drawing and learning about woods, seashore and nature. You can very easily incorporate nature walks with this! We go on walks and whatever my boys collect, we write the name on little white tags and tie them to the specimen and display it in our schoolroom. We use blank spiral bound art journals, watercolors & colored pencils.

I know that nature study is very important in the Charlotte Mason method, so much so that she said children should be out of doors for at least 3 hours in the afternoon, rain or shine! She says to take the children outdoors, you sit on a blanket, and allow them to run and discover things for themselves. Then, as they find things and bring them back to you, talk about what they've found. Have a basket or bag for them to put their discoveries into, and once back home, look up the proper names and identify what they've found. They may paint it or color it into their journal that day or later that week. There is a beautiful book that every CM homeschooling mother should have on her shelf: The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady. It's a treasure of a nature journal that is just so inspiring. Also the Handbook of Nature Study is a must! It has information on everything: mammals, birds, flowers, etc. and you read about it, and then when you are teaching about a subject, you can either do one of the lessons from the book, or just tell the information to your children as they find things. I also personally pull ideas off pinterest, and you can always keep beans growing in your window, order caterpillars, keep a bird journal and read the Thornton Burgess Bird book alongside it.

Nature study seems to be this vague, beautiful thing that no one has seemed to tackle head on in any of the curriculums that I've personally researched, and that has been very frustrating for me. I think I've been searching for someone to lay it out for me, day by day, and I've not found that yet. Maybe the older HOD guides do that, I don't know. But reading through For the Children's Sake and Charlotte's writings myself has been so helpful, and takeng away a lot of that confusion. I think if you pick a subject that follows the seasons, and study it until your interest wanes, then you can move on to the next one, and you'd eventually cover a lot of material! EX: flowers in spring, rocks in summer, mammals in fall, birds in winter....etc

Those are just my ideas.
Blessings!