Outdoor Hour Challenge #2: Using Your Words

Outdoor Hour Challenge #2 Using Your Words   1. Read page 15 in the Handbook of Nature Study. (The Field Excursion) Read page 23-24 in the Handbook of Nature Study. (How to Use This Book) Make note of any points you want to remember. My favorite is "The chief aim of this volume is to encourage investigation rather than to give information." This is where many people misunderstand the HNS. It is not a field guide but it teaches us how to help our children with nature study. 2. "It is a mistake to think that a half day is necessary for a field lesson, since a very efficient field trip may be made during the ten or fifteen minutes at recess, if it is well planned." Challenge yourself to take another 10-15 minute "excursion" outdoors in your own yard again this week. Before setting out on your walk, sit with your children and explain to them that when you remain quiet during your nature time, you are more likely to hear interesting things. Brainstorm some sounds they might hear and build some excitement about remaining quiet during their nature walk this week. Take your walk and if they get rowdy, use the universal finger over your lips sign to get them to quiet down. Set a good example and be quiet yourself, modeling how to listen carefully. 3. After your walk, challenge your children to come up with words to describe the following things: One word to describe something they heard. (For example: rustling, snapping, crunching or chirping) Two words for something they saw. (For example: tall trees, frozen water, red birds) Three words for something they felt. (For example: freezing cold wind, rough sticky pinecone) The point of this assignment is to get them to start thinking about what they see as they go along. Each time they take a nature walk they will develop more and more vocabulary and this will eventually trickle down to their nature journals. If they have difficulty coming up with things to say, help them out with some of your own words to get them started and they will soon catch on. Once we start identifying objects they see on their nature walks, you will be surprised at how easily they remember the specific names of plants, trees, and birds. 4. Optional nature journal entry: Use their words as the basis for a simple nature journal entry. If the child is too young to write in the journal himself, you can write for them. "Everything he learns should be added to his nature notebook by him or, if he's too little to write, his mother." Charlotte Mason, volume 1, page 58. At this point, you can pull out some colored pencils or crayons and invite them to illustrate their nature journal page if they want to. I always leave it as an option for my boys and I would say about half the time they draw. I feel like the nature walk and the discussion is the meat of our nature study and that it is the most important part of what we do. "No child should be compelled to have a notebook." HNS page 14 (Next week we will read about drawing in our nature journals in the Handbook of Nature Study, page 17.) 5. If in your discussion of your nature walk your child expresses a particular interest in something they saw or heard or felt, make a note of it for further research later in the week. Remember to check your Handbook of Nature Study index for more information about your nature interests. If you create a blog entry for this challenge or any other challenge this month, please submit it to the Outdoor Hour Challenge Blog Carnival so other families can be inspired to continue in their nature study.