I have ventured ever so slightly into the world of Charlotte Mason over the past few months and feel that I am ready to bring some of her ideas into our homeschool. With four active little boys, we are constantly outdoors and it is second nature to them to find bugs and birds and flowers.
Charlotte Mason has latched onto this incredible appetite that children have to the world that God created and looks to use their curiosity as a way to ever so slightly and slowly focus their attention and create a habit of observation. She does this by having the children keep a nature journal.
Typically I tend to dive headlong into a new homeschool idea and then burn out on it. I am trying to curb this flaw with nature journaling because I feel that it is an important learning tool. You can imagine that if I drag all my little ones to a park or lake every week for journal time, I will quickly decide that this is for the birds.
So over the spring/summer break, I am sneaking in some journal time about once a week. We are starting simple with the life we find in our own back yard. The boys or I collect a few items and they draw while I make lunch.
When I am brave enough, we will take our supplies outside and try to draw some flowers that I don’t want to pull up.
The next step is to load up the double stroller and walk around the neighborhood to look for new species that I don’t have in my own yard.
Finally, maybe in the fall, we will start taking a nature walk once every couple of weeks at a park or trail. We have enough of those types of places in our town to keep up busy for these young years.
I need to read up some more on how other nature journaling moms go about drawing those living things that don’t stay put. We have lots of birds right outside our dining room window, and I’m sure it won’t take long before the boys start noticing bugs in the grass. If you have any pro tips, stick them in the comments, please.
I am keeping our supplies simple right now. Just a small notebook for each of us and good quality colored pencils
I must admit, I am enjoying this activity the most right now. Alex is definitely interested, but doesn’t stick with it too long. Ryan gave it a go once, but prefers to just make his own drawing from his imagination right now. That is fine by me, but he is only allowed to use his notebook for nature drawings.
Hopefully, these tentative baby steps will have us running in no time. It has been a nice start so far. I have also found great inspiration from Celeste at Joyous Lessons. I’m not one to strap a toddler on my back and push a stroller through the woods like her, but she has some great ideas. For us lazier moms. Deanna at Little Schoolhouse in the Suburbs also has a few posts about Spring Walk Alongs (no journals) that she and her kids do – sometimes from the car!
As the Wild Kratts would say, “Get outside and get into nature!”
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to keep track. Then when he finished a column, he could see right there on the beads how many groups of ten needed to be carried over and what was left. After a few weeks of practice, he didn’t need the abacus anymore. We also transferred the problems onto 
Following the teachings of Christ is not always easy, especially when it is my inclination to defy. Like a small child though, I am called to obey first and seek understanding after. So for the past decade or so, I have dutifully abstained from eating meat on Fridays of Lent. And to answer the obvious question of why, I say because it is a sacrifice. But then come the inevitable litany of rebuttals:
Sunday
