Category Archives: Living Science

Nature Lore: The Beginning of a Science Education

9 Replies

“In Science, or rather, nature study, we attach great importance to recognition, believing that the power to recognise and name a plant or stone or constellation involves classification and includes a good deal of knowledge. To know a plant by its gesture and habitat, its time and its way of flowering and fruiting; a bird by its flight and song and its times of coming and going; to know when, year after year, you may come upon the redstart and the pied fly-catcher, means a good deal of interested observation, and of; at any rate, the material for science.” (3/236)

The primary means of science instruction in the early years of a Charlotte Mason education is through direct observation of the natural world. However, this wouldn’t be a Charlotte Mason-style curriculum if we didn’t have our books!  Therefore, children beginning school in Form 1 (grades 1-3) were assigned two “Nature Lore” books each term. The purpose of nature lore is to open the children’s eyes, help them know what to look for, and increase their interest and curiosity. Charlotte Mason said:   Continue reading →

Nature Study Lays the Foundation for Science

2 Replies

Form 1 science (grades 1-3) includes all nature study and no formal science. (e.g., chemistry or physics) That is hard for some people because they want to get to the “good stuff,” but it’s essential to understand that “out-of-door nature-study lays the foundation for science.” (3/281)

When Charlotte Mason talked about nature study, the terms she most often used were: out-of-door work, field studies, fieldwork, or field nature studies. Somehow, when she says it, it doesn’t sound like fluff or buying time before they can start REAL science classes.

Out-of-door work includes:

  • Nature walks
  • Keeping nature notebooks
  • Reading natural history
  • Doing special studies
  • Parent-led object lessons

I discussed the first two items at the beginning of this series, and I will talk about the last three in the following articles, but first, let’s consider how nature study lays the foundation for science? And how are those habits carried over into the upper-level science classes? Please note that if you have children older than Form 1, it is still worth following along because all students should be doing nature study.

Continue reading →

The Real Scientific Method

1 Reply

Charlotte Mason said, “out-of-door nature-study lays the foundation for science.” (3/281) But have you ever wondered how that works?

To explain, I must start by clearing up a scientific myth — the ‘scientific method’ that you learned in school is ordinarily not used by scientists at all. The multi-step list seems to have started innocently enough when in 1945 a man named Keeslar prepared a paper with a list of things associated with scientific research. He submitted the list to research scientists and the items that were highly ranked were put in a logical order and made part of a final list of elements associated with the investigation of scientific problems. Textbook writers adopted this list as the description of how science is done and the “scientific method” was born. But scientists don’t usually conduct their research in the order outlined in the scientific method. They sometimes use it as an outline to write up their findings, but some people even take offense to this practice. (McComas) 

The scientific method then is a disjointed group of things a scientist does, just as a textbook is a somewhat disjointed list of things a student should learn in a particular field of science. Neither takes into account the natural way people learn or make discoveries in science. Charlotte Mason, on the other hand, always took into account the natural way people learn. She had an intuitive sense of the way a child would best learn a subject, but more importantly,  the way a child would best come to care about a subject. Continue reading →