As each of my children graduated, I found myself surprised by the people they had become. I only had my own experience of early adulthood to compare them to, and …
The Nature Notebook: How Wonder, Attention, and Habit Grow on the Page
I still remember the first year we tried keeping nature notebooks. My son painted a little yellow flower we’d seen on a walk. At the time, it looked wrong to …
All Nature Is of a Kind
One of the most common hesitations I hear about nature books is, “But the author lived somewhere else. Will this really apply to us?” It’s a fair question. After all, …
The 5 Guideposts of Nature Study
As homeschooling parents, you’re doing something remarkable: you’re shaping how your children see the world and guiding them to connect with the Living Teacher who created it all. Nature study, …
How to Start a Nature Group and Combat Loneliness and Add Life to Your Homeschool by Joy Cherrick
As homeschoolers, we seem to run in one of two directions, doing too much or isolating ourselves and our kids. It is so important to find a balance between the …
A Special Study: Let’s Learn About Mushrooms
Does nature study make you uncomfortable? What is it, after all? And how are you supposed to do it? When I was pretty new to this style of education, I …
Nature Study: Special Studies
What are Special Studies? A special study is a seasonal study of one object or group of objects — a plant or animal generally. Still, things like stars, shells, or …
Nature Study Lays the Foundation for Science
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 …
Keeping a Wildflower List (video)
I’ve written extensively about “The Lists” but I thought it might be helpful if you could see one of my own lists and learn how I keep it up. This …
The Lists
In Form 3 (grades 7-8,) a new Natural History assignment appeared on the PNEU programmes. While in Forms 1 and 2 students were simply told to “Keep a nature notebook,” …