Category Archives: Winter

Stuck at Home

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I enjoyed watching a Northern Flicker on the bare little dogwood through the sunroom window.

I enjoyed watching a Northern Flicker
on the bare little dogwood
through the sunroom window.

I have been practicing what I preach, by doing a little nature study out the window! It’s been dreadfully cold and snowy here this week, as it has been over a good portion of the Eastern US, and we have had the pleasure of being stuck at home for an entire week.

My dear friend Liz, from the LivingBooks Library, always says that you should try to schedule to be home three days in a row each week. I have never really understood how valuable that can be until this week. What I finally realized is that when you go out every other day, or some such schedule, your days at home are partly just rebounding. Your brain is in recovery mode from all the running around. Given a few days at home in a row you begin to be fruitful. A drawer gets cleaned out here, a closet there, a nature painting is completed, and the classical music playing in the background doesn’t feel forced. You aren’t recovering from the last thing, and you aren’t worrying about the next thing. You can just be here now.

There is one quality that characterizes all of us who deal with the science of the earth and its life -- we are never board. - Rachel Carson

There is one quality that characterizes all of us who deal with the science of the earth and its life — we are never board.
– Rachel Carson

Before I cancel every lesson we have scheduled for the rest of the school year, however, I remember a valuable tidbit I got from the book Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne. I read it years ago, and I’ll admit that I didn’t finish it, but the main thing I took away from it was that you don’t have to cancel everything indefinitely. Sometimes you just need a few days to recoup. This time at home has let me recoup a peace of mind that I was seriously lacking last week.

Tomorrow it is supposed to rain, which will melt all the snow and our family will be in motion again. Like many families, spring is unreasonably busy for us. Maybe this unforeseen break in our schedule will allow me to approach it with a greater level of serenity though.

I should mention that we did complete our entire school schedule this week, and because we have our act together in that department, there was still ample time for sledding!

Related:

Winter Nature Study – From Inside

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windowI marveled when I first read The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry and came across the section called Window Poems. He has since published a book devoted to these Window Poems as well.

The idea of doing nature study out the window had never felt acceptable to me, but if Wendell Berry does it, surely it’s acceptable for the rest of us when we just can’t get outside. Of course, we must remember that he has far more poems inspired by walks across the field, so don’t let this be an excuse to cross nature study off of your list for the whole of winter.

An Excerpt from Window Poems by Wendell Berry
Outside the window
is a roofed wooden tray
he fills with seeds for the birds.
They make a sort of dance
as they descend and light
and fly off at a slant
across the strictly divided
black sash. At first
they came fearfully, worried
by the man’s movements
inside the room. They watched
his eyes, and flew
when he looked. Now they expect
no harm from him
and forget he’s there.
They come into his vision,
unafraid. He keeps
a certain distance and quietness
in tribute to them.
That they ignore him
he takes in tribute to himself.
But they stay cautious
of each other, half afraid, unwilling
to be too close. They snatch
what they can carry and fly
into the trees. They flirt out
with tail or beak and waste
more sometimes than they eat.
And the man, knowing
the price of seed, wishes
they would take more care.
But they understand only
what is free, and he
can give only as they
will take. Thus they have
enlightened him. He buys
the seed, to make it free.

Here are a few things that might inspire some indoor nature study of your own:

  • Feed birds where you can see them through a common window in your house. Take note of where to put your bird feeder so they don’t run into the window and die.rocks
  • Do a special study on a houseplant or family pet
  • Grow crystals: Here’s instructions on how to grow great crystals. We made the sugar crystals and used them as cake decoration.
  • Make Your Own Weather Station: find instruction here or here.
  • Do a cloud study: Use this cloud chart for daily recording and check out these cloud studies ideas.
  • Track the length of the days: once a week note when sunset and sunrise happen. (Most weather apps will give you that information.)
  • Buy or borrow a rock tumbler to polish rocks: This is the kind we got and we are very happy with it.
  • Conduct science experiments that coincide with The Story Book of Science, such as creating water vapor.
  • Drop a piece of celery in a jar of food-coloring-tinted water and see what happens over the next few days
  • Make a terrarium: We followed these instructions.
  • Pick an adventure from Adventures with a Hand Lens or Adventures with a Microscope, both by Richard Headstrom

I hope this gets you started on some indoor nature study for those days when you just don’t want to brave the elements. However, as soon as there is a nice day, do go outside. Remembering that a high-30’s or low-40’s day can feel very comfortable when you’ve endured several weeks in the teens. It may not feel like spring, but the kids are sure to be warm enough due to their active little bodies and will greatly benefit from the fresh air.

Winter Nature Study Inspiration

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red bellied woodpecker

“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.” -Thoreau’s journal, dated August 23, 1853
Charlotte Mason says “There is no reason why the child’s winter walk should not be as fertile in observations as the poet’s; indeed, in one way, it is possible to see the more in winter, because the things to be seen do not crowd each other out.” (Home Education, pg 86)

But still we resist. After all, it’s cold out there! So I had an idea.

In Home Education Mason says “The real use of naturalists’ books at this stage is to give the child delightful glimpses into the world of wonders he lives in, to reveal the sorts of things to be seen by curious eyes, and fill him with desire to make discoveries for himself.” (Home Education, pg 64)

Maybe what we need, in order to improve our motivation toward winter nature study, is to read some of what was written by the great naturalists who have gone [into the snow and cold elements] before us.

“He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter. It is true the pomp and the pageantry are swept away, but the essential elements remain, – the day and the night, the mountain and the valley, the elemental play and succession and the perpetual presence of the infinite sky. In winter the stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted simplicity. Summer is more wooing and seductive, more versatile and human, appeals to the affections and the sentiments, and fosters inquiry and the art impulse. Winter is of a more heroic cast, and addresses the intellect.”
“The Snow Walkers” Winter Sunshine by John Burroughs

“The country is more of a wilderness, more of a wild solitude, in the winter than in the summer. The wild comes out. The urban, the cultivated, is hidden or negatived. You shall hardly know a good field from a poor, a meadow from a pasture, a park from a forest. Lines and boundaries are disregarded; gates and bar-ways are unclosed; man lets go his hold upon the earth; title-deeds are deep buried beneath the snow; the best-kept grounds relapse to a state of nature; under the pressure of the cold all the wild creatures become outlaws, and roam abroad beyond their usual haunts. The partridge comes to the orchard for buds; the rabbit comes to the garden and lawn; the crows and jays come to the ash-heap and corn-crib, the snow-buntings to the stack and to the barn-yard; the sparrows pilfer from the domestic fowls; the pine grosbeak comes down from the north and shears your maples of their buds; the fox prowls about your premises at night, and the red squirrels find your grain in the barn or steal the butternuts from your attic. In fact, winter, like some great calamity, changes the status of most creatures and sets them adrift. Winter, like poverty, makes us acquainted with strange bedfellows.”
“Winter Neighbors” Signs and Seasons by John Burroughs

frozen dogwood“Each year after the midwinter blizzards, there comes a night of thaw when the tinkle of dripping water is heard in the land. It brings strange stirrings, not only to creatures abed for the night, but to some who have been asleep for the winter. The hibernating skunk, curled up in his deep den, uncurls himself and ventures forth to prowl the wet world, dragging his belly in the snow. His track marks one of the earliest datable events in that cycle of beginnings and ceasing which we call a year. The track is likely to display and indifference to mundane affairs uncommon at other seasons; it leads straight across-country, as if its maker had hitched his wagon to a star and dropped the reins. I follow, curious to deduce his state of mind and appetite, and destination if any.”
“January” A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold

“If one could take the cover off the ground in the fields and woods in winter, or have some magic ointment put upon his eyes that would enable him to see through opaque substances, how many curious and interesting forms of life he would behold in the ground beneath his feet as he took his winter walk — life with the fires banked, so to speak, and just keeping till spring.”
Wild Life in Winter by John Burroughs

icicles“The wonderful purity of nature at this season is a most pleasing fact. Every decayed stump and moss-grown stone and rail, and the dead leaves of autumn, are concealed by a clean napkin of snow. In the bare fields and tinkling woods, see what virtue survives.”
“A Winter Walk” The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau

“Why do you flee so soon, sir, to the theaters, lecture-rooms, and museums of the city? If you will stay here awhile I will promise you strange sights. You shall walk on water; all these brooks and rivers and ponds shall be your highway. You shall see the whole earth covered a foot or more deep with purest white crystals . . . and all the trees and stubble glittering in icy armor.” -Thoreau’s journal, dated October 18, 1859

iceThe Cold by Wendell Berry
How exactly good it is
to know myself
in the solitude of winter,
my body containing its own
warmth, divided from all
by the cold; and to go
separate and sure
among the trees cleanly
divided, thinking of you
perfect too in your solitude,
your life withdrawn into
your own keeping
–to be clear, poised
in perfect self-suspension
toward you, as though frozen.
And having known fully the
goodness of that, it will be
good also to melt.

Ah yes, “having known fully the goodness of that, it will be good also to melt.” Isn’t it true that our Lord gave us each season, and therefore we shouldn’t close our eyes to hide from any of them. As Thoreau says, lets resign ourselves to the influences of each.

Below are a few essays that you might enjoy reading with your kids:

And a couple of books you might enjoy also:

Lastly, and in closing, while I’ve been in here writing to all of you, my ten year old daughter was writing a poem in the other room. She had no idea what I had on my mind, and yet here is what she had on her mind:

The wind blows and it snows
On a dark winter night.
The birds are sleeping in their nests
Waiting for summer at last.
Finally summer comes
And the birds are playing in the grass.

by Allison

May you all enjoy a bit of winter before it’s gone!

snowman