Category Archives: Charlotte Mason Science

Brush Drawing for Nature Notebooks

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Miss Mason, in her admirable system at the House of Education, gets her students to bring back leaves and buds of trees from their walks, and to copy them in “Brushwork,” with name, locality and date attached to each. The twigs with buds they secure early in the spring, and later in the year compare their sketches with the same trees when in full leaf. This is an excellent way of teaching the students to know the many varieties of trees and shrubs, and to identify them at any time of the year. (Perin, Brush Drawing II, p. 454)

When you take a nature walk, you may see a specimen or two that you would like to bring home to paint in your nature notebook. Of course, you must be considerate of the next person who will walk that trail and therefore, you should never pick flowers or take home objects that are protected or of which there are only a few. We know this was a problem in Charlotte Mason’s day, as it was written about often, and it can still be a problem today. I once took a walk with my daughters with the sole intention of showing them a beautiful flower I had seen the day before, only to find it was gone. Maybe a person picked it, or perhaps a deer ate it, but you can imagine my disappointment when it wasn’t there.

It’s useful to note that the drawings we see in the House of Education student-teacher notebooks are not of rare or endangered species. Instead, students just mentioned these flowers in their notes and then made paintings of the more common flowers. For the most part, my own book includes wildflowers from my yard that most gardeners would call weeds. In fact, on more than one occasion I have asked my husband to please weed-eat or mow around a new plant in our yard so that I could look at it more closely later — the latest having grown almost overnight to a height of seven feet! (If you are imagining him rolling his eyes at me, you would be correct.) I also love to paint grasses, which are abundant in almost any region. Once you start noticing them, you will see there is such variety, and they are all so graceful and beautiful. Continue reading →

Beginning Brush Drawing

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The idea of keeping a nature notebook sounds so lovely, but for some people, the thought of making a nature painting is more than a little overwhelming! You may feel insecure about your abilities with a brush and paint, and allowing anyone to ever see your work is out of the question.

Florence Rankin, a student at Charlotte Mason’s teaching college, likely felt the same way. Two of her nature notebooks are archived in the Charlotte Mason Digital Collection. Her first nature note was entered on February 2, and yet she didn’t attempt her first drawings until March 6 and 7 — an entire month after she started journaling.

Although she didn’t attempt another drawing until April 5, a full month later, you can already see some improvement. Continue reading →

Nature Notes, part 2

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Source: Archive.org, Charlotte Mason Digital Collection, Florence Rankin, 1894.

In Home Education, Charlotte Mason referred to nature notebooks as nature journals. What is being recorded, however, is not a daily record of a person’s life, but a narration of the beauties God has revealed to us.  For a journal of any kind to be useful, the entries must be descriptive enough to give a sense of what the writer has seen, heard, tasted, touched, and smelled. It’s not surprising then, that one of the most common negative critiques of the House of Education student-teachers’ notebooks was a general lack of description:

Hussey, A. A. … There are too many vague and loose statements. (PR 27, p. 156)

Alfred Thornley explained: “Now and again the observations recorded are a little superficial, and sometimes words are too vaguely used, and sentences do not always convey a clear idea of what was really seen.” (PR 21, p. 228)

In the same way, Agnes Drury emphasized the importance of accuracy:

The interest in birds is remarkable, but there are few notes to enable the writer to recognise her bird a year later. Accuracy should be the aim as opposed to vagueness. For example, notes on dragonflies, with one exception, give no indication of the size, or even relative sizes. Generalisations about weather, harvest, fall of leaves, or differences between Ambleside and the South, if vague, are useless; but by exact statements evidence is accumulated. (PR 52, p. 62, emphasis mine)

In her article, “How to Keep a Nature Note-book,” Drury gives an example from her own book. Notice the level of detail seen in this record: Continue reading →