Nature Notes, part 1

“The pleasure and value of every walk or journey we take may be doubled to us by carefully noting down the impressions it makes upon us.” —John Burroughs

A cornerstone of a Charlotte Mason style nature notebook is the notes, and much of their value lies in their continuity. It’s unlikely that your book will represent a “pageant of the seasons” if several months have been skipped. Alfred Thornley said, “…it is essential that a nature note book should preserve a continuous record,” (PR 26, p. 233) and therefore, all of the House of Education examiners critiqued the student-teachers’ notebooks on how complete they were.

Vine. A very full and charming book …
C. Nevitt Bennett. A nice, full book, showing good powers of observation. …
…
Clendinnen. … The book appears to stop short with November.
S. Henderson. Apparently an incomplete book. The Ambleside records are scant; the account of the voyage to Canada is very good. The book stops suddenly on August 23rd. (PR 20 p. 230)

Repeatedly I read comments from the examiners that a book would have been great if not for significant gaps. My own book has been on hiatus on multiple occasions, so don’t feel any judgment from this corner! Still, learning what kinds of things to enter and when to make those entries has greatly increased my motivation.

A Record of the Weather

When recording the passing of the seasons, the weather is the most fundamental thing you can report. It can establish where you are in the year and even where you are in the world. Did it snow today, or is it 102-degrees with 3-percent humidity, or is it somewhere in the middle? In the student-teacher notebooks just a quick word on the weather was sometimes part of a long entry about other things, such as this one from Florence Rankin:

June 6th. We had a half holiday because it was such a lovely day. I drove with my mother to Elterwater village. A grand little place built on the shores of the tiny lake and within a half a mile of the Langdale Pikes…

Other times, the weather was an important detail relating to another observation, such as Margaret Deck’s entry on her holiday to Stelling:

July 28th. … The nuts are not ripe yet, but they are getting quite large. Everything is very backward this year. The hay is not in yet, some of it is not even cut yet. The corn seems very good, but it is not really ripe; if this good weather continues, it will soon ripen it.

It can certainly set the scene to have a good description of the weather, as Agnes Drury does in her student notebook from 1902:

March 19th. March winds are in force, cold and making the air bleak so that no fresh flowers have opened. (PR 41, p. 190)

And sometimes it was the entire entry for the day, or for several days:

February 9th & 12th. Too wet to go out.
May 16th. Very showery and windy. We all went out in Macintosh’s again. (Rankin)

July 5th. We were not able to go very far this afternoon on account of the rain. We have been having such lovely weather lately, that the rain is not so very unwelcome. (Deck)

It always makes me smile to read Thornley’s dramatic notes on the weather:

The elements certainly conspired to try our courage and endurance to the uttermost. But we refused to be beaten. (PR 21, p. 228)

Of course, we had our usual rambles, in which the keenness and enthusiasm of the students made us absolutely oblivious of bad weather conditions : and we cheerfully collected caterpillars and various pollywogs in a gale of wind, enough to blow one off one’s feet. (PR 26, p. 234)

Talking about the weather may seem trite but it’s actually the pendulum on which the seasons swing, so it’s very appropriate for us to note the weather in our notebooks. It’s also very appropriate for us, as Charlotte Mason devotees, to use descriptive words in doing so, rather than depicting it with a small diagram in the corner of the page. I hope you can see from the examples above the character these kinds of description can add.

A Record of Walks Taken

Of course, we should be sure to record all that was seen on our nature walks. The student-teachers at the House of Education were allowed two half days per week, which were to be spent taking excursions. Some of the accounts of these walks were full to overflowing with the flowers they had seen:

May 17th. A lovely spring day. We went to the top of Loughrigg and found ever so many things. First the fragrant mountain fern growing in quantities near the theawes. [?] It is so called on account of the sweet odor it has when it is crushed. A very little farther we found the little mountain primrose and the butter wort (pinguicula vulgaris) The leaves grow in a spreading lift and are curved at the edges and are covered with a greasy matter. As they are yellowish in color, this may account for its name. Growing in the same place was the little pink mountain primrose and quantities of louse wort. We found the sun dew in the same boggy ground – but it is very small at present (drosera rotundifolia) … (Rankin)

Others recorded encounters beyond the botanical kind:

May 12th. We went a walk towards Skelwith Bridge, and found the bugle out and the tuberous pea. The latter had been found out a few days before, but it was the first time I found it. We also found a small hole in an ash tree, which we afterwards found it to be a Birds nest, as we saw a small bird flying in and out of it. The bird was quite small, with a black back, a pale gray breast, and white cheeks, but we could not quite make out what it was. Although we climbed up a wall and looked into the nest, we could not see any eggs, but we found a good deal of sheep’s wool inside which made us quite sure that it was a nest. We saw the last streaks of snow on Fairfield basin. (Deck)

August 6th. This morning as we were going through a large wood, we saw a snake gliding into the hedge at the side of the path; after going a few steps further we came to another small path where we saw a wood cutter who had just killed an adder. He said there were any amount of them about in the woods, and they were very poisonous. The one he killed just then was between two and three feet long. (Deck)

A Record of Other Observations

Source: Archive.org, Charlotte Mason Digital Collection, Margaret Deck, 1910.

Beyond their weekly walks, Charlotte Mason encouraged the House of Education students to “delight in walking as far as possible between dinner and tea,” (Cholmondeley, p.159) and many of their notes came from these daily outings. Other records were from observations made around the house or out the window of the schoolroom. Margaret Hickling, a student of a public Parents’ Union School, noted the following in her nature notebook:

June 16th. Today, looking out the form-room windows about twelve oclock, we saw a lovely little grey squirrel, he stopped for a moment so that we had a splendid view of him, and then he darted off.

Nov 12th. Looking outside the Formroom we saw a sweet little field mouse in a clearing in the undergrowth. It found something to eat – we could not see what – and then sat up and nibbled it, when it had finished, it darted away.

Dec 3rd. Looking out the dining room window, during lunch, we saw a lovely Green-Woodpecker in one of the trees. He gave us quite a long time to study him before he flew away.

Drury, who kept a very complete book also noted things she had seen around the house:

February 8th. There are about six inches of snow to-day, and the trees were fairy-like before the snow fell from their branches. The birds are watching the house from a hawthorn, and blackbirds, robins, starlings and, I think a rook, have been on the verandah to get the biscuit I threw out for them. (p. 188)

February 16th. …At 8.30 p.m., the Northern Lights were showing. There was a pearly light at the back of Fairfield and Red Screes. Rays shot up, first over Scandale, then over Rydal, and, as they grew brighter, glowed higher up not only rosily but bloodred against the dark sky. … (Drury, vol. 41, p. 195)

We also should be stepping out of doors daily to breathe the fresh air and take a look around. Maybe you enjoy sitting on the porch to watch the birds for a few minutes each morning, or each afternoon you stroll to the mailbox and look for any wildflowers or grasses along the way. If you see something that interests you, or something you haven’t noticed before, or anything seasonal that is worth noting, feel free to include a note about it in your nature notebook.

Something else to consider is that in the time and place of the above-referenced notebooks there were no errands by car or weekly trips to lessons. “Miss Kitching remembered that in Miss Rankin’s time, and for many years afterward, there were no motors, no bicycles, no buses, only some private carriages.” (Cholmondeley, p. 39) We live in a very different time, and as such, you may want to include notes of the things you see while you are out and about. Lately, while driving into town, I have noticed that the redbud trees and California poppies are in bloom, but neither is growing on my property or near the trails I frequent. While I think most of our entries should be from observations we’ve made at a much slower pace, it doesn’t seem right to leave these harbingers of spring out of my book just because I haven’t seen them while on foot.

A Record of Studies Made

Drury was clear that we should also be recording notes about the things we are personally making a study of: “The reports of conducted walks bear too large a proportion to the written notes of independent search and observation.” (PR 50, p. 139)

Upon moving back to California, I realized how many things I had missed as a young person living here, and immediately I dove into one subject of study after another. First, it was the many wildflowers I found on the trail behind my house, most of which were new to me. Then I realized how many different conifer trees I could see right from my back deck, so I began an interesting study of trees.

Much of this was motivated by my move and the fact that everything around me seemed new. But even if we stay in the same place for decades, we can and should be making continual studies of nature. Children of the Parents’ Union School were assigned this work in the programmes as Special Studies, and of course, we should assign the same work to our students. But as parents, we must apply ourselves in this area even more so. L. Hodgson, the House of Education’s first Natural History teacher, gives us some advice for beginning a study of this kind:

It is very important that you should all of you take the greatest care to work up for yourselves in Natural History the subject you find appeals most to you. To some, flowers come quite easily and naturally: you learn their names, where they grow and their habits, without much thought on your own part. Others feel a greater interest in stones. Some like birds, others insects ; either of these offers a field of vast interest to the observer, who will for herself carefully note down each thing she finds out about the plant, stone or bird that comes before her. To see for oneself, and then to look at one’s text-book, is the very best way of learning the life-story each thing has to tell. In this way science may be helped, mind and body improved, and much pleasure enjoyed quite quietly and naturally by all of you. In this way, too, your notes in your books will be of interest to many, as containing ‘eye-witness’ to the facts noted down. (PR 4, p. 558, emphasis mine)

I am always reading one book or another about nature, which inspires personal observation. Sometimes I even take notes from these books to help organize the information in my mind. In 1897, Geldart reported that both sets of information, personal observations and lecture notes, were kept in the student’s nature notebooks. But soon afterward that changed. It became standard for students to keep a separate Natural History notebook where they recorded copious notes from lectures and the books they had read. Thornley reported in his January 1905 examination report: “…the notes and excellent drawings bear witness to the fact that they are the result of observation in the field, and not mere memories of the text book and the classroom.” (PR 16, p. 232) Our nature notebooks are a place to record what we have seen with our own eyes, and therefore, I have followed their example and now keep a separate book with notes from the books I’ve read.

Another way to conduct a study is to record notes or drawings on a single specimen repeatedly. Drury reported, “…there is, in many cases, evidence of observations repeated day after day, or from year to year, until facts have been verified. This is one great use of Nature Notes.” (PR 55, p. 78) As part of my tree study, I’ve chosen four specific trees to follow throughout the year and have added notes and drawings about each of them every month. You could also follow a single wildflower, a frog, or a butterfly through its lifecycle. You could watch a bird as she builds her nest, lays eggs, and then raises her young. All the while, recording your observations in your nature notebook.

A Record of Astronomical Observations

Source: Archive.org, Charlotte Mason Digital Collection, May Openshaw, 1912.

Often Thornley remarked in his reports that the stars must be out of fashion. He enjoyed the descriptions of the stars and the star maps drawn by the students in their notebooks. But again, Drury made the point that only those things seen by the student should be included. She included the following early morning observation in her own student notebook:

January 8th. There was an eclipse of the moon this morning, beginning about 5.40 a.m. When we first saw it at 6.30 a.m., the dark shadow had crept about half over the moon. It was to be full at 7.40 a.m., and would have set by then. It was setting over the Purbeck Downs while we watched it, and the last little rim of light had vanished before the moon was dimmed by clouds. But it never was entirely covered by the umbra as long as we could see. There was a crescent of penumbra on the upper right side, and I suppose that was why it was said to be a partial eclipse at Greenwich. The sky presented a magnificent spectacle before dawn, as the moon was just below Saturn and the Twins, with Procyon beyond her on the left and Capella on the right. Leo and Virgo were most impressive and I saw Corvus and the bright star in Hydra. On the opposite side of the house I saw Venus just risen. (PR 41, p. 192)

Lunar and solar eclipses, the phases of the moon and it’s shifting position in the sky from night to night, star maps of the constellations seen, the aurora borealis if you live in the far northern or southern hemisphere, and the positions of planets can all be described and in some cases painted in your nature notebook. If you own a telescope, you may also want to include an observation of Saturn’s rings, the craters on the moon, or the occasional comet.

A Record of Vacations and Holidays

House of Education students also included notes about their time on holiday. For some, that was a trip home, but others had an opportunity to travel to far off lands. In Florence Rankin’s first notebook she recorded eight pages of notes about her holiday. They began with her travel day:

July 21. My last summer day in Ambleside. As the train carried me straight across country from West to East I was really delighted to lose sight of the hills which had shut out much of the sky and to get into the undulating moors and wolds of Yorkshire. Yellow corn fields began to skirt the line and among them I hailed with great pleasure the dear old scarlet poppy – that I had not once seen in Westmoreland. My first walk on the wolds somewhere between Scarboro and York showed me quantities of new July flowers…

Thornley related his enjoyment of these accounts:

I am greatly struck again with the excellent account of the way in which the holidays were spent both at home and abroad, and nothing was of more interest in the note books, than the admirable attempt made by several students to make a comparative study of the different faunas and floras they met with in their ramblings.” (PR 17, p. 231)

However, he did voice one complaint periodically: “also I should like always to know the names of the holiday resorts, which are frequently omitted.” (PR 45, p. 135)

Sometimes entries were short:

April 20. Two bumble bees and two white butterflies.
March 20-21. Both beautiful days. I did not walk far.” (Rankin)

Drury said short entries are especially acceptable for young children. Other entries, particularly those recording Thornley’s visits, often took from two and six pages to recount. Sometimes they were a series of entries while on an enjoyable vacation, and sometimes they had nothing more exciting to report besides the weather.

The key is that the students whose notebooks were highly ranked had made consistent entries. We also must get in the habit of making entries consistently. By keeping our books close at hand, even keeping a favorite pen with it, we can quickly make an entry whenever we would like. Perhaps more importantly, we need to stop making such a big deal about what we write that we end up making no entries at all. This is a habit and a practice that will bolster our confidence, ability, and motivation. Drury explained in her article “How to Keep a Nature Note-Book”: “When we are in the habit of looking about us, we get the most delightful surprises out of doors. Even if we can only go a short distance, things we know quite well can fill us with wonder and delight” (PR 52, p. 222)

This week, I challenge you to make multiple written entries in your nature notebook. (If you don’t have one yet, then just write your notes on a piece of binder paper.) Don’t overthink it — just take some time each day to notice the natural world around you and then write down what you saw. I hope you find great enjoyment in the process!

Resources:

I strongly suggest that you read John Muir Laws’ recommendations on the following pages:
Customizing the Cotman Sketcher’s Pocket Box – this is what I started with
Customizing the Holbein Palette
Watercolor Sets for Kids
How to Make Your Own Palette
Choosing Watercolors

To a large degree, I believe the notebook and materials you use are a personal choice. My only advice is to get the best you can reasonably afford for yourself and your children. Below I have included my favorites as a jumping off point.

My favorite nature notebook: Stillman & Birn Epsilon Hardbound Sketchbook, 100lb, Natural White, 62 Sheets, 5.5×8.5 (I like everything about this notebook, the hardcover, the medium size, the weight and color of the paper, and the number of pages.)

My second favorite nature notebook: Stillman & Birn Zeta Softcover Sketchbook, 180lb, White, 48 Sheets, 8×10 (If you like a larger book, this is a good option, but you will have to forego the hardcover and the ample number of pages.)

My favorite pen: Pilot Precise V7 RT Retractable Rolling Ball Pens, Fine Point, Black Ink (You can get these at Walmart or Office Depot too.)

My favorite paint brush: Princeton Snap! Brushes, Round Size 3 & 6, and 1/2″ stroke.

My second favorite paint brush: Princeton Artist Brush Neptune, Brushes for Watercolor Series 4750, Round Synthetic Squirrel, Size 4

My favorite paint tray: Large Plastic Folding Palette (DickBlick)

My favorite paints: Winsor Newton and Daniel Smith
Cool Yellow — lemon yellow (WN)
Warm Yellow — cadmium yellow pale (not “hue”) (DS)
Cool Red — permanent rose (WN)
Warm Red — permanent alizarin crimson (WN)
Warm Red — cadmium red medium hue (DS)
Cool Blue — prussian blue (WN)
Warm Blue — ultramarine blue (NOT “green shade” or “red shade”) (DS)
Purple — winsor violet (WN)
Neutral — quinacridone gold (DS)
Neutral — burnt sienna (WN)
Neutral — neutral tint (WN)

References:

First Image: Source: Archive.org, Charlotte Mason Digital Collection, Florence Rankin, 1894.
Cholmondeley, Essex. The Story of Charlotte Mason. Child Light Ltd, 2000
Deck, Margaret. “Two Nature Notebooks by Margaret Deck (1910 and 1912) ARMITT Box ALM127, File CMC519, Items 1-2.” Internet Archive, Charlotte Mason Digital Collection, 1910, archive.org/details/BoxAML127FileCMC519.
Drury, Agnes C. “From a Nature Notebook” Parents’ Review, vol. 41, 1933, pp. 188-197.
Drury, Agnes C. “Our Work” Parents’ Review, vol. 50, 1939, pp. 138-139
Drury, Agnes C. “Our Work” Parents’ Review, vol. 52, 1941, pp. 62-63.
Drury, Agnes C. “How to Keep a Nature Note-Book” Parents’ Review, vol. 52, 1941, pp. 218-233.
Drury, Agnes C. “Our Work.” Parents’ Review, vol. 55, 1944, pp. 78-79.
Geldart, H. “Nature Work at the House of Education.” Parents’ Review, vol. 9, 1897, pp. 487-495.
Hodgson, M. L. “Notes By The Way.” Parents’ Review, vol. 4, 1893, pp. 68-70.
Rankin, Florence. “Notebooks from Eve Anderson, Including 2 Nature Notebooks (by Florence Rankin 1894 & 1899), Book of Centuries, by Eve Anderson, and History of Education, by Eve Anderson. 1894-1952 [?] ARMITT Box PNEU24, File pneu162, Items i1(a)p1pneu162-i5p142pneu162.” Internet Archive, Charlotte Mason Digital Collection, 1894, archive.org/details/BoxPNEU24i1Ap1-i1Dpneu162.
Thornley, Alfred. “Our Work.” Parents’ Review, vol. 16, 1905, p. 232.
Thornley, Alfred. “Our Work.” Parents’ Review, vol. 17, 1906, pp. 230-232.
Thornley, Alfred. “Our Work.” Parents’ Review, vol. 19, 1908, pp. 232-233.
Thornley, Alfred. “Our Work.” Parents’ Review, vol. 20, 1909, pp. 228-230.
Thornley, Alfred. “Our Work.” Parents’ Review, vol. 21, 1910, pp. 228-229
Thornley, Alfred. “Our Work.” Parents’ Review, vol. 26, 1915, pp. 234-235.
Thornley, Alfred. “Our Work.” Parents’ Review, vol. 45, 1934, p. 135.

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