Nature Study: Object Lessons

Charlotte Mason tells us that the young child is “full of vivid interest. He has a thousand questions to ask, he wants to know about everything; he has, in fact, an inordinate appetite for knowledge.” Unfortunately, we soon cure him of all of that by “occupying him with books instead of things…and we succeed in bringing up the unobservant man (and more unobservant woman) who discerns no difference between an elm, a poplar and a lime tree, and misses very much of the joy of living.” (2/181-182)

If we are determined to follow Miss Mason’s lead down a better path, we must remember that while books are an essential part of a Living education, “a couple of hours’ work daily, not with Books but with Things” (3/271) will be very instructive as well, and the more we find a balance between the two, the more intelligent and observant our children will become.

Object lessons are an excellent way to gently guide a child to carefully examine a given object (a thing) to find out all he can about it through his five senses. In fact, when the child’s senses have been exercised and his interest aroused, he can most effectively retain what he has discovered.

Let’s give it a try

Look at the creature pictured above and answer the following questions:

• What is its general color? Is it striped? What colors are the stripes? Are they oblique or lengthwise stripes?
• Can you find the caterpillar easily when feeding? Why is it not conspicuous when on the plant? Of what use is this to the caterpillar?
• Note the horn on the end of the caterpillar? Is it straight or curled? Is it on the head end? What color is it? Do you think it is of any use to the caterpillar? Do you think it is a stinger? 

Play the video below and answer the last two questions:

• Describe how the caterpillar eats. Can you see the jaws move? Does it eat the plant up clean as it goes?

 

I always giggle when I see this little fellow efficiently eat the leaf, but I don’t laugh when I find one in my garden! Unfortunately, that efficiency makes him quick to decimate my tomato plants! But despite his taste for tomatoes, this caterpillar is called the Tobacco Horn Worm.

[end of lesson]

Did you notice your attention being directed to each part of the caterpillar as you attempted to answer the questions? Yet I did not tell you where to look. Nor did I tell you details about it, such as “notice the caterpillar has oblique stripes.”

Were there some questions that you didn’t have the answers to? That is ok. If I were with you, I might be able to share the answer (because of the preparation I did for this object lesson,) but I would not tell you unless you, 

1. Ask, AND
2. Cannot find out for yourself through observation.

For instance, regarding the horn, I asked, “Do you think it is of any use to the caterpillar? Do you think it is a stinger?” You might have answered the question correctly or not and then just moved on. You may read about it later in one of your Special Study books, such as Sphinx: The Story of a Caterpillar McClung, and learn the answer. But if you said to me, “Wait, is it a stinger?” I would have answered that no, it’s not. (In this case, trying to find out through your five senses doesn’t seem right!) 

This quick object lesson was gental and easy, yet very instructive. In fact, if I asked you to turn away from this page and sketch a picture of the caterpillar from memory, you would easily account for all the details, including its shape, color, stripes, and horn. I suspect you could even label it correctly.

Two Types of Object Lessons

Object lessons come in two forms, those that happen when you have come across something interesting while out in nature and those that you have prepared for.

By-the-Way Object Lessons

Have you ever noticed something fascinating while you were on a nature walk? Maybe it was a bluebird egg that had been pushed out of a nest, unfamiliar animal tracks, or the most enormous caterpillar you have ever seen. Charlotte Mason instructed us that these finds can be turned into impromptu object lessons. She said,

“The child who finds that wonderful and beautiful object, a ‘paper’ wasp’s nest, attached to a larch-twig, has his object-lesson on the spot from father or mother. The grey colour, the round symmetrical shape, the sort of cup-and-ball arrangement, the papery texture, the comparative size, the comparative smoothness, the odour or lack of odour, the extreme lightness, the fact that it is not cold to the touch––these and fifty other particulars the child finds out unaided, or with no more than a word, here and there, to direct his observation. One does not find a wasp’s nest every day, but much can be got out of every common object, and the commoner the better, which falls naturally under the child’s observation.” (2/182-183)

This type of object lesson is like a game of jeopardy. Just start asking questions that can be answered by the child by way of his five senses. Do you see stripes? Then ask, “Is it striped?” Do you notice a color? Ask, “What color is it?” or, more specifically, “What color is the head, the legs, the beak, the back, the throat…” Do you notice that it’s textured, soft, or rough? Then ask what the child thinks it feels like? Do you suspect it has a smell? Ask the child what it smells like? Or ask specific questions that help the child learn new words, such as does it smell sweet or bitter? Often you won’t know the answers, and you’ll be flying by the seat of your pants just to come up with the next question, but you will cement the image in your child’s mind if you can learn to do this.

Impromptu object lessons are more difficult in a classroom setting, which is why we see them on the morning schedule for young students. But Charlotte Mason encouraged, “this is where the family enjoys so great an advantage over the school. It is almost impossible that the school should give any but set lessons; but this sort of teaching in the family falls in with the occurrence of the object.” (2/182) From this, we can also discern that object lessons are so important that we need a backup plan in case they do not happen incidentally.

Prepared Object Lessons

The most important factor in choosing the subject of your object lessons is that your student must be able to look at, touch, and smell it; therefore, a photograph is of no use here. You can bring an object inside if the weather is poor, or you can go outside to study it. If you are teaching a class with several children and have a set lesson time for this activity, you can bring in samples. That might mean bringing one for each child (such as a wildflower) or having everyone crowd around one item (such as a Tobacco Horn Worm that you found in your garden.)

The best option is to tie these prepared lessons to your Special Study topic. It is what the student will be reading about that term, so adding a few object lessons will be a great addition to their knowledge.

Familiarize Yourself

The first step in preparing for an object lesson is to familiarize yourself with the object, primarily so you can speak about the thing correctly. Miss Mason said, big words “such as opaque and translucent, [will] never become part of their living thought until they pick them up for themselves incidentally as they have need of them.” (2/180) So when you ask whether the stripes of the Tobacco Hornworm are oblique or lengthwise, they have a chance to learn and use these words naturally. 

Equally important is that the more you know, the better you will be able to draw the kids’ attention to details particular to that object. So, for example, if you know that ants go to war and take slaves, you can ask your child if all of the ants in the colony are the same color, and if they aren’t, you can share why that might be the case. Or if you know that they keep aphids as cows and milk them daily, you can guide your child to look on the rosebush and wonder what the ants are doing around the aphids. The more you know, the more you can help them make discoveries for themselves!

Prepare Questions

The second step in preparing an object lesson is to gather a list of questions to ask the kids. I often can’t rely on my memory, so I write the questions I want to ask on a small card, which I can slip into my pocket when we go outside. Then I can refer to my card if I need help remembering them.

The Handbook of Nature Study (HoNS) by Anna Botsford Comstock is an invaluable resource for preparing for an object lesson. So too, I hope, is the SMH Special Study Curriculum. These resources help you become familiar with various plants and animals and include a list of questions you can choose from.

For example, if your child is learning about birds this term, you might scan the bird section of HoNS and prepare an object lesson on attracting birds (p. 43). Or maybe you have noticed a turtle at a nearby pond, so you watch the SMH video on Reptiles: Turtles & Tortoises and use the handout to prepare some questions.

You do not need to ask every question. Just pick a few and gently guide your child to notice all they can. Remember, it is not your duty to fill the children’s minds with facts and details. You will likely know more than they do about the subject because you will have studied it a bit, but you must guard against lecturing.

How Often

You only need to prepare for one object lesson each week, and the whole lesson should take no more than ten minutes. Of course, you may notice enough interesting things to make an object lesson on a daily basis, but Miss Mason warned that we must not point out more than one or two things each day. For the rest of the interesting things, we must zip our lips and let our children practice the art of looking closer and asking questions all by themselves.

Related:
Wildflowers: Object Lesson Demonstration
The Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock
ADE Episode 95: Object Lessons

Return to An Overview of School Science

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