If this is your first visit to the Outdoor Hour Challenge, I want to welcome you to join us in this nature study adventure! You can read the steps below and then click over to read more about How to Get Started With The Outdoor Hour Challenge. As promised, I am going to start a weekly challenge for families who are wishing to get started with nature study or need to have a focus for each week. We will start off in a gentle, easy to accomplish way and build from there.
Many of you have read the book Pocketful of Pinecones and you are dreaming about having nature study like she describes this story. You can have that sort of experience if you take it easy and leave yourself open to the little opportunities that come in your everyday life. Please remember that this book is a fictionalized story about what nature study can look like. Your experiences can be just as enriching and look totally different.
Here is my official explanation of the plan for the Outdoor Hour challenges.
- 1. I am going to assume that you have a copy of the Handbook of Nature Study or that you have access to it online. I am going to try to give you a bit of the Handbook of Nature Study to read each week so that you will become familiar with the book and its many features.
- 2. I am going to give a suggestion for a nature activity but I realize that not all activities will be appropriate for all parts of the world. Please feel free to adapt my suggestions to your local area.
- 3. I am going to give suggestions for activities that you will need to do *with* your children. Having the parent participate is an important way to stimulate a love of nature. More than anything else, these challenges will be for the parents to complete. You are the key to a successful nature study. How you conduct yourself will determine how well the children react to nature study. Your enthusiasm f(or apathy) will be contagious.
- 4. I will give suggestions for follow-up activities like an entry in your nature journal or time spent looking things up in your field guide. I don't think the nature journal is the most important part of nature study but it is enjoyable to have a record of your adventures and discoveries. Every week will not have a nature journal suggestion. You may feel we are moving at a snail's pace as far as what is expected each week but nature study is a very slow, constant life project. Stick with me and week by week we will fill up your nature journals and your hearts.
- 5. I am going to try to keep the activity to a maximum of 15-20 minutes per week. That means you will need to find that amount of time somewhere in your homeschooling week to participate. I know I call it the Outdoor Hour but realistically I want as many families to join us as possible for these weekly challenges and that means making a realistic goal to start with.
- 6. The follow-up activities will be another period of time in addition to the 15-20 minutes of outdoor time. Sometimes the follow-up activity will be for you the parent and sometimes it will be for your children.
- 7. Instead of sending in sketches like with Sketch Tuesday, I will be using a Mr. Linky tool for you to record your activities on your own blog and then share the links for all others to enjoy.
- 8. I am going to put all the assignments on my sidebar so if you join us late you will be able to find every assignment. Please join in whenever you feel inclined and share your experiences with all of us.
- 9. I would love for each and every assignment to encourage all who participate. Please do not feel intimidated by what others are doing in their nature study but make these assignments something that will be rewarding for your particular family and area of the world. We all have something unique to experience.
- 10. I will be posting Outdoor Hour Challenges on Fridays so you can plan for your next week of nature study.
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| If you would like to have the first ten challenges in eBook format, they are now available for purchase. |
Let's Get Started!
1. Read pages 1-8 of the Handbook of Nature Study. Highlight or underline anything that you as the nature study teacher find will help you in your guiding your children. If you read a sentence that you agree with, mark it so you will remember to come back to it when you need some encouragement.
2. "In nature-study the work begins with any plant or creature which chances to interest the pupil." So here is your challenge this week. Spend 10-15 minutes outdoors with your children, even if it is really cold and yucky. Bundle up if you need to. Take a walk around your yard or down your own street. Enjoy being outdoors. After you come inside, sit the children down and ask them one at a time to tell you something that they saw on their walk. Ask them what was interesting to them. Maybe they picked up a leaf or a stick and brought it back indoors and now they can really take a look at it. Make a big deal about whatever it is that they talk about.
3. After your discussion, come up with two things to investigate further. For instance, if they saw a bird on their walk and they came inside and talked about it, ask them if they want to know more about that bird. You have a whole week to spend some time looking it up. Maybe they found an acorn or a berry on a bush that they were interested in. That could be your focus for the week.
4. After your nature study time with the children, pull out your Handbook of Nature Study and see if the item the children are interested in is listed in the index. If it is, look up the information for yourself and then relate interesting facts to the children sometime during the next week.
5. Post an entry on your blog listing out what you did for your Outdoor Hour. I would also love to see the list of the two things that you are investigating further. Come back to this post and add your blog link to Mr. Linky. Please do not link to your blog in general but to the entry that you make about your Outdoor Hour experience each week.
Charlotte Mason knew what she was talking about when it came to nature study. Somehow in our modern life we have forgotten the simple pleasures of outdoor time. For this challenge, just go for a walk. Don't worry about taking any tools or supplies with you. Enjoy the outdoors and your children and then spend some time talking about your experiences together.
I am excited to get started. I will post our family's adventures sometime in the next week. I know this is a super long post but from now on I will not have to explain the overall plan but will get right to the assignments.
Barb-Harmony Art Mom
