Science!

We are trying something new this year for science. When Kaley was in HS we did a typical package curriculum that she did not get much out of, did not enjoy and I had no hands on or experience with whats so ever. I really wanted to do it differently for the other children coming up.

While they are elementary age, we enjoy reading natural history books, nature journaling, playing in and experiencing nature, recording the changes in our world in a book of firsts and much more, but with a focus on the natural world. We use good literature to learn, just like we do any other subject. So why did I give that up for high school? I could never figure that out. I guess I just thought I had to, for the older student to acquire the knowledge they would need for life or upper level education.

Two things changed my mind. The first was this post at sageparnassus by Nancy. We started using narration journals for science! Instead of narrating our science books out loud, we began drawing our narrations. Oh what a difference in what we learned!

The next was hearing Jennifer Gagnon speak at the Living Education Retreat on science. She said a great many wonderful things that I don't have time to narrate here, but really she made me realize, I DO like science and I AM scientific. When did I lose my love for science? And think of myself as a person who is not good at it? Hmmm, probably about the same age my daughter stopped enjoying it. Say, middle school?

A couple things that were impressed upon me there were:

*You can't know everything.
*Why would we stop using living books for science just because our children are older??
*We are a scientific family.
*I need to build deep roots in the love of subjects for my students to hang knowledge on.

I know there were more. But here was another that happened in chatting after the conference. It was pointed out that at Charlotte Masons schools, they did not focus on one science topic per year, ie: biology one year, chemistry the next etc. The studied multiple branches of science at one time. That really got me thinking. And I decided I was going to try that!

So this year we are reading multiple science books: 

The Way We Work  for the study of the human body.
The New Way Things Work for physical science
An Edwin Teale book for natural history
The Wonder Book of Chemistry , my 14yo loves this book
Along Came Galileo for astronomy and a biography

Some color on the blueridge

These are our first term selections and I have some more I'm investigating for second and third terms. I'm really excited about a book I found on the periodic table. I can't believe that I am! I am learning SO much with my students.

The starlings are beginning to murmerate

The first chestnut tree I've seen in the mountains

Humility

–Humility does not think much or little of itself; it does not think of itself at all. C.M.

My Charlotte Mason book club just came to the close of 'Parents and Children'. We certainly ended with a bang, or rather Charlotte did. I think the above statement is a new rather big idea that she has given me. This is the third book I have been blessed to study through in the two years I have been a part of this book club. It is such a joy to read through Ms. Mason's series on education with others. I have found her books to be so much more than instruction on how to teach my children. It is a devotional, a guide to life, a character training for me and a philosophy of life.

It seems like once or twice a year, I trip across a BIG IDEA somewhere in her writing. Last year it was this:

We become aware of an altogether unnatural and irreligious classification into things sacred and things secular. We are not in all things at one with God. There are beautiful lives in which there is no trace of this separation, whose aims are confined to the things we call sacred. But many thoughtful, earnest persons feel sorely the need of a conception of the divine relation which shall embrace the whole of human life which shall make art, science, politics, all those cares and thoughts of men which are not rebellious, sacred also as being all engaged in the great evolution, the evolution of the Kingdom of God.  vol 2 pg 130

I believe for the next little while, I will be meditating on humility. On what it should be in myself and how I should guard it in my children. I'll leave you with some more thoughts from Charlotte....

  It is a negative rather than a positive quality, being an absence of self-consciousness rather than the presence of any distinctive virtue. The person who is unaware of himself is capable of all lowly service, of all suffering for others, of bright cheerfulness under all the small crosses and worries of everyday life. This is the quality that makes heroes, and this is the quality that makes saints. We are able to pray, but we are hardly able to worship or to praise, to say, 'My soul doth magnify the Lord' so long as in the innermost chamber of our hearts we are self-occupied. vol 2 pg 285

The note of childhood is, before all things, humility.  This, if we think of it, is the state natural to children. Every person and thing commands their interest; but the person or thing in action is deeply interesting.