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Thursday, July 31, 2008

Is Nature Study Old-Fashioned?


Why are we spending time in nature study? Is it old-fashioned? Do we really need to expose our children to this type of learning in our modern age, where everything is at our fingertips as far as finding answers to anything we want to know in books or on the internet?

I think outdoor time and nature study are as fundamental to good learning as you can find. Charlotte Mason agrees.
dandelions with tree
“And this is exactly what a child should be doing for the first few years. He should be getting familiar with the real things in his own environment. Some day he will read about things he can’t see; how will he conceive of them without the knowledge of common objects in his experience to relate them to? Some day he will reflect contemplate, reason. What will he have to think about without a file of knowledge collected and stored in his memory?”
Charlotte Mason, volume 1 page 66
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2 comments:

  1. Melinda LoustalotJuly 31, 2008 at 6:06 AM

    I think Nature Study is even MORE important today than in CM's time. Today many people live lives completely separate from their own natural surroundings and some don't know enough about the natural world to even be interested. When my 2 older kids were in public school (in our days before homeschooling)I remember handing out orange halves after their "fun run" and having more than 1/2 the kids tell me they didn't like lemons! And these were 5th graders! These kids couldn't tell the difference between 2 very common fruits.

    Is nature study old-fashioned, well maybe (and that's a plus for me) but is it outdated? No way!

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  2. AnonymousJuly 31, 2008 at 1:43 PM

    I agree!
    My son has been spending time observing his newly found snake.
    Each time he finds something, he is learning from it. I believe there is so much to be learned by observing nature.

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