Ship Full o' Pirates

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If y’all want to follow Charlotte Mason’s advice about Nature Study and you don’t want to do any of the work, (I bet I have your attention now, don’t I?) you want to check this out.

Barb at Handbook of Nature Study has created The Outdoor Hour Challenge for all of us to use with our children.  So far she has 21 of them available for us on her site.  And she makes a new one every week.  And it’s free.  All we have to do is click on her site and follow the simple instructions she has laid out for us.

Now, you’re gonna need a copy of the Handbook of Nature Study, these are about $16 or $17 on Amazon OR you can use the one that is free online and Barb gives the link for that also.

And you’re gonna need at least one child, and some outdoors.  I’m goin’ out on a limb and thinkin’ you already have a child or two.  If not, talk to your hubby, very sweetly.  And the outdoors can be lots of places.  Start opening doors and you’ll probably find some.  I’m being snarky because I love how simple Barb has made this for us.

Here’s how our initial foray went this morning.  I sent some of the children outdoors to play.  After a pretty long while, The Squid came in to “tell on” The Princess, “She’s got some caterpillars that she took off of your parsley.  I told her to kill ‘em, but she said she’s gonna keep ‘em for pets! (insert huge, heavy, disconsolate sigh)”  While he was busy feigning dejection I was having a light bulb moment.  This is it!  This will be our start up project for Outdoor Hour Challenge #1.  So, at the risk of knocking The Squid over with a feather, I said, “Wait. lets put ‘em in a jar and watch ‘em.”

Now, I have to admit, we have done nature study before, a lot, just never with the kind of focus and organization that Barb has cooked up for us.

This is the kind of homeschooling I can get very excited about.  I get to do the fun stuff, like taking pictures of the children holding squirmy caterpillars.  And Barb does the part that I hate, like figuring out what would be good for next week and writing out the plan and instructions and all the thinkin’ part.  And it’s free!  Thanks Barb!

We gathered all of the pertinent books.  Billy Bones found some images on google and determined that what we have are Black Swallowtail caterpillars.

Pretty, huh?

The Princess was so excited she jumped for joy and grabbed me and kissed my face and hugged my neck.  Really, we do fun stuff all the time, but it usually doesn’t involve such beautiful butterflies.  This really works for me.

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