The Faith of a Naturalist: a Book Post

Today is the anniversary of the publication of The Origin of the Species, by Charles Darwin.  As I regularly make it a practice to find good resources for my congregation and put them into calendars that mark dates like these, last month I checked out a bunch of Darwin books from the library.  Many I was already familiar with (One Beetle Too Many and The Humblebee Hunter are my favorite picture books, and I really like the YA novel Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith), but I also received a stack I had not read before and I had to choose just one as I didn't have time for them all.  My choice was a fortuitous one, and I am happy to say that Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent: The Importance of Everything and Other Lessons from Darwin's Lost Notebooks by Lyanda Lynn Haupt is a most fascinating book.

Unlike other books about Darwin that I have read, this book focuses on the inner journey and his growth as a naturalist through the daily writings he kept on his trip aboard the Beagle.  Haupt is herself a student of ornithology, so she admits to focusing on his work with birds mainly because that was the part that interested her the most, but also because she thinks birds are one of the more accessible areas of nature study for the general public.  As I also like to casually watch birds, I found myself agreeing with her.

While there is a great deal of interesting science and history here, in the end it wasn't the science or the history of the book that was the real take-away for me.  Haupt describes what she calls "the faith of a naturalist" and uses examples from Darwin and from her own life and studies as well as a few interviews she conducts that were in some way related to her topic.  She weaves between the historical and the modern, the scientific and the philosophical, and it was a lovely and thought-provoking progression.

A few quotes:

In our own lives as homespun naturalists, the moments we do manage to spend becoming educated by our native places can wend their way into our daily lives, making it more and more difficult to see ourselves as individuals, self-sufficient and cordoned off somehow from our humus-y ground.  We begin to see, rather, our lives as embodied, unseparate, inseparable, rushing forward with the whole of wild life.

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Yet it is here, in the spaces between what can be seen and what can be spoken, that the naturalist's faith often lies.  This is why it is called faith.  Intimacy, residence, patience, a sense of dwelling alongside wild nature, earthen insight, gratitude, affection, kindness, a kind of grace, a kind of joy - all of these unutterable things find a place in the naturalist's task.

Large Doses of the Outdoors

This year we found a wonderful program for my son to do, attending the "Environmental Connections Outdoor School" which is a once a week full day of nature study, free play, and exploration outdoors.  They meet in a local park, and they do have a picnic shelter with a roof but otherwise they are really outdoors all day, all year.

Yesterday was a rainy and blustery day, which my daughter and I spent indoors (at church and at home) and still felt the need to go out for steaming hot bowls of pho for lunch.  As we looked out the window at the rain, we said "poor buddy, he's probably all wet and miserable".

When I picked him up, however, the sight that met me was not a bunch of bedraggled children huddled under a picnic shelter.  Instead, the children were playing in a shelter they had built in the woods, playing tug of war with an ivy vine they found that was apparently indestructible, and sliding through mud puddles and pits.  Yes, my son was all wet and dirty, but he was decidedly Not Miserable.  In fact, he said he had the best day ever and couldn't wait to do it again.  He had spent the rainy day carving sticks, building a fort, dissecting owl pellets, hearing local history stories (about the first peoples of this land and the settlers who came later), and generally having a grand time. 

We all belong outside, but children especially should be outdoors.  The connection with nature, the survival and resiliency skills learned, the healthy benefits of fresh air and plenty of physical activity - these are precious and valuable aspects of outdoor education. 

I'm so glad that 20 % of my son's schooling time is now spent in this way!

Summer Time and the Learning is Outside

Summer has arrived, and we have moved a lot of our learning outside.  This week we've had a field trip with our homeschool group to a local nature sanctuary.

A little learning inside:



And then they took the kids on guided walks.



Of course, my little artist just kept trying to sit down and sketch (not nature - just "my imagination as inspired by being here")



We went to a party put on by my husband's employer over the weekend, which was marvelously family friendly: at a lake and they had a puppet show.



Fishing and Swimming kids!



Dancing with puppets!



And then we built a new chicken house and moved our baby chicks outdoors this week.



And my daughter had three days of camp in this amazing setting:



Naturalists teach the kids about the estuary and the sound, and they spend days out on the beach doing surveys of what they can find.  She counted crabs, dug for clams, and collected little fish in nets.  Every day I picked her up she was muddy and wet. :)

Living in the land of grey cloud cover as we do, we have to enjoy the summer while we can!

Happy Spring!

Happy First Day of Spring to you all!  I am soooo glad to welcome Spring back into my life.  The sun, the green, the flowers, the birds, the bees, the frogs are all most welcome.  The flies and fleas are less welcome but unavoidable and so while I do not roll out the welcome mat and sing for them, I am going to try and accept their place in the interdependent web of life.

We had a lovely nature walk earlier this week, and saw many signs of spring:







Now we have a lovely sunny day here (the forecast may say 50% chance of rain, but I choose to ignore that), and other than practicing musical instruments I am going to have the kids do their whole school day outdoors working in the garden.

Yay for Spring!

Taking a "Sun" Day

Some kids get Snow Days, but that doesn't make much sense for a homeschooling family - we're home snug anyway so we might as well get some learning done. :)

But ... a SUN day hasn't come around in a while in our neck of the woods.  And we couldn't possibly waste it sitting inside, no matter what fabulous books and studies we are currently engaged in.




I canceled normal school and we headed out!




Nature guides in hand, we saw a northern harrier and a great blue heron up close and personal, spotted what we think was an egret off in the distance, heard the loud geese and watched the ducks dive.  We also found a mass of garter snakes enjoying the sun as much as we were!




Plenty of time to catch back up on the book stuff tomorrow. :)

Nature Study - the Unplanned Subject Area

There are resources out there for doing Nature Study with your homeschool student.  We've tried some of them, and they were fun enough, useful enough.  But they didn't work out for us over the long-term, because the book/journal/websites invariably don't reflect what is actually happening in our backyards, on the trails we hike, or out our windows.


(We encountered a whole bunch of kinglets on a recent hike.  They almost seemed to want to keep pace with us as we walked.)

So now I don't really plan nature study in advance anymore.  The only "plan" we really need comes down to:

1.  Set up observation stations meant to attract something.  Mostly, this means bird-feeders.  It can also mean putting out bat boxes, etc.

2.  Get the kids set-up with: guidebooks, cameras, binoculars, magnifying glasses, a flower press.

3.  Regularly spend time outdoors.  In the yard.  In the park.  Hiking.  On the water.

4.  When you are out and about, be observant.

That's about it, and it's working for us. :)


(Outside my kitchen window I have five birdfeeders.)

That said, if you want to do something less casual than we do, I'm incredibly impressed with The Handbook of Nature Study.  Barb McCoy has some great ideas and resources, and you should check it out if you are a homeschooling parent.  Let's get all the kids outside more, and in touch with nature!

How the Walking is Going

So you might remember that I (without really meaning to) laid down a new walking challenge for the kids.  The original threat intent was to hike Every Day.

Every Day is not possible, sadly.  There are so many days that are already overfull with Stuff To Do, or days when Someone Is Sick, or days when The Weather Sucks.

But we have managed to do at least one hike a week, and it's been good.

There has been a simple walk around the lake, with a quick sighting of an invasive species, the nutria:



And a quick hike on a loop trail in the city that provokes the question "what is that stuff growing on these sticks?" (really, if you know please tell me!)




There have been extremely cold hikes where we had to walk fast just to keep warm.



And hikes where a sign at the trailhead warning of a cougar sighting spooked my daughter out and made her jump at every rustling fern the whole way.

There have been many opportunities to learn more about our local ecosystems and do some nature study.




We even managed to do one of our hikes so quietly that a pileated woodpecker flew right up to us before it saw us and swerved.  The loud beats of its wings were startling in the quiet forest.



And the kids are impressing me.  They really didn't want to do this, and they were not good walkers.  Now, they have both developed better attitudes about it, become more interested in what there is to be seen along the way, and have better stamina.  This time together can be a great chance to talk, hold hands, indulge in imaginative storytelling about the landscape around us, and just be present to our own bodies and the nature around us without the distractions of toys, entertainment, books, etc or the self-consciousness that comes from being in society.




Walking is one of my new favorite things!

An Annual Field Trip

Yesterday we made it out on a field trip we do once a year, to see the salmon run on a local creek, complete with docents who help us figure out what we are seeing.





Underwater cameras helped them see some cool salmon action, too.

 

A fun fall tradition for us. :)

Unplanned Pond Studies

 A clever "fish trap" the kids made themselves.  They caught fish (even a blue gill), a turtle, and were investigated by this snake.  All were released unharmed back into the pond.

 

We're just back from our visit to Arkansas, to remember and celebrate the life of my kids' Poppy.  Poppy and his wife lived/continue to live on 30 acres, with a pond, and the kids really love it there.  But they are far braver about the wildlife than I think I would be!  After seeing the snake pictured above almost go into their little fish trap they had built, they were still up for a swim!

A fun scavenger hunt idea

Yesterday the kids and I went to a fun scavenger hunt organized by a mom in our homeschool group.  Her really fun idea was to use egg cartons, and paint each well in the carton a different color.



Twelve different colors for the twelve wells in the carton.  Once the paint had dried, the kids all set out to find something that color on the beach.




For a few of the colors, my kids ended up picking up bits of trash.  A yellow straw bit for the yellow.  A bread bag tie for the white.  Others stuck with just rocks and were sifted carefully through the piles of rocks on the beach.




It really was lots of fun!  I'm going to copy this idea for a scavenger hunt at church, I think.

In My Kitchen

My kitchen has become the primary bird watching station in our house.  Bird guides belong on the bread machine, right?

Homeschool Field Trips: Nature Centers

I've been hearing about and seeing signs for this urban nature center in a nearby city, and last Friday it made the perfect stop after a work-related daytrip.  This nature center also featured a very cool playground surrounding an artificial pond, all made to be as natural as possible.  Super fun!

Our Week of Learning in Hawaii

We're just back from a trip to Hawaii that the kids and I took with my mom.  It was a Spring Break trip, to celebrate my mom's 60th birthday.  She hasn't gone on a vacation (other than trips to see her parents in Kansas) in so long we can't remember - it may have been 20 years!

But this trip was also a great educational experience:




We (mildly) hiked and saw some amazing things.






We toured a macadamia nut orchard and factory, and a coffee farm.  This is coffee being grown like wine grapes:



The coffee was good!



We were interested in all the cool birds, and bought some guide books to use throughout the week.  The botanical gardens were also really interesting and lovely.  The birds moved to fast for me to photograph, but the flowers stood still. :)



A submarine trip took us to see the marine life and the coral reefs.






There was interesting history to learn and see, and we're going to need to read more about the native Hawaiians.








The Imiloa planetarium in Hilo is amazing, there is also a rainforest zoo, and then there is the active volcano to see as well!