Charlotte Mason’s 20 Principles & Nature Study

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This episode explores a little more deeply Charlotte Mason's 20 Principles. I share more about the 1st and 12th Principles in our first segment on the TRUE: Children are Born Persons and Education is a Science of Relations. We touched on them last week with Rachel Lebowitz of A Charlotte Mason Plenary and today I will go into more detail about what those principles encompass and how to practice them in our classrooms and homes. I also introduce another great resource on the 20 Principles, a video recording by A Charlotte Mason Poetry, featuring Art Middlekauff. 

In our segments on the GOOD and BEAUTY, I am thrilled to chat with my homeschooling and realtor friend, Stephanie Newcomb, about Nature Study and Nature Journaling.

Some of our favorite nature resources are the following:

• The Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Comstock 
• Nature Anatomy by Julia Rothman
• The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady by Edith Holden
• The Nature Connection: An Outdoor Workbook for Kids, Families and Classrooms by Clare Walker Leslie
• The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling by John Muir Laws
• How to Teach Nature Journaling: Curiosity, Wonder, Attention by John Muir Laws and Emilie Lygren
• The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds by John Muir Laws
• Trees: National Audubon Society First Field Guide (and others in this series)
• Eyewitness Handbooks: Mushrooms (and others in this series)
• Audubon's Art and Nature edited by John Borneman
• Maria Sibylla Merian: 22 Pull-Out Posters
• Exploring Nature With Children by Raising Little Shoots
• @ninathidalgo --- Miniature Artist on Instagram

 But the people themselves begin to understand and to clamour for an education which shall qualify their children for life rather than for earning a living. As a matter of fact, it is the man who has read and thought on many subjects who is, with the necessary training, the most capable whether in handling tools, drawing plans, or keeping books. The more of a person we succeed in making a child, the better will he both fulfil his own life and serve society. -Charlotte Mason, Volume 6: A Philosophy of Education, p. 3

As soon as he gets words with which to communicate with us, a child lets us know what he thinks with surprising clearness and directness, that he sees with a closeness of observation that we have long ago lost, that he enjoys and that he sorrows with an intensity we have long ceased to experience, what he loves with an abandon and a confidence which, alas, we do not share, that he imagines with a fecundity no artist among us can approach, that he acquires intellectual knowledge and mechanical skill at a rate so amazing that, could the infant's rate of progress be kept up to manhood, he would surely appropriate the whole field of knowledge in a single lifetime.  - Essex Cholmondeley, The Story of Charlotte Mason, p. 201

But they are equals, first, because they work as colleagues, are equally involved in the conversation, equally eager and determined to find as much of the truth as they can. And they are equals beause the man treats the boy with exactly the respect that he would want an adult colleague to treat him, takes his thoughts, confusions, and questions as seriously as he would want another adult to take his own. Again, we can only envy all children who have such adults to talk to. - John Holt, How Children Learn, p. 97

Boys and girls must have time to invent episodes, carry on adventures, live heroic lives, lay sieges and carry forts, even if the fortress be an old armchair; and in these affairs the elders must neither meddle nor make . . . . the child who goes too much on crutches never learns to walk; he who is most played with by his elders has little power of inventing plays for himself; and so he misses that education which comes to him when allowed to go his own way . . . - Charlotte Mason, Volume 3: School Education, p. 37

Education is not simply a matter of aquiring information but of encountering knowledge and allowing it to change us. As we learn to care about various things -- things of the natural world or personal virtues usch as honesty -- our feelings will motivate us to act because of what we know. In this way, knowledge becomes virtue in a person's life. - Karen Glass, In Vital Harmony, p. 28

Let us take it to ourselves that great character comes out of great thoughts, and that great thoughts must be initiated by great thinkers; then we shall have a definite aim in education. Thinking and not doing is the source of character. - Charlotte Mason, Volume 3: A Philosophy of Education, p. 278

People who live in the country know the value of fresh air very well, and their children live out of doors, with intervals within for sleeping and eating. As to the latter, even country people do not make full use of their opportunities. On fine days when it is warm enough to sit out with wraps, why should not tea and breakfast, everything but a hot dinner, be served out of doors? For we are an overwrought generation, running to nerves as a cabbage runs to seed; and every hour spent in the open is a clear gain, tending to the increase of brain power and bodily vigour, and to the lengthening of life itself. They who know what it is to have fevered skin and throbbing brain deliciously soothed by the cool touch of the air are inclined to make a new rule of life, Never be within doors when you can rightly be without. (emphasis made by me)  - Charlotte Mason, Volume 1: Home Education, p. 42

 . . . give a child a single valuable idea, and you have done more for his education than if you had laid upon his mind the burden of bushels of information. - Charlotte Mason, Volume 1: Home Education, p. 174 

 1) What is one way you can demonstrate to your class or children that they are born persons and image-bearers of God? What new Principle can you focus on this week?

2) Buy yourself and your kids simple blank journals to start Nature Journaling in. Make sure the paper is thick enough to use watercolors if you want to use them. Try to do this once a week together. At the top of each entry record the Meta Data - date, location, weather, temperature. Then sketch out something you see, hear, smell or touch. Add color if you want. Lable the parts as best you can and take any pertinent measurements.