The Study of Astronomy: Nature Study In Our Charlotte Mason Homeschool

For the last two terms my 4th grader, preschooler and I have been studying the night skies as our nature study for Ambleside online.

Nature study is a little bit different from the other area of natural education in our home, nature walks, and journaling. Nature journaling involves intentionally documenting things we’ve personally observed in nature. Nature study is when we choose one area of the natural world and spend time focusing on it. Ambleside gives nature study suggestions with little recommendation on how to implement the study. This provides a lot of freedom for parents to choose how they want to move forward in the term.

Freedom is something I do well in our homeschool. To go with our two terms of nature study I used a variety of resources.

Books:
Find the Constellations by H.A. Rey: I loved using this book. It gave such a fantastic overview of the various constellations and different stories. We paired this book with written and oral narrations.

What Miss Mitchell Saw by Hayley Barrett
Mae Among the Stars by Roda Ahmed
Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 by Brian Floca
One Giant Leap by Robert Burleigh
Curiosity: The Story of the Mars Rover by Markus Motum
Papa Put a Man on the Moon by Kristy Dempsey
See it With A Small Telescope by Will Kalif

Independent Readings:
Hidden Figures Young Readers’ Edition by Margot Lee Shetterly
A Rover’s Story by Jasmine Warga

Folk Lore Read Aloud:
They Dance in the Sky: Native American Star Myths by Ray A Williamson : This book was included in A Mother’s Education Winter and I loved it so much that I included it in our morning time readings. This book takes commonly know constellations and shares the various legends of Indigenous Americans.

Books for Mothers:
Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly
The Astronaut Wives Club by Lily Koppel
Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Comstock

Night Time Lantern Walk

Nature Journaling:
For nature journaling we spent time observing the sky and documenting the constellations we saw. We also used a Colorado Star Map specific to the winter skies. We plan to make a star map for each season this year. We also brought out our telescope to get a closer look at things.

Crafts:

Are we tiptoeing into a unit study, perhaps? I think once we add handicraft to the conversation we might be. Alas, I’m a connection kind of homeschool mom and try and I might, I love a good unit study.

Constellation Embroidery:
I gave each child an embroidery hoop and allowed them to watercolor the fabric. Each child picked a constellation and embroidered it on their hoop.
My 4 year old son represented the stars with buttons and glued them on. He used a back stitch for the lines. My 10 year old used a back stitch and straight stitch for her project.

Moon Phase Rocks:

This project was mostly for my 4 year old son. We painted the moon phases on the rocks and he was able to use them as manipulatives for learning the phases of the moon.

Legos:

Every year my husband buys a lego set to work on in the winter with the kids. This year he took advantage of our science and they have been building the Discover Rocket.

Field Trips:

We also took a field trip to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science to visit the Exploration Space area. On one of our visits they had scientists doing a presentation and my daughter was able to find out why Pluto isn’t a planet. (But she won’t admit it)

Science Units:

In addition to all of the nature study we’ve done, we also included Astronomy Level 1 by Pandia Press. While it was fun to work on, it was a little young for my 10 year old.

All in all, its been a beautiful year of discovery which we’ll end with a trip to Kennedy Space Center in a couple months.