Eyes open, hands busy

Nature & Arts

Real attention is the heart of a fine education. A child who can sit with a leaf, hear a symphony, and recite a poem has learned to notice. Here is a year of it.

Nature year Artists and composers

Nature study

A year outdoors

Fifteen minutes of quiet looking a week, outdoors, in all weather.

Month	Study
September	Seeds and fruits: collect ten, sort them, draw them
October	Leaves: rubbings, pressing, naming five trees by their leaf
November	Birds at the feeder: keep a tally chart for a week
December	The night sky: the Moon's phases, drawn every clear night
January	Snow, ice, and water: melt and freeze experiments
February	Tree buds and bark: adopt one tree and visit it monthly
March	Weather: a daily weather chart with rain gauge and thermometer
April	Seeds sprouting: bean jar, draw the roots every two days
May	Insects and bees: a quiet ten minute watch, then a labeled drawing
June	Flowers: parts of a flower, press and label
July	Water life: pond or creek study, what lives in the water
August	Rocks and soil: collect, scratch test, and sort by color and hardness

The nature journal

One page a week, from age six or so: the date, the weather, a careful drawing, and a few labels.
Littles dictate one sentence; you write it in.
Older girls add a paragraph and the Latin name.
Pair each month with the season lessons: Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer.

Picture and music study

Artists and composers

One artist and one composer a season. Listen while you paint or during lunch.

Season	Artist	Look at	Composer	Listen to
Autumn	Vincent van Gogh	Sunflowers, The Starry Night, Wheatfield with Cypresses	Antonio Vivaldi	The Four Seasons
Winter	Johannes Vermeer	The Milkmaid, Girl with a Pearl Earring, The Little Street	Johann Sebastian Bach	Brandenburg Concertos, Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring
Spring	Claude Monet	Water Lilies, Poppy Field, Impression, Sunrise	Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart	Eine kleine Nachtmusik, The Magic Flute
Summer	Mary Cassatt	The Child's Bath, Mother and Child, Summertime	Camille Saint-Saens	The Carnival of the Animals

How to do picture study

Look at one painting quietly for two minutes.
Turn it over. The child describes everything she remembers.
Turn it back and look again for what was missed.
Paint your own in the same colors on Wednesday, watercolor day.

Poetry

Poems to learn by heart

A poem a fortnight, said every morning until it is known. Recite for Father at the Friday feast.

Littles: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star; Hey Diddle Diddle; Little Bo Peep; One, Two, Buckle My Shoe.
Kindergarten: Robert Louis Stevenson, My Shadow and The Swing; Christina Rossetti, Who Has Seen the Wind?
Early grades: A. A. Milne, Halfway Down; Rachel Field, Something Told the Wild Geese; Stevenson, Windy Nights.
Upper grades: Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening; Emily Dickinson, Hope is the thing with feathers; William Wordsworth, Daffodils; Psalm 23.

Handwork

The handwork ladder

Handwork builds the fingers, and the fingers build the mind. Each step comes when the last is easy.

Age 3 to 4: finger knitting, threading big beads, beeswax modeling
Age 5: sewing big running stitches on burlap, simple weaving on a card loom
Age 6: knitting with needles: a square for a doll blanket; peg dolls
Age 7: knitting a flute case or a small bag; crocheting a chain
Age 8: crochet a small pouch; hand sewing a pillow; wooden structures
Age 9 and up: knitting in the round, cross stitch, simple woodwork with real tools, embroidery