Artist Study - John James Audubon

Image courtesy Great Modern Pictures

I'm learning so much being a homeschooling mother. The past weeks have been spent immersing myself in the writings of Charlotte Mason, doing much research online, and in general educating myself about nature study. It has been such a blessing to take this time to learn, for myself for my children. We are trying to develop units much as she would have. In doing so, I've seen my children's love of learning grow, so much that they are just seeing this as our way of life. God is good.

"Self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child's nature." ~Charlotte Mason

My first unit in earnest is one on the nineteenth century American artists, John James Audubon. Last week was technically spring break for us, but this gentle study didn't seem like "school". A study of John James Audubon seems appropriate for this time of year, with all of the many birds returning to our area, and so many of them visiting our feeders in the yard. It all started with this sweet book, A Nest for Celeste.

This is the story of a mouse, Celeste, and her sweet relationship with John James Audubon's young apprentice. This book has captured my children's attention from the very first paragraph, and the pencil illustrations are exquisite. If you are adding to your library, I would suggest it.

We supplemented with a free reading online, Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans, picking out the chapters about Audubon. Looking at pictures painted by Audubon along the way has also been integral to our study.

A bird viewing area was set up on our deck (I placed the feeder on the table, rather than hanging so they could see the birds better!), hopefully spurring the children to think about what Audubon was thinking when he observed and painted birds. At first we had times in the morning to sit and watch the birds, but over the next several days my children would come get me to show me birds they were observing during other times as well. I cannot tell you how happy I was!

Children should be encouraged to watch, patiently and quietly, until they learn something of the habits and history of bee, ant, wasp, spider, hairy caterpillar, dragon-fly, and whatever of larger growth comes in their way. ~Charlotte Mason

This week will include more Audubon resources, and notebooking about birds and the artist. If you study Audubon, your first stop should be this full unit, which includes everything you will need to know - a wonderful resource for free. We will continue to study and learn about Audubon for the next 6-8 weeks, immersing ourselves in a different painting or two each week.

What amazing gifts God has given us, if we just slow down to enjoy them.

*Linking up this week:

Spring Cleaning in our Learning Space

Spring break was declared this week at our house. We have been working hard since August with not much of a break (even our vacation included a few school days). Why is it hard for me to just STOP school and leave the kids alone? Maybe because we have an attitude of learning these days that is difficult to just put up on a shelf. We have been reading this week, watching birds, and thinking about some fun unit studies for the spring. Tomorrow we will be going to a wonderful museum at Emory University in Atlanta that has a collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts.

Last summer I blogged about our schoolroom. If you forgot, click here. I love having the space for storing all of our resources, but to be quite honest, we spent most of our time downstairs in the kitchen. Crates of materials piled up downstairs and upstairs sometimes got neglected. Over the past week we've been organizing everything upstairs and I purchased a new shelving unit to house MORE books. I've also cleaned out lots of books we don't need for our home school association book sale in a few weeks.

Now, instead of each child having their own work table in the schoolroom, we have one table (for when they actually need to sit and work on something in that room), and put a shelving unit in the other table's place. These shelves have chapter books, readers, reference books, and read alouds we haven't gotten to just yet. I can also add more units to this if I need to, and they snap together easily.

I have bins of books (by subject) that I can rotate and put on top of the shelves:

When it's free reading time, there's always plenty to choose from.

I also love our bulletin board, which has our markable world map and all of the poems we are memorizing.

The room also a sofa and an entertainment center - so it serves as an upstairs family room on occasion. I love having this space, but I also know that a lot of learning occurs out of this space, too. It still feels good, however, to be more organized!

Have you been organizing this spring?