Exploring Nature With Children: Seed Week.

Last week I mentioned, I was going to begin incorporating some other curriculums and philosophies into our days. One of those is Exploring Nature with Children (ENWC). This is a year-long Charlotte Mason-inspired curriculum. Each week is centered around a nature theme and the curriculum gives parents/caregivers ideas and prompts of conversations, studies and works to do with children. It’s also designed to work with families who have children at different ages and it works as a core curriculum or a supplementary guide. I purchased this curriculum because I wanted to and these posts are not sponsored in any way.

I really like that the guide gives a lot of ideas of things to do around each week’s topic AND that I’m able to pick and choose the ones that work for us within the time we have in the day. 

This week was SEED WEEK. 

Last week when we visited the library I picked up some books with SEED week in mind. Here are some of the books we borrowed and have been reading to prepare and talk about seeds. (This post contains affiliate links at no cost to you, however, if you make a purchase I may earn a commission.)

A seed is sleepy // The dandelion seed // Seeds move // Miss Maple’s seeds // Because of an acorn // Seed to plant  // From seed to plant // A seed is the start

With the purchase of the curriculum comes a recommended book list but unfortunately our local library didn’t have most of the books on the list. So, I improvised. 🙂

So after reading about seeds all week, on Wednesday morning we went for our nature walk. It’s recommended that you pick a place, close to home, and visit it at least once a week to observe nature. I chose a nearby bike path because it has it all: woods, trails, a lake, flowers, wild animals (like swans, geese, turtles) PLUS parking, it’s stroller friendly (just in case) and it feels like a safe place which felt important to me. I did consider just making our nature spot our backyard (there’s a suggestion in the guide about making that happen) but ultimately decided that my girls would enjoy “going out”. There are also prompts in the guide of questions and “I wonder” statements to encourage your children to start talking about nature.

Another big part of the work is a nature journal, but based on Lola’s age/personality, I’ve omitted this right now. Maybe I’ll incorporate a journal into our walks at some point, but right now I just know I’d end up carrying the journal (and all the accessories.)

My favorite thing that Lola said during this time was that “it’s so windy” and when I asked her why she would say that (because I didn’t feel like it was very windy) she said “because look at the leaves! they are moving so much!” I hadn’t even noticed! 

We spent about 30 minutes walking, but saw a lot! It felt like a very successful outing.

A few hours later, I gathered some supplies and let Lola discover what seeds are and look like — up close! First I searched the fridge and found a bell pepper, a grape, a strawberry, an apple… and then we went outside and found seeds in nature — from different flowers, from a maple tree, an acorn and so on. I let Lola use a knife and cut up the fruits to find the seeds inside and then we compared them and noticed their differences. We collected our seeds in an old egg carton.

At the end, I set up a little watercolor painting station, and suggested she paint something she could see from her spot on the patio. She painted her swing and slide 🙂 — not exactly “nature” but we’ll get there!

All in all, we had so much fun during our first week. The curriculum didn’t feel rigid and it didn’t make me feel stressed — it gave us some direction while being outdoors but also felt really child-led. I am using this guide as well as another homeschool curriculum which I’ll share about in another post.