CM Blog Carnival - Handicrafts {vol.1}

Welcome to the Handicrafts edition of 

the Charlotte Mason blog carnival!

"The report and the Natural Science and Handicrafts taught by our ex-students during the past five years is most cheering and encouraging. Not one handicraft seems to have fallen through. There has not been time yet for our Leather-embossing, Repousse and Woodcarving to work their way, but Book-binding, Cardboard-Sloyd and Basket-making seem to have succeeded very well. With regard to sloyd work, the fact that it encourages children to invent and carry out models of their own speaks greatly in its favor. It is the inventive faculty in children we all wish to encourage and cultivate. The same may be said of Basket-making. Children soon begin to invent their own patterns, and if along with pretty designs we get careful and accurate work the educational value of these employments soon shows itself."  

Parent's Review article, Our Work

AmblesideOnline presents Handicrafts

Serena@CastingPearls presents Adventures in Soap Making.

Barb presents Handicrafts- Appropriate and Essential for High School?, saying, "This was a really fun post to put together for the carnival. I hope that it inspires other families to make handicrafts an essential part of their homeschooling plans. Our family has definitely seen the benefits."

Nadene presents How Handicrafts and Life Skills Become Great Assets, saying, "Handicraft and life skills provide so much more than a craft or project!"

Amanda presents Why Include Handicrafts in Your Homeschool?

Angela England presents 5 Educational Activities in Your Backyard | Blissfully Domestic





Sarah presents Don't Break The Charm!

Mountaineer Country presents Living the Charlotte Mason Lifestyle.

Lanaya presents Handicraft.

Catherine presents Handicrafts.

Penney Douglas presents Kids and Crowns.





Rachael presents Handicrafts - Sewing.

amy in peru presents Handi-crafty Kids.

Naomi presents Handcraft Fair

SimpyCharlotteMason has an series of posts on Homeschool Handicrafts

Here are some Parent's Review articles I found useful:
On Some Aspects of Slojd
The Value of Art Training and Manual Work

Along with the handicrafts CM mentioned in her books and mentioned above is sloyd and admittedly, I have no idea what it is, except that it has to do with paper and wood. I haven't had time to actually read the articles I googled that I'm about to share with you, so you can research it at your own pace :)

Free books on sloyd... whatever sloyd is ;) heheh.
Sloyd
Elementary Sloyd and Whittling
Paper Sloyd: a handbook for primary grades

Enjoy!

Please, as always, if you've posted on Handicrafts and would like to share your post, please feel free to link up in the comments!  :)

*Please Note: The next CM blog carnival will be in 4 weeks (7/26) - the Science of Relations.
 

**This concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of the charlotte mason blog carnival using our carnival submission form.

Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival: Nature Study (vol1)

Welcome to the Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival!  Nature Study. Volume One.

Nature study at the Grand Canyon. Studying the panorama, observing, sketching, etc.

Nature study as a subject is one which should be approached with great reverence, for in dealing with birds, animals, flower and all other forms of natural life, we are perhaps, nearer to the Creator than in any other branch of science; for the natural world is the expression of God's personality in a form that is within the reach of all of us to comprehend in some measure. And is not the natural world one of the greatest proofs that there is a God?
The secret of having reverence in all branches of Nature Study lies in reverence for Life in any shape or form. In speaking of this reverence for Life, Miss Mason says, "Reverence for Life as a wonderful and awful gift which a ruthless child may destroy but never can restore, is a lesson of first importance to the child."   

PR Article, "The Charm of Nature Study"

The reading selections for this edition are as follows:

• CM series: Vol.1, pg43 - 93
• PR article: How to Best Study Nature

Mountain Chickadee, LaPine, OR

Barb presents Nature Study and Summer Travels - Four Steps to Prepare

Cindy West presents June's Creation Club | Our Journey Westward

Kris Correira presents Surprising Wealth of Living Nature Books

Penney Douglas presents How to Raise a Monarch from a Caterpillar

Grey Squirrel, LaPine, OR., with the biggest, fluffiest tail. ever.

Sarah presents Discovering Spring

Lanaya presents Ladie Green Eyes

Serena@CastingPearls presents Charlotte Mason and Nature Study

amy in peru presents Using Field Guides in Nature Study



Karyn Tripp presents Read Along- The Burgess Animal Book for Children, Chapter 1

Tricia Hodges presents Backyard Bunnies

Ann presents Spring Bird Study - Outdoor Hour Challenge Spring Series #3
and Harvest Moon by Hand: Outdoor Hour Challenge Spring Series #2 Weather Observations

Grace'n'Chaos presents Ready For The Originals saying, "This is an attempt at beginning to truly understand Charlotte Mason's philosophy of education and our continued journey down that path."

Angie in GA presents I am, I ought, I can, I will; therefore I am Free!

Thank you all for your contributions!  You make the carnival what it is!  You're the greatest!
Please make sure to comment on posts, you never know what encouragement might mean to someone!  

Our next run at the carnival will be on June 28th.

Handicrafts.

@ http://holistichomeschooler.blogspot.com

Suggested Reading:

CM Series. Volume 1, pg 316

PR Article...The Value of Art Training and Manual Work.

This concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of
the charlotte mason blog carnival using our carnival submission form.
(Please submit your post before 5pm Monday, June 27th)

Using Field Guides in Nature Study

Have you ever felt overwhelmed in the face of such a giant book like Handbook of Nature Study or other field guides not knowing where exactly to begin? They have SO much interesting information! How might we go about making them useful tools in education? Well, these books can be very helpful, but not for whom you might at first think. Have you considered that as teachers we may find scheduling readings for ourselves from the Handbook of Nature Study or other field guides extremely helpful? Did you ever think using them with the children could actually be a problem? To a certain degree we must take care not to use these kinds of books heavily with our children except perhaps for identification after a rich time outside of careful observation and the child's completion of an entry in the his/her nature notebook. Here's why:

It is possible to find all the information in books we could ever want on nature study. There are books which contain every observable, and unobservable fact for that matter, the realization of which certainly might rob us and our children of the initial wonder and resulting keen observation of aspects of nature we've never seen before. Identification books ought to be used by the teacher mommy for reference preferably before the nature study/walk and by the student only afterward, according to CM.

" All men are interested in Science - At former meeting of the British Association, the President lamented that the progress of science was greatly hindered by the fact that we no longer have field naturalists - close observers of Nature as she is. A literary journal made a lamentable remark thereupon. It is all written in books, said this journal, so we have no longer any need to go to Nature herself. Now the knowledge of Nature which we get out of books is not real knowledge; **the use of books is, to help the young student to verify facts he has already seen for himself. Let us, before all things, be Nature-lovers; intimate acquaintance with every natural object within his reach is the first, and possibly, the best part of a child's education.** "  Vol.2, p62

Personally, I aspire to become a nature field guide of sorts for my children, full of information, and yet able to wisely dole out precious gems in a provocative manner, or then refrain from doing so at just the right moment. :) I wish I'd grown up studying nature, or at least in close proximity to someone who had. But I didn't. I get to study now. I get out as often or more than my own children and am every bit as curious as they might be. I can't get enough of the field guides... I've got to have answers! Looking over the field guides helps 'ignorant' me to have some information in store for my wonder-full children when they have need of it. Of course on the same note, most of the time just staying out of their way is paramount!

Our Peru.

Yay!  It was SO much fun meeting many of you this last weekend at ChildlightUSA!  So much fun. Only this, I felt so much pressure from such a number of you who asked for pictures of what it is like in the jungle where we live!!

Well, that and after two months, I'm missing Peru.
If you click the picture link below you will be able to SEE a little bit of our Peru too.






Enjoy!