How to be observant

Observation is one of the cornerstones of any good scientific process. All good scientists know they need to look closely at things to work out how they work or notice minute changes if they're conducting an experiment. They have learnt how to be observant.

"Observation is essential in science. Scientists use observation to collect and record data, which enables them to construct and then test hypotheses and theories." (Science Learning Hub)

 
Today I'd like to share with you one way we've been fostering observance in our home education through natural sciences. Many children have a natural interest in the outdoors, in nature and animals. Fostering this interest and using it to encourage careful observation is an excellent way to encourage your children's scientific tendencies.

What this means for us is many different things. It may be spending time by the riverside or at the beach. It might be leaf collecting or painting tulips, going bird watching or star gazing. All these activities cultivate not only great observation skills but our children's sense of wonder. 

The activity I'd like to share today is botanical drawing. That sounds fancy but round here it mostly means taking time to draw, colour and paint plants and flowers. 

Supplies

• Nature journal or paper. We like water colour weight paper best either in notebooks or loose leafed. We also love water colour postcards. 
• Drawing pencils
• Coloured pencils or felt tip pens or watercolour paints. The latter are our favourites because we're big fans of botanical books and they're often illustrated with watercolours.*
• A frame or things to mark out a square (we used four barbecue skewers) 

 

Method 1 Nature Trail

1. Take turns to be the guide. The first guide leads everyone to a plant or flower of their choice.
2. Everyone draws the flower or plant. 
3. Take time to observe the details, the shapes of the leaves or petals. 
4. Add colour.
5. Once everyone has finished, the next guide leads them to a new flower or plant. 

Observing and drawing flora and fauna has been part of education for centuries. Keep your eyes peeled for examples in old books, on postcards and tea towels. Or in Cecily Mary Barker's delightful and accurate Flower Fairies Books.
 

This activity encourages children through art to explore flora and fauna. Drawing activates our observational skills in a different way to photography for example or using words. 

Method 2 Make a Scientific Record of a Designated Space

1. Someone picks a spot (on the grass, in the soil, on the forest floor...). Place your frame on the ground. 
2. Record what you can see in the frame in a drawing. 
3. Add colour if you wish.
4. This can be repeated in as many locations as you wish.

This activity is actually very similar to what botanists do out in the field. They make Plant Surveys. They do it to find out how many of a particular species is present in a particular place or to discover the distribution and populations of many plants in a particular place.

In our version the emphasis is on observing what's there and finding a way to record it. So far we haven't explored the idea of trying to tabulate this in a graph or table. 

To extend this activity, grid your frame so you can be even more precise about distribution and use graph paper to make an even more accurate representation. 

Be Observant Together  

Children of all ages can enjoy botanical drawing. The important thing is that whichever activity you pick to do, make sure you do it with your children. Seeing you observing and drawing is the best encouragement there is!

 
*Matt Sewell is one of our favourite illustrators. We love his gentle water colours which make the  birds seem so vivid.

Five Little Things : Colour and Promise

Spring is in the air here, the primroses are blooming, the weeping willows have leaves, the first blossom is on the trees and the beautiful yellow bells of the daffodils are covering the verges. It's great. That and the fact that I'm poring over paint charts and decorating books has me thinking about colour a lot and that's the inspiration for today's five little things. Promise? Well that's what I feel like spring is full of, the promise of sunshine and warm days and more time outdoors. I love this season because on certain days, it really does feel like anything is possible in this life.

Blossom on my knee

Drooping Daffodil

The Old Hortensias

Rock Plants

Warhol Daffodils

ththe

Coming Home and Kids Photography

We are back from our little trip and as always it's a mixed bag. Joy at being home and the inevitable chaos that always seems to accompany our return; unpacking, washing, the finding of homes for the new things the children have accumulated, the picking back up of activities and the hundred and one new projects floating around everyone's heads. Oh well, it is like all transitions I suppose, a little uncomfortable, somewhat frustrating but also quite enjoyable at times. 

I didn't really have a post planned this week with all this chaos. But looking through our photographs from our trip and just before I decided to share some shots from my apprentice photographers... 

Noah takes Lotta taking something

Noah's joy taking photos (by me)

In this learning experience we really only apply one rule which is to give them decent tools and show them the basics of how to use them. Their patience won't stand for anything else, this is definitely one skill they seek to master through a lot of practice. We do try to look through their many photographs with them afterwards to discuss things like not putting your fingers in front of the lens and how sometimes taking lots of pictures of the same thing isn't necessary - that's a hard one because as every photographer knows sometimes that is exactly how you get a good shot!

They both have small digital cameras; a Fujifilm Finepix which used to be ours for Noah (7) and a Coolpix S220 which we bought for them on sale and is a little broken for Lotta (4). Both have a viewer rather than a lens and that seems to work for them for now. The basics we teach them our to always attach the camera to their wrist so as not to drop it and where not to put their fingers - this latter hasn't always been successfully integrated particularly by Lotta but she is only 4 and the camera is small. I can see that for her one of the big kids cameras would be more adapted. Maya our oldest also uses the Fujifilm and occasionally takes over our Canon digital SLR with supervision. 

Without further ado, to the photos...

Lotta waiting for her Pony Quiriquou (by Noah)

Shooting the shooter (Noah)

Noah (by Lotta)

Things that interst me (Lotta)

Camera Man on the Run Action Shot (Noah)

Noah gets Arty

This last shot we retouched together in google photos cropping it slightly to the right to remove some grass and clean up the image and flushing it shades of blue. I was very impressed with the result. How do you handle photography and kids? What advice to do you give them and how free a rein?

Five Little Things : Surprises

We are travelling at the moment, visting friends and family. I like to have my camera with me on holiday and take shots of the things we see around us. Especially the surprises like this fantastic street art Maya and I stumbled across or the red sky last night predicting shepherd's delight and another beautiful sunny day this morning. Happy Sunday! We're off for a bit more strolling around taking pictures and hopefully a visit to St Etienne's museum of Art and Industry.

Unexpected Art

Another bird

Big Bird Watching

The Sky at Night

Night Sky through the Window

Five Little Things : Sculptures and Pottery

Maya and I began taking a sculpture/pottery class when we first moved here. This is our third year and since the beginning our house has slowly being filling up with our creations. Today I thought I'd share some of mine...

Copy of a statue from the Louvre

 

Lace print Vase

Raku Pot

Leaf Print Experiments

Coasters

Homeschool Files : Art and Artists - Matisse

Snails

As you may have gathered from many of my posts, we spend a lot of time crafting and drawing. This probably began because it's something I enjoy doing and the kids do too. It's also because I believe it's really important for people to have different ways of expressing themselves and art is one valuable form alongside, dance, music, talking about our feelings, writing and many others.

Recently we have been working on Matisse. It began when we decided to spend some time drawing bodies using our wooden artist's doll. After we'd done sketching over several days and sessions, I wanted to offer the children another way of representing bodies and I immediately thought of Matisse. Both his paintings and his later collages represent bodies beautifully in ways that reveal their underlying shapes and fill them with movement.

We began by looking at some Matisse pictures online. We talked a bit about the pictures and I shared a bit with the kids about Matisse particularly how he turned to collage when he got older and he couldn't paint anymore because of rheumatism. This led to a discussion about frustration and how you can deal with it before we got stuck into collaging.

Dancing man

I placed all our collage materials in the middle of the table. These include old magazines, newspaper, wrapping paper, speciality papers such as origami, tissue paper etc and painted paper, snippets of paper the children have stamped on, kraft paper etc. Basically anything that I think could possibly be interesting goes in the box (ok boxes now- shh). I also put out a pair of scissor each and a couple of glue sticks, everyone having their own tools makes for much less squabbling in our house.

I put the artist's doll back in the middle of the table and let one of the kids arrange his body the way they wanted. Maya decided to begin with a cat rather than a person, I worked on a man mirroring the artist doll's position. The youngest two decided they would just use the papers to do a collage and spent a lot of time with the magazines cutting out anything that interested them.

Man and his cat

For me the important thing about this sort of activity is that we're doing it together and that it is a proposition that the children can take up and run with as they wish. Quite often I find myself alone or just with one child at the beginning, but the fact that mum's doing it often means that by the time I've finished everyone has joined in and carries on long after I've moved on to getting the tea or running the hoover around. 

Pink Flamingo

I was really pleased with how my artwork turned out and the children's too. It's been a really fun project and one we're continuing with as you can see from the photos, using it to explore our experiences at Branféré Animal park. For the younger children collaging is a great activity for their fine motor skills and the littlest one also had fun hunting through magazines for specific colours or objects we named.

Giraffe

If you want to do this kind of art activity at home you'll need:

• collage materials 
• glue sticks
• A4 or bigger sheets of paper
• scissors

Remember anything can be collage material, you could even do the same as Matisse and make your own materials first by painting paper. You could also work on another artist. Copying great artists has always been a part of artistic training and is a great way to think about how art represents the world and to learn knew skill sets.