How I Created my own Nature Study Curriculum for Free!

 

If you've been in the homeschool circles long enough, you've heard of the Nature Anatomy books. We have used them with the Peaceful Preschool, as well as the Playful Pioneers. These books are beautifully illustrated and informative. As a Christian, I will note that the phrase 'millions of years' shows up a few times, but I can easily skip over or explain things from a Biblical worldview. 

I loved this set of books so much, that I wanted to use Nature Anatomy as a jumping off point to creating my own science Curriculum. When I decided that I wanted to use this book, I started out figuring out how I wanted the year to go. These would by my goals. I wanted the year to be: fun, interactive/hands on, informative, and where my 1st grader would understand. 

Where I began...

I searched Pinterest for others who had used this book as a curriculum and came across this blog post:

A Forgotten Joy, Nature Study with Nature Anatomy

I loved how she planned out her year and chose chapters based on season. Since we wouldn't be learning year 'round and I wanted to put a zoo and health unit in our year, I edited it to fit my schedule. Here is what the year looked like:

September: Chapter 1 Common Ground
October: Zoo Unit and Chapter 4 Take a Hike
November: Finish Chapter 4 Take a Hike
December: Health Unit using My First Body Book (find review here)
January: Chapter 2-Snowflakes and Moon Phases
February: Chapter 5 Creature Feature
March: Chapter 6 A little Bird told me+finish Chapter 2 Rainbows and storms
April: Chapter 3 Come Close (Bugs and flowers)
May: Do a month long unit study using the Ocean Anatomy book

Now to find books, videos and activities

Next I searched Pinterest for unit studies and activities based on each chapter. I wanted child friendly books and videos, hands on crafts and activities to help Little Man remember the things he had learned in the chapter. 

While searching, I came upon this free nature journal that went along with the chapters in Nature Anatomy! I chose just the pages that would be on Little Man's level, but still downloaded the entire thing, since we can use it again and again. 

I also found this Youtube channel with some great science videos for kids.

Check out my Pinterest board for more ideas!

Creating the Curriculum

Finally it was time to put it all together! I tried to have each section of the chapter include reading about it, a corresponding book or video, and an art project or other activity. Here is what the first chapter (month of September) looked like:

Week 1: Layers of the Earth
M:Read Layers of the Earth, and color worksheet from the free nature journal
T: Foam ball activity (see picture below: We colored with a marker and labeled the layers of the Earth)
W: Read Magic School Bus: Inside the Earth
Th: Layers of the earth pudding cup (we wound up not doing this. New mom brain forgot to put pudding on the list. We did some video watching instead, I believe)

Week 2:
M: Read Minerals and do Stalagmite mason jar experiment from Mason Jar Science book
T: Read the rock cycle and Take a nature hunt and search for rocks. Discuss what type of rock they are
W:Read Fossils and do fossil salt dough
Th:Watch rock videos mentioned in this blog post. 

Week 3:
M: Read Landforms
T: Playdoh Landforms
W: Watch video about landforms and look at pictures of the Grand Canyon
Th: Take a break (we went to my moms one day this week and were unable to complete our science. We moved things to the next week to finish up the chapter)

Week 4:
M: Read Landscapes
T: Watercolor Landscapes
W:Review-Look at Geology book 
Th: Nature walk-talk about what we've learned this month

This is what Chapter 1 looks like for us, and I'm hoping to continue the trend of watercolors, nature walks, Magic School Bus books, and kitchen science creations. I am also including the books I'm linking in my Amazon recommendations (links are affiliated) to supplement and use just to help reinforce what we are learning. I don't think my curriculum quite fits into any method, but I like the blend of hands on, and worksheets.  This past month only took me about 30 min or so to put together, once I had started the search and pinned my favorite activities. It was just a matter of blending each of the things I found into the week. 

I hope this inspires you, if you would like to put together your own science curriculum! I think you could easily do this to fit any science or nature book, and just make unit studies to fit what you would like to learn for a certain time frame. 

Next week, I'll be talking about how I created my own unit study history curriculum from a text book. Let me know if you have any questions!