Today I welcome Suzie Agnew as a Guest Columnist. Suzie is one of the HOOville Ladies (the Homeschooling Only One message board).  Enjoy!

Before we started homeschooling, I was a big fan of Dr. Raymond Moore’s ideas of “better late than early.” Unfortunately, I forgot to give the book to my son to read so he didn’t get the message. Considering he was walking at 10 months and running by a year, it’s no wonder that we now home educate at his pace – fast and on-the-go.

When you homeschool an only child – and that ‘only’ happens to be a very, very energetic BOY – you find that you have to be creative to keep them engaged and not using the back of the couch as a launch pad during reading time. And when the gears in their minds are constantly spinning and they always want to learn more and do more, the gears in your head have to be going just as fast to keep a few steps ahead.

Our son started collecting rocks when he was just 12 months old. He would pick up pebbles and pieces of broken concrete on walks around our neighborhood, stuff them into his pocket, then deposit them in his mommy’s pretty flower vase next to the bathroom sink. I should have seen the writing on the wall then that my son would be into collecting all things natural, live bugs included.

One of my favorite books on home schooling is I Saw the Angel In the Marble by Chris & Ellyn Davis. I was just re-reading it the other day and noticed that he promoted keeping an aquarium set up, so that your child can bring in, identify and study any bug that they found. I wonder if that is where I got the idea and why our kitchen table now is ‘science central’ with three aquariums – one with two praying mantis eggs, one with tadpoles and one with crickets – oh, and one ant farm. Sometimes it is hard to sleep at night, thinking about all the ‘wildlife’ that I have allowed my son to bring into our home. But my son has learned an amazing amount by sitting and watching the wildlife – breakfast, lunch and dinner find him at the table, watching whatever he happens to have in an aquarium at the time.

We lived in this home for around six years before our son was born. Rather, I should say, I gardened at this house for six years before our son was born. There is a big difference – as one look at my overgrown “I wish I lived in England” garden clearly shows. At last count, I had around 150 antique rose bushes, plus anything and everything that will attract birds, hummingbirds or butterflies. When we announced that we were pregnant, many people told me that I would have to tear out my gardens to make room for a swing set. I brushed aside their comments and said that my ‘jungle’ was a better place to play than any swing set. Thankfully, our boy couldn’t agree more. He loves ‘adventuring’ in our garden, looking for insects, lizards and caterpillars. He loves having bird feeders and bird baths right outside the windows.

Having a garden at our fingertips has been wonderful for science experiments, such as tinting white flowers with water mixed with food coloring. If you want to get really adventuresome, try dying pink roses green. We keep a steady supply of dried and pressed botanicals on hand for craft projects, such as decorating bookmarks, making ‘leaf people’ or adding to homemade paper.

Have you ever had one of those ‘perfect’ homeschooling moments? Ours happened last fall. Unbeknownst to my son, I was getting ready for us to ‘row’ the book Owl Moon by Jane Yolen, using Five in a Row. Now, we had already read that book several times the previous year, but it had sat, unread, on our shelves for months by this point. (The problem with being a bibliophile, it is hard to actually read all the books you have.) I had gone out for a walk that night after supper. As I was approaching our house, my husband and son were going outside to star gaze. We all heard an owl at the same time. He was perched on the telephone pole right behind our neighbor’s home. My son right away said, “Mom, that is so neat. Now we don’t have to go out into the woods to find an owl like they did in that book. Do you remember that book? Can we go read it?” When I told him we were going to study that book, he was so excited and couldn’t wait until morning for school – we had to read the book that night at bedtime. To our son, reading the book was like finding an old friend. But it was so much more meaningful, reading it that night, with our owl’s calls fresh in our minds.

The next morning, we went for a nature walk – along the little trail beside our subdivision and out onto the old dead-end farm road behind our house. I was hoping to find an owl pellet in the wild, by the pole we spotted the owl on the night before. I actually already had some sterilized, store-bought owl pellets at home that we were going to dissect later in the day, but I thought finding one ‘in the wild’ would be more exciting. We never found any owl pellets, but we did find the shell of a deceased turtle.

That started a tradition of ours – at least once a week, we start our morning with a nature walk around our neighborhood and back out on that farm road. And now I know to take a large bag to carry home our ‘treasures’ in. (The morning we found the turtle shell, I only had a small baggie with me - for an anticipated owl pellet - so I carried the shell home with my bare hands. Shudder.)

We scrubbed the shell and bleached it, so that our son can touch it and play with it without worry of germs. The shell is now part of our ever-growing ‘nature collection,’ which includes seed pods, pine cones, leaves, bamboo stalks, sea shells and snail shells. And, of course, rocks.

It is fascinating to see our school work woven into our daily lives. This spring, our son found a brown and furry caterpillar in the garden and promptly started reciting the poem The Caterpillar by Christina Rossetti. (Thanks to poem memorization with First Language Lessons.) Yes, the caterpillar had to come into our home, where we pulled out the field guides to identify it. Once id’d, we put the caterpillar in a cage, along with his host food, and proceeded to watch him over the next few weeks ‘spin and die to live again a butterfly,’ just as the poem says.

We often do our school work outdoors, if the weather is accommodating. We have a secluded front yard, heavily shaded by a towering bur oak. I love to sit and read to my son while he pokes around the garden, looking for pillbugs. I just have to be careful, as our son loves to bring pillbugs into the house. Just the other day, I realized that our son was sitting at the school table with a pillbug in his right hand, doing his copywork with his left hand. (I am grateful that it was ‘just’ a pillbug and not a snake.)

I love to pack up our school books and ‘hit the road,’ even if we are just going to the local park. Last fall, we spent some time studying trees and what better place than a picnic table along our local nature trail. We were there a few days after a big storm so I had our son pick up a bag full of twigs. We took the twigs to a picnic table where he laid them out like tally marks and we worked on skip counting by 5’s to 100.

One of the most fun things we have done lately is make solar prints, with photosensitive paper. My son had the time of his life, hunting around the garden for interesting leaves and flowers to use. Who knew that a dandelion in “puff ball” stage could be flattened into a beautiful work of art?! Fennel, planted in the garden because it is a host plant for the swallowtail caterpillar, also looks fabulous as a solar print.

Whether you live in the city, suburbs or in a rural area, there are ample opportunities around for ‘breathing some fresh air’ into your homeschool journey. So grab a field guide, a magnifying loupe and a bug jar today and head for the great outdoors.

A few resources you might be interested in:

Pets in a Jar: Collecting and Caring for Small Wild Animals by Seymour Simon

Pocketful of Pinecones: Nature Study with the Gentle Art of Learning by Karen Andreola

My Nature Journal: A Personal Nature Guide for Young People by Andrienne Olmstead

Wild Days: Creating Discovery Journals by Karen Skidmore Rackliffe

A Pillbug Project: A Guide to Investigation by Robin Burnett

Picture books my son has enjoyed:

Owl Moon by Jane Yolen

Mary Ann by Betsy James

The Salamander Room by Anne Mazer

Rocks in his Head by Carol Otis Hurst

Oddhopper Opera: A Bug’s Garden of Verse by Kurt Cyrus