We walked in a bed of leaves. We enjoyed the several different paths and came by to the cabin to draw. As we were drawing, a lady with a little boy came by and exclaimed, "how creative". She was looking at Heather's nature journal and at all of us painting things in different places: Heather's son by the small pond, our girls on the deck, we two on the deck as well. Heather told the lady her son was her boy's age when we started our journals. I remember him being the youngest, and Heather chasing him around while the rest of us were painting for a bit longer.
Today we saw the fruits of this journey we started by faith and we continued supported by the readings on Charlotte Mason's work who encouraged children and their teachers to do frequent nature observation. It renders what Carol so eloquently wrote in her latest post, 'Cultivating a Scientific Habit of Mind'.
We painted roots of an unidentified tree and leaves. My oldest wrote about the day with Heather's wonderful fountain pen. We joked, and talked, and were quiet while painting.
We also remembered when Heather told her son he could draw anything he saw, and he ended up drawing tractors while filling his pockets with worms and dirt. We miss our friend Sarah, who moved to another part of Texas, with her four boys, two oldest and the twins she calls the "babbis". (Sarah will be coming to the conference in a few weeks.) Nature study with boys is wonderful; they find everything that is to be found, no matter how deep the hole, or how far up in the branches.
While painting, I used black for the shadow. Big mistake. Heather reminded me what I learned at the Charlotte Mason Texan Hill Country Retreat, the shadow of an object is done with the color of that object mixed with blue.
I'm always growing into everything life and learning brings to us. It's my intention to write more about our nature days, and any day in particular. I think I need to start a journal just for nature writings (my nature journal is more catered to painting, and I want one for nature observations, it suits me).