Charlotte Mason Nature Study in this Digital Age

Nature study in this modern day of technology may not look exactly the same as it did during Charlotte Mason’s time. How do we know which tools to use, and which to skip? Consider this a mini-FAQs as we jump into a year of nature study! 

Charlotte Mason Nature Study and Technology

Let’s take a look at some of the most useful (and sometimes detrimental) tools of technology to aid our study of nature.

1. Can we take photos? 

Sure! 

In Charlotte Mason nature study, we include what we call nature journaling, where you draw, sketch, or paint the things you find in nature. Because we live in the digital age, it’s a good idea to take pictures using our phones (or even DSLR cameras), but they do not in any way replace the actual act of using pen and paper to record our observations. We recommend you to use these digital tools as a way to record your findings especially for fast-moving creatures like birds and butterflies, or even slow-moving ones like insects and caterpillars. But after you or your child takes the photo, we recommend still going for the actual act of nature journaling. This is why we may include smartphones or cameras in our list of resources needed, but know that these can be optional. 

We actually have plenty of precedents of naturalists who took photographs of the objects they’re studying. One prime example is the naturalist Gene Stratton-Porter, author of several classic novels set in the out-of-doors (such as “Freckles”), who was also a photographer and illustrator of natural history books. 

2. Can we just watch these things on YouTube? 

Sorry, watching videos may be educational by all means, but it’s not a replacement for actually encountering nature as Miss Mason described nature study. Feel free to supplement with nature videos, but it’s a poor substitute for the true joy and learning that happens when we expose our kids (and ourselves!) to nature! Not only are they getting their science foundation down, you’re also doing wonders for their mental health! 🙂 

3. Do we really need field guides? We can just Google, right? 

For nature study, we recommend having field guides in your arsenal. However, we understand that it’s not always easy to find the different field guides for all the types of nature things we want to study. As such, we will include a list of guides that we have found useful ourselves, and we suggest you use your own discretion as to which books you will be able to buy, which ones apply to where you are in the Philippines, and which to skip for now. 

Check out this quote that explains why we need field guides, especially when we’re just getting started: 

For the first you will need the how-to-know books—these while you are getting acquainted; but soon acquaintance grows into friendship. You are done naming things. The meaning of things now begin to come home to you. Nature is taking you slowly back to herself. Companionship has begun. 

~from Chapter 2, The Lay of the Land by Dallas Lore Sharp

4. We can use the Internet, right?  

We use the Internet as a helpful tool but not as a crutch nor a replacement for nature study. For example, we can (and do!) use Google to help us identify, for example, a bird or a caterpillar we find. But before we run to do a search, we encourage our children to make careful observations, for example, of the shape, color, or habits of whatever creature we’re observing. 

For newbie nature students, we can use Google to help us identify the creature; the more we grow in the knowledge of nature, we encourage our children to make hypotheses: for example, does this bird’s beak look like the one on the kingfisher we saw last week, or does it look more like a sparrow’s? These kinds of questions help us identify what kind of bird it can be even before we hit Search on our phones. 

Some homeschoolers use apps that can identify flora and fauna using pictures. Feel free to use them.

Using Technology for Nature Study

To sum it up, we personally believe that technology can be helpful, as long as they don’t replace the actual experience of being out in nature. The Internet and digital photography are especially helpful in recording and identifying what we find, but be mindful that your children don’t use them in lieu of actually thinking and analyzing before confirming their hypotheses of what their chosen subject might be.