science

While at Amelia's Garden in Westfield, MA, last weekend I really got into the patterns on the Coleus leaves, and figured I'd share some pics while talking about a related topic.

I spent yesterday afternoon (while my family attended a birthday party) reading through the Enki 1st Grade Nature Stories. These stories provide the bulk of the Science program for the Enki curriculum in the early years. Like other aspects of the Enki educational plan, there are some key differences between Enki's approach to science, and a standard "school-type" approach. And this difference is one of the primary reasons we chose to go with the Enki curriculum for our family.

The Enki approach strives to create an appreciation for the natural world and its processes, and guide the children in discovering their place in that world and those systems. As opposed to labeling, categorizing, and studying the myriad of pieces that comprise the natural world, the kids are allowed to explore the natural cycles and feel a part of them.

For instance, take the study of plants (given my photo theme for this post, I thinks it's a good example!). Rather than teaching the kids about leaf structure, photosynthesis, the carbon cycle, and the names and types of each plant, we instead read them stories about the Color Painters -- Little Red and Little Yellow, who carefully dab their paint here and there in the Spring, and Big Green who comes along after them and slathers everything with his wide paint brush, covering up Red and Yellows' delicate work. Red and Yellow get back to work during Summer, carefully dabbing their colors here and there amongst the greens of the grasses. In the Autumn, Green rushes around with his bucket to catch his color as it drips off the trees, revealing the original work of Red and Yellow on the leaves, which was there all the time.

There is plenty of time later in the children's development to learn the terms and specifics about the process of photosynthesis (for example, during 5th grade Botany, and 7th grade chemistry), but for right now we are encouraging the kids to EXPERIENCE the process rather than categorize it. This gives them a solid base from which to build more analytical learning as they become developmentally ready for it. And allows them to feel a part of the natural rhythms and processes of the world in which they live, which can only lead to a deeper understanding of and appreciation for science in all it's many aspects. I feel that this approach is especially important for kids like mine, who are such avid readers and are already, on their own, doing plenty of labeling and categorizing in their quest to know everything there is to know.

For our particular science curriculum, we will be reading one Nature Story per week on Friday evenings (around a campfire, or a fire in the fireplace). On Saturday mornings over breakfast, we'll recall the story (in much the way we do the Fairy Tales during our story work with them), and the kids will have time to paint or create with beeswax or clay, or some other form of artistic digestion of the story. At some point that weekend, we will take a family adventure to a location where they will have the opportunity to observe the process covered in the story -- for instance, with our above Color Painters example, we'll take a hike to an observation tower to view fall foliage. Or we'll rake leaves and jump in the piles. Or (more likely) both. And our morning walks will give the kids plenty of ongoing opportunities to observe and discover more about these processes. Finally, we will gather materials on our adventures to do nature crafts that tie in with the stories -- in the above example, we might collect leaves and do leaf rubbings.