The secret is out and I’m thrilled to be able to finally talk about it! Treehouse Schoolhouse has released their brand new Treehouse Nature Study: Autumn for pre-orders as of today! We will be using this guide as our “morning time” (ours isn’t always done in the morning) core and to assist in weaving in the beauty subjects like art, music, poetry, nature study, and handcrafts.
If you did A Connected Christmas or An Expectant Easter, this will be very similar in layout and organization. I loved so many things about those studies, and the idea of a whole themed season laid out for me is a dream come true! If you didn’t get a chance to participate in those, you can always jump in this year!
What Is Treehouse Nature Study?
“Treehouse Nature Study is a seasonal nature study curriculum designed with family-style learning in mind. It is a gentle guide meant to invite various ages to connect with each other and the world around them through living books, nature notebooking, hands-on projects, and beauty subjects such as poetry, picture study, and folk songs.
From preschool through upper middle school, it appeals to every age and is easily used with multiple ages at the same time. It would be a great fit for your preschool or kindergartener’s core curriculum or your whole family’s home education Morning Time and Nature Study. It also provides supplemental work for your children’s language arts through poetry memorization, recitation, copywork, and notebooking.” – Lyndsey, Treehouse Schoolhouse
Included Nature Study Themes in Autumn
Every week will focus on a different Autumn nature study theme. The topics are as follows:
- Apples
- Birds of Prey
- ️Autumn Equinox
- Arachnids
- Fungi
- Deciduous Trees
- Moon
- Pumpkins and Corn
- Stars
- Woodland Creatures
- Tracks and Scat (I know my kids will love this. ha!)
- Rocks, Minerals, Fossils
- Changing Leaves
What Does Each Week Include?
Each week is beautifully organized including:
- Lesson plan overviews with detailed material and book lists
- Lesson plan grids with daily lesson instructions including:
- Folk Songs
- Hand Rhymes
- Poetry
- Picture Study
- Nature Study Book Basket
- Nature Connection Activities (such as experiments, handcrafts, and nature notebooking)
- Folk song lyric sheets with coordinating Spotify links
- Hand rhyme lyric and hand motion sheets with coordinating YouTube videos
- Poetry display sheets with coordinating copywork
- Full color, high-resolution picture study display sheets (I love this feature!)
- Extensive booklists including fiction picture books, non-fiction picture books, and relevant reference pages from The Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock and the books in The Julia Rothman Collection
- Full-color, high-resolution educational display sheets using vintage illustrations (nature anatomy and life cycle posters, 3-part cards, charts, and more)
- Nature connection instructions (recipes, scavenger hunts, investigation worksheets, handcrafts, experiments, and more)
Other Helpful Elements Included
The 150-page curriculum also includes:
- 2021 Curriculum Calendar to follow along with holidays and others using the curriculum. This curriculum begins the first week of September.
- Detailed introduction section including tips on how to tailor the guide to different ages
- Printing and organizing instructions and tips
- Picture Study Guide with starter questions
- Nature Notebooking Guide
If you don’t already have a plan for this type of study in your homeschool, I would encourage you to check this out. There are no rules here either. You don’t have to do all the elements, or even all of them all the time. I’m sure there will be weeks where we will skip an element or two, and some weeks where we do allll the things! I will have to wait two months since we are starting back the first week of July, but in the meantime, I will post in the near future about how I plan to organize all of the pieces. Follow along on my Instagram to see more of that!