Today’s blog is a guest post from Lisa at This Pilgrim Life. Lisa is the founder of This Pilgrim Life and the author of the cookbook, Family Meals From Scratch in the Instant Pot. She also authored Treehouse Nature Study, Intermediate Years. A homeschooling mother of 5, she loves helping other busy moms simplify cooking for their families, adventuring with their kids, and finding joy and beauty in the everyday. Follow her blog and Instagram for helpful resources, healthy recipes, practical tips, and fun hacks! 

We have been homeschooling for many years and have used a variety of curricula in that time. As our family dynamics and needs have changed with children in elementary, middle, and high school, we have made adjustments and swaps in curriculum choices. Some we really enjoyed and others we simply tolerated, but nothing brought me as much joy as using Treehouse Nature Study.

Treehouse Nature Study gives us a way enjoy poetry, art, and beauty subjects with ease. I love the push to be more present and observant of the natural world around us in a purposeful way. I also love how we come together as a family through the curriculum. Treehouse Nature Study is one of my favorite choices because it is open-and-go and requires very little preparation. As a busy mom who also also works from home, this is very important to me.

Related: Six Core Values of Treehouse Nature Study

For many years we have used Treehouse Nature Study, Primary Years with all of my children, adapting the study for different ages and levels as we study together. This year, we will use both Treehouse Nature Study, Primary Years and Treehouse Nature Study, Intermediate Years. We will all study the same seasonal nature topic each week, as both curricula follow the same order of nature topics. My younger children will do the activities from Primary and my older children will use Intermediate for advanced language arts projects and hands-on science experiments. After years of doing nature study together, I couldn’t be more excited to expand our learning in this way.

In this blog post:

• Family-style learning
• Adapting Treehouse Nature Study for different ages
• Using Treehouse Nature Study, Primary Years for younger children 
• Using Treehouse Nature Study, Intermediate Years for older children
• Examples of family-style learning with Treehouse Nature Study

Family-style learning

The reason Treehouse Nature Study brings us so much joy is because we do it together as a family. With five children ranging from elementary to high school, my kids may be reading at different levels, learning different math concepts, and have varying writing abilities. However, none of that matters when we are learning about nature.

Learning about nature as a group bonds my children together and strengthens our family unit. Because we are all learning about trees or birds or mountain ranges, we naturally have common ideas to discuss. We get excited when we see examples of things we’ve learned about, and we can share that excitement with each other. We observe together, nature journal together, sing together, and so on. Each instance may be subtle and seemingly minute, but together they are creating a family culture my husband and I cherish.

Adapting Treehouse Nature Study for different ages

I want my children to see value in art, poetry, music, and nature. Appreciating beauty and nurturing a love of learning is something that has intrinsic value for all ages. It does not need to be complicated. It is simply meant to be enjoyed, and doing so as a family can be a beautiful experience.

How do we help our families enjoy all these things when we are gathering all ages around the table? Let me share a few ideas for keeping everyone interested and engaged at their own levels.

Using Treehouse Nature Study, Primary Years for younger children

Each lesson plan in Treehouse Nature Study, Primary Years includes a selection of living books, copywork exercises, opportunities for narration and notebooking, a folk song and hand rhyme, poetry, art study, and a hands-on activity. Here are some of my favorite ways to keep my younger children engaged and help them enjoy the work at their own level.

• Trace nature pages with a light board. When my children were 4- and 5-years-old, the loved doing this, in part because a light board is really cool. They generally trace the outline and then color the rest in.
• Provide coloring pages related to each week’s study. These can easily be found online (I just search “water cycle coloring page” for example and get innumerable options). Again, this helps them have something that resembles what we’re studying, and also gives them something to do while we read.
• Encourage the littles to practice narrating the small picture books we read. Just as simple as, “tell me something you heard.” It’s great, low-pressure practice, and really aids in strengthening recall and organizing thoughts.
• Provide simple quiet activities that younger children can do while you read aloud, or while their older siblings work on copywork or journaling. Keeping littles busy at the table is good because (1) your attention can remain in one place, and (2) they will pick up on things you’re reading or discussing simply by being present.
• Create a multi-sensory learning experience. Special snacks, songs, tactile activities, lessons out of doors, visits to related locations—the more layers of connection you can provide, the more meaningful the learning experience will be. For younger children especially, novelty and fun will go a long way. Even if they don’t remember a lot about spiders or what enables animals to hibernate all winter, they will have connections and memories that tell them that learning about it was enjoyable and significant.

Related: Using Treehouse Nature Study for Pre-K to Kindergarten and How We Use Treehouse Nature Study for Preschool and Early Elementary

Using Treehouse Nature Study, Intermediate Years for older children

Treehouse Nature Study, Intermediate Years follows the same format as Treehouse Nature Study, Primary Years with additions for older students like science experiments, advanced language arts assignments, new artwork and poetry, and more. This curriculum is designed for 4th-8th grade students and coordinates with the seasonal themes from Treehouse Nature Study, Primary Years to allow for family-style learning.

Each week of Treehouse Nature Study, Intermediate Years has a themed poem, picture study, language arts lessons, recipes, and scientific experiments. The daily lesson plans walk you through engaging with these subjects in a new way each day.

At the core of each week’s Language Arts lesson is an Illustrated Science Dictionary which your children will compile over the season. There are also prompts for creative writing and nature notebooking.

Here are ways to deepen your learning, depending on how naturally they fit with that week’s topic, or what you and your children feel like doing that week.

1. Use a large wall map or a map in their notebook to mark places each week: artist place of origin, geographic features, regional animals, etc. Use it to review map skills and learn their world.
2. Copy the entire poem each week. Memorize poems. Discuss elements of the poems.
3. Pick a facet of the week’s topic to learn more about, and have children present their findings to the family at the end of the week.
4. Do a more-involved hands-on project like build models, dioramas, conduct experiments (I like the book Maker’s Lab for easy projects, or simply a quick search online).
5. Create more detailed, or more varied, nature drawings on the week’s topic. Add written narrations to their nature drawings about what they learned.
6. Help younger children with activities and teach simple facts.
7. Read more about the artist and/or poet’s life, discuss the period in history in which they lived and how world events might have shaped their work, and look at or read additional pieces from their work.

Related: Picture Study in Your Homeschool: Why and How? and Sunflower Dissection Activity for Kids [Free Unit Study]

Examples of family-style learning with Treehouse Nature Study

In the week about weather, we used the poem to learn about homophones. We found them in the poem, watched a short video on homophones, then made a list of other examples we could think of. Below their copied poems, my older boys copied the definition of a homophone and recorded their favorite examples. Everyone then made different types of clouds with cotton balls, the older children labeling them on their papers.

When studying spiders, we made a snack version. It was a really fun snack to enjoy while observing a spider outside our window!

A simple light board is a great tool to help younger children still feel accomplished in their work, rather than discouraged at not being able to copy the nature pictures.

I hope this post gives you practical help in spanning a big age range with Treehouse Nature Study. It is not only possible to teach preschoolers alongside middle schoolers, it can also be fun and meaningful! How do you use Treehouse Nature Study for your family? Let us know in the comments below!

Try a FREE week of Treehouse Nature Study to see which is the best fit for you!