Our day “officially” begins at 10:00, kids are being dropped off and immediately climbing trees and jumping right into play that they had left a few days before.
For those looking to get an earlier start to their day we begin with what we call “morning meeting” from 9:30-10:00am.
The morning meeting sets our intention for the day. On the first and last week of the month we hold parent meetings simultaneously. This last Thursday a parent meeting was being held while I was holding the morning meeting under our large oak tree. There’s a cluster of trees that include both sycamore and oak. When there’s a light rain the cluster of trees typically keeps the area below dry. Not on Thursday… we were about 10 minutes in when we all had to get up and move ourselves underneath the structure over the picnic tables. We finished our morning meeting and rushed over to the creek bed to see if we had any water yet.
We will need a few more days of good rain before I suspect we will have any water in the creek. Everyone enjoyed the light rain while it lasted. At 10:15 I called for Form 1 by hooting like an owl. Once I start hooting others start as well and before long the class of owls have joined me. We usually begin our class under the large cluster of trees mentioned before but with the rain still falling we met under one of the park’s structures instead, keeping our books and other supplies dry. Once all together in our meeting place, I go through roll call saying hello to every child and then read a poem or two. Currently we are reading a variety of poems by Eugene Field while slowly memorizing “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod” and “The Night Wind.” After reading the poems we walk over to the bathrooms together, practicing “mental math” on the way there and back.
Once back to our shelter we read from “A Child’s History of the World” about Christopher Columbus’ explorations while the light sprinkle of rain continued. They were excited to hear that Columbus had also read and was inspired by Marco Polo’s adventures. We read Marco Polo on Tuesdays. After our reading and narrations we began on copywork, which is a sentence the students copy down from our reading. As they are copying the sentence down we talk about what punctuation is used and why, and what is capitalized. They are also practicing spelling as they are challenged to copy entire words at a time, rather than letter by letter. Some students will challenge themselves to write a few words at a time before looking back up at the sentence they are copying from.
As students finish their copywork we talk about who their favorite person or story from history has been so far, just as Columbus’ was Marco Polo. Some of their answers are Marco Polo, Joan of Arc, or all the stories from An Island Story. We write down Columbus in our Book of Centuries and note the time between Marco Polo and Columbus.
Some students then take advantage of having a few minutes to play while others are still finishing. It continues to sprinkle a bit while they climb trees or find hidden forts in this new area. Once the copywork has been cleaned up and put away we take out our Latin notebooks. We recorded two words on Thursday, patria and prope. Meaning “homeland” and “near.”
As they finish they have time once again to climb a tree before Mrs Brittany comes over to lead us in a guided nature drawing. She joins us every other Thursday and it’s always a highlight of the day!
Directly after art class we take out our lunches and eat together as a class. Once everyone has finished eating they are free to go play! They enjoy playing with all of the other forms at this time.
After lunch we head back to our meeting place and take out 50 Famous Stories and read the first half of Whittington and his Cat – Britain, 1350-1423. While reading, students mold with clay. After narrations we take to the creek once more! We sit down in the middle of the creek and vote on when we think it will fill up with water and then begin reading the last portion of Joan of Arc.
After narrations of Joan of Arc and a bit of debriefing of the entire story, we all picked up our things and took our back packs to the “good bye tree.” This is a little oak tree where we end our day. After putting our things under the oak tree we gather all the forms together, though on this day Form 2 and 3 did not join us because their art class was running late. We take a few minutes to share about our favorite parts of the day and go over any rules if the day proved we needed to be reminded of any. We then end with the month’s poem. This month is the second half of the “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.”
The students then are free to go home.
It is a beautiful thing to be present in nature for all of the seasons and all kinds of weather. Being outside consistently in the same environment is in itself its own teacher. Thursday was a wonderful reminder of that.
“We were all meant to be naturalists, each in his degree, and it is inexcusable to live in a world so full of the marvels of plant and animal life and to care for none of these things.” Charlotte Mason
Live Oak Education 
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