This course has been a universal favorite with all four of my older kids, different as they all were. Mother of Divine Grace's courses are designed to prepare the student for a Great Books college like Thomas Aquinas College. Now that two of my older children have gone through the freshman "Lab" class at TAC, I can see how the course prepared them for the type of thing they end up doing there.
Here are the Laboratory books read in the Freshman year at TAC (like you really care, but if I'm going to write out book notes, I'm going to do it thoroughly):
| Aristotle | Parts of Animals |
| DeKoninck | The Lifeless World of Biology |
| Fabre | Souvenirs Entomologiques |
| Galen | On the Natural Faculties |
| Harvey | On the Motion of the Heart and Blood, On Animal Generation |
| Linnaeus | Systema Naturae |
| Pascal | On the Equilibrium of Liquids |
| Archimedes | On Floating Bodies |
| Mendel | Plant Hybridization |
| various authors | Scientific papers of Driesch, Gould, Marler, Tinbergen, Goethe, Virchow, von Frisch, et alia |
| Measurements Manual |
They read these books and discuss them in class and also do two independent projects. The first is a taxonomy project in the first semester. They are supposed to collect bugs and classify them using their own system. It's always fun to visit TAC in the fall on weekends and see freshmen with butterfly nets running around. It's like a yearly rite of passage. My daughter found a spectacular praying mantis. It had a wasp in each (claw??) and was eating the head off of one. You think that's gruesome? Well, to my very feminine daughter it was fascinating. Anyway, it' was REAL, as we used to say in my college days, which probably seriously dates me!
The second project is very similar to the one in the NH syllabus. You are supposed to devise and execute your own observation project, on animal behavior, testing out a question you have developed, and do a report and presentation. My son and daughter both love ants so they both developed questions concerning ant behavior. Other students studied moths, hamsters, and so on.
So, back to Natural History. My science system with my high schoolers in general is to take 4-5 years to do 3 standard science courses. .... biology, chemistry, physics (I wrote a bit about it here). This leaves quite a bit of time to supplement in between with my own science agenda, which is reading living books and interacting with the natural environment (ie spending time outdoors), and so the NH syllabus is easy to plug in with biology coursework. If you wonder about the "five" years, I usually start high school science in 8th grade. If the kid isn't ready to tackle a textbook, we can just mostly focus on the NH course and on other "living books" using choices from Ambleside and from MacBeth's High School Science page. All the books we have gotten from these sites have been winners.
The Natural History syllabus is designed for 3 days a week, 32 weeks in the year.
For the first 12 weeks the student reads King Solomon's Ring by Konrad Lorenz and Fabre's Book of Insects. There is a day by day breakdown, and study questions are included in the syllabus. The student is asked to take notes and think about the methods the scientists are using in the books. The student is also asked to keep a nature notebook (more details in the syllabus) and start thinking of ideas for the field project. My kids have varied in how strictly they have kept the notebook but they usually enjoy doing it at least informally. (They don't generally do the field project, by the way, partly because of the biology commitment.)
For weeks 12 to 20 the student reads Nature Drawing: A Tool for Learning and does exercises based on that book and on the seasons.
For weeks 20- 30, the student works on the project he has designed and proposed in the earlier part of the course. During the last three weeks he writes it up, summarizing the questions he asked, the planned data gathering, what actually happened and how the questions were answered as a result.
There are more book suggestions for further reading in the syllabus bibliography, and various practical teaching helps. I really like Laura Berquist's approach in general -- she keeps it simple and linear, with plenty of room in the margins of her syllabi to flex and change details. Generally speaking, the high school literature-based syllabi have been winners in our family.
This is a very "liberal" course -- by that, I mean that it is the opposite of mechanical and merely utilitarian or vocational. I believe that Aristotle defines liberal education as that which helps the student use his leisure well. I've found that this syllabus opens doors to further interest in and exploration of the natural world through the years and into adult life. It complements our National Forest environment very well. My children usually go from this course to reading much more extensively in some area of interest -- several have loved Journey to the Ants (which we acquired because of MacBeth's Opinion), a couple read several of John Muir's books (since we live in his territory and see many of the things he describes) and one started collecting the works of Donald Culross Peattie.
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