Donna Young

This page is about the book pictured below. If you have used this book, feel free to comment on it. Comments that have useful ideas on using this book would be most welcome. The description and link below are from christianbook.com. They have provided several pages from the book for viewing.

Handbook of Nature Study By Anna Botsford Comstock Witness the wonders of God’s creation with naturalist Comstock as your guide! From dandelions, toads, and fireflies, to robins, rocks, and weather, she takes you on a lively trek through the natural world, vividly describing the habits, habitats, and physical structures of common living and nonliving things. Includes study questions and black-and-white photographs. 887 pages, softcover from Cornell University.

. . .

At donnayoung.org - Book Archives - Handbook of Nature Study, I have a sample lesson from the book.

When I open and read the Handbook of Nature Study is does not fail to impress me. It is clear to me that Anna Botsford Comstock loved what she did. A few weeks ago when I was reading about aphids, I had several resources at my disposal; I had two encyclopedias: World Book and Britannica, I used Christian Liberty Nature Reader, Book 4, some gardening books and Handbook of Nature Study. They were all valuable resources, but the Nature Reader and the Handbook of Nature Study were written in an engaging style. The Handbook of Nature Study followed through with a “Method” and that included a list of observations that students could do with a magnifying glass and a leaf covered with aphids.

My suggestion regarding Handbook of Nature Study is that if you have the book or purchase one, then be certain to use it. It is big (887 pages) but do not let that discourage you from taking it from the shelf and reading parts of it to your children. The first 24 pages, Part I: The Teaching of Nature-Study, are especially for you, the teacher. It contains many topics that should be helpful to you in the teaching of nature.
Some of them are:

• What Nature Study Is
• What Nature Study Should do for the Child
• Nature-Study as a Help to Health
• What Nature Study Should do for theTeacher
• When and Why the Teacher Should say, “I don’t know!”
• Nature-Study, the Elixir of Youth
• Nature-Study as a Help in School Discipline
• Relation of Nature-Study to Science
• Nature-Study Not for Drill
• The Child Not Interested in Nature-Study
• When to Give the Lesson
• Length of the Lesson

This is 12 of the 34 topics. If you go to christianbook.com at Handbook of Nature Study and open the “Additional Views” link that is under the image of the book, go to the second page, which is the contents, you will see the rest of topics covered in the first 24 pages.

1. Nature Journal Printables
2. Lab Sheet Printables

. . .