Naturalist Narration

One of the key components of a Charlotte Mason education is the practice of narration, which simply means retelling what you read in your own words, either orally or in writing.

Another aspect of education that Charlotte Mason emphasized is nature study. Each term we study one area of the natural world, such as trees, stars, or mammals. This term we studied amphibians for six weeks, but the amphibian section in The Handbook of Nature Study is rather short so I thought we’d simply finish early. Then I came across a book at the library that fills the gap perfectly. For our final six weeks of the year we are reading one chapter per week from Girls Who Looked Under Rocks: The Lives of Six Pioneering Naturalists.

This morning we read about Frances Hamerstrom and I thought she would make an interesting topic for a blog post. Then I thought, why don’t I write a written narration of the chapter? So here goes!

Frances Hamerstrom lived from 1907 until 1998. She grew up in a mansion in Massachusetts, where her mother expected her to be a proper young lady. She was given her own flowerbed but told that she mustn’t dig in it; that was the servants’ job. Once when her mother was hosting a tea party the maid poured water from a pitcher where Fran had collected some tadpoles from the pond! Because her mother was strict, Fran would sneak out of her bedroom to study the creatures she found in the dirt or make her own garden with poison ivy around it to keep other people away (since she was immune).

One day Fran met Frederick Hamerstrom at a ball and three days later he proposed. After they were married they moved to Wisconsin to work as naturalists. They lived in a run-down shack. Once when the pump froze a neighbour asked for kerosene and a rag. Since Fran had been taught that rags were dirty she had burned the rags she found in the shack and she didn’t want to give up her good work clothes, so she gave the neighbour the red velvet dress she had been wearing when she met Frederick. He soaked it in kerosene and lit it on fire to thaw the pump.

Before the Hamertroms’ work people thought that animals became extinct from over-hunting, but they showed that clearing land also had a negative effect on animals, such as prairie chickens.

Frederick and Fran had two children and they always had animals in the house. When they went to the movies they would use an empty shoe to trap the mice that came looking for spilled popcorn. They would take the mice home to feed the birds of prey they rescued.

After fifty-nine years of marriage Frederick died. Fran later explored the Amazon in a dugout canoe and traveled to Kenya. One day while she was there she was thinking about how her mother told her it was rude to brush one’s hair in public so she crawled into her tent to brush her hair. Then she said to herself, “I’m ninety years old and I don’t think this matters!” So she stood outside and brushed her long grey hair.

That’s what I remember! How about you? Have you tried writing a narration of something you’ve read?

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