As summer approaches, we are switching gears a bit and I am taking some inspiration from this woman:
Madame de Genlis (1746-1830) was a French writer and educator. She was born to a noble but impoverished Burgundian family. At the age of six, she was received as canoness into the noble chapter of Alix, near Lyons, and received the title Madame la Comtesse de Lancy. Interestingly, she was entirely home educated. Her skill at the harp and her wit earned her admiration in Paris.
She served as a governess to wealthy families, educating their children with zeal. She would see one of her students take the throne of France. She was a woman of the French Revolution, although she had to soon take refuge in Switzerland. Upon her return to France, she was well-received by Napolean Bonaparte who extended her a pension of 6,000 francs. She was a prolific writer (over 80 works), and anticipated many modern methods of education.
Like any good educator, she utilized the technology at hand to teach her young pupils. She utilized magic lantern slides to teach history. These were popular in the early 1800’s and were a precursor to today’s film and television. She also took her children on nature walks where they learned botany from a practical botanist. One way she encouraged children to learn to appreciate the variety of plants and their parts was through games, such as making dolls from flowers.
poppy
blades of grass
Take the side petals and bend them down, rolling them carefully into arms. Tie them at each end with a blade of grass. (Field poppies have four petals, so you will use one petal for each arm. Garden poppies may have eight, so you will use four for the skirt and two for each arm).
The carpel, or seed pod, serves as your doll’s head. The stamens will form a collar.
(directions taken from Hidden Stories in Plants by Anne Pellowski)
This site provides a somewhat simpler poppy doll as it does not have you make the doll’s arms.
Imagine spending the summer learning about botany by making toys out of plants.
homeschooling, homes school, education, teaching science, botany, dolls
FYI, review of a book on hollyhocks. It shows how to make a doll with them at the end and is a true story of a little slave girl. I loved it.
http://homeschoolnetc.blogspot.com/2008/12/priscilla-and-hollyhocks.html
Thank you! I had started collecting a whole bunch of nature crafts a long time ago, but sort of stopped that. I need to dig all of it out and finish up my little project.
Very interesting! Love the history… more than the botany LOL But I do remember making dolls out of corn husks as a child: my mother has some native American ancestry so we did this during our American indian studies
Can you imagine a collection of dolls and play things made from natural plant materials!
That would be cool! Most of the projects I have are little things that won’t last, but give a child something “to do” while playing outside.
Like Shawna, the botany isn’t my thing nearly as much as the history and just plain power of story — so your French femme made me think of our year learning with Eleanor of Aquitaine.
If you branch out in her direction, you might start with E.L. Konigsburg’s Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver.
Here’s a reader review that sounds like how we experienced it:
“. . .After reading this book, I was so inspired that I dressed as Eleanor of Aquitaine for Halloween; I was shocked and astonished to discover that she was far from a household name and I spent my entire evening of trick-or-treating explaining my costume. If more books for children were as historically accurate and entertaining as is Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver, I think more people would have recognized and appreciated my costume. E.L. Konigsburg writes some of the best children’s books I’ve ever read and they stand the test of time- I enjoy reading them now as much as I did then. By writing about an often ignored yet fascinating woman, Konisburg opened my eyes to a range of historical characters usually excluded in traditional history books. I highly recommend this book for any child, but especially for young girls who are looking for more female characters to shape their understanding of world history. “
Whether history or botany, I love anything that falls into “learning by the wayside.”