Being a good noticer

“…But listen: are you a good noticer?” Do you notice things well? I mean for instance, supposing you saw two cock starlings on an apple tree, and you only took one good look at them, would you be able to to tell one of them from the other is you saw them again the next day?"

"…that is what you call the powers of observation – noticing the small things about birds and animals: the way they walk and move their heads and twitch their whiskers and wiggle their tails. You have to notice all those little things if you want to learn animal language.”

Hugh Lofting: The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, part 1 chapter VIII.

In the afternoons, Rod and Jack have been reading the Voyages of Dr DoLittle by Hugh Lofting. The above is a quote, spoken by Polynesia, the good Doctor's companion parrot.

***

Yesterday, I was washing laundry, tidying the kitchen and preparing to head out to Flint to scrapbook with a witchy friend, Erin, who teaches at a local craft shop (you know, doing the "Mom" thing).

I became aware that my two beautiful Smiffy boys were scurrying about collecting an array of equipment -- a notebook, a camera, a sound recorder, and a collection bag.

"What's up?" I asked.

"We're going out 'noticing'", says Jack

"Noticing?"

"You have to be a good noticer to be a naturalist" explains Dad

"Ahh, I see" I said, in wonder.

Off they went. They spent several hours watching birds and trying to tape their songs, taking pictures and observing which trees each type of bird seemed to prefer.

When they ran out of birds, they started photographing the trees in our front yard and collecting fallen leaves to catalog them. They wanted to be able to notice, on future forays, which type of animal and bird like what kind of tree best.

Then they came in and we made leaf rubbings from each of the leaves and labeled them, while Dad uploaded the sound and photo files to begin a new online journal called "Jack's Noticing Page". (Not started yet, as far as I've heard.)

We then make a book of the pages, so Jack can easily keep track of what he has noticed.

While we were working, we noticed that red and yellow maples have slightly different shapes. We tried rubbing them in black so that the colours wouldn't be distracting.

Sure enough -- the yellow maple has much deeper lobes -- they *are* different!

And that is how literature acts as the core of an education -- painlessly begins our nature study and the beginning of scientific inquiry.

Such fun!!