Are you searching for a homeschool science resource that encourages your child to step away from screens and explore God’s creation? Many homeschool parents struggle to find a classical Christian science curriculum that fosters curiosity and a love for the natural world. Exploring Insects with Uncle Paul provides a timeless solution.
Let’s examine how author Jean-Henri Fabre leads young learners on a journey of discovery, integrating classical learning methods with hands-on observation and engaging storytelling.
The Disconnect from Nature
“I think often of a wonderfully honest comment made by Paul, a fourth-grader from San Diego: “I like to play indoors better ‘cause that’s where all the outlets are.”
— Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv[1]
In 2005, Richard Louv’s international bestseller, Last Child in the Woods, alerted parents and educators to the rising decrease of contact children were having with the natural world, both in the home and the classroom. Citing multiple research findings, Louv convincingly described the harmful effects of technology on children’s social, emotional, and intellectual growth.
Louv concluded that plugged-in children were suffering from a new disorder described as “nature-deficit disorder.” Louv describes the results as “a diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, conditions of obesity, and higher rates of emotional and physical illness.”[2] In the same article, he also cites that the disconnect with nature results in an “epidemic of inactivity,” and a “devaluing of independent play.” Children who have little connection with the natural world also fail to see the need for stewardship and show little interest in environmental issues.
Louv urgently advocated for change, and within a few years, his book sparked an international movement to reconnect families and children with the natural world. This movement continues today in education, but the pull towards a virtual world remains strong for families. What can we do to resist this pull away from the natural world? How can we face this challenge? We need a timeless way of confronting these challenges, and the solution for homeschool science is a classical, Christian education.
To grow in our understanding of classical Christian education, we would benefit from a guide who both comprehends Creation’s purpose of revealing the truth, beauty, and goodness of God and who is capable of teaching these truths using time-honored classical skills. Fortunately for us, Jean-Henri Fabre qualifies.
Jean-Henri Fabre: A Guide for Young Naturalists
Jean-Henri Fabre, the renowned mid-19th century French entomologist and university instructor, would have agreed that Natural History is a book everyone should read, and students require time in nature to study nature. Instead of fighting against the pull of technology, Fabre’s battle was within the academic world. During Fabre’s time, education for children was limited to what he described as “university methods” that reduced learning about the natural world to a “tedious and useless study in which the letter [dry textbooks] ‘killed the life.’”[3]
Fabre became so passionate about introducing his students to God’s natural world that he wrote his own textbooks and published books for young children that inspired them to go outside and explore the natural world. Fabre’s biographer, C.V. Legros, described his pupils as an “eager crowd of listeners pressed to hear him.” His lectures were described as exquisitely woven harmonies.
“No one expounded a fact better than Fabre; no one explained it so fully and so clearly. No one could teach as he did, in a fashion so simple, so animated, so picturesque, and by methods so original.”[4]
Legros also describes Fabre’s passion for teaching young children about nature: “He [Fabre] was indeed convinced that even in early childhood it was possible for both boys and girls to learn and to love many subjects which had hitherto never been proposed and in particular that Natural History which to him was a book in which all the world might read . . .”[5]
Instead of reducing the study of science to a set of useless dry facts, Fabre was determined to make “the truths of science more fascinating. . . than fabrications of fiction.” [6] Drawing from his own childhood experiences, Fabre insisted that students spend time outside and make their own wonder-filled observations of God’s world.
Meet Uncle Paul: Science Through Storytelling
To inspire his students to study nature, Fabre wrote the children’s science book, The Story-Book of Science with the characters of Uncle Paul, a learned man of science who loved God’s world, Emile and Jules, his two young nephews, and Claire, his twelve-year-old niece. He wrote vividly animated stories of their adventures in the fields, mountains, and rivers around their French cottage. Revealing the extraordinary in the ordinary, Uncle Paul’s marvelous descriptions of the world have drawn many children and adults into the beauty and wonder of the natural world—a world just outside their own door.
A Classical, Christian Approach to Science
Classical Conversations recognized the value of Fabre’s vision and republished his stories in a three-volume set
- Exploring Insects with Uncle Paul
- Exploring the Heavens with Uncle Paul
- Exploring the Oceans with Uncle Paul
Along with weekly stories, these editions offer ways to integrate the Five Core Habits of grammar in nature study and how to lead science conversations with your children. Each volume corresponds with the homeschool science topics for Classical Conversations Foundations Curriculum science cycles and is designed to prepare families to become lifelong explorers of the natural world.
Exploring Insects with Uncle Paul: A Journey into God’s Creation
Let’s take time to explore the first volume of the set, Exploring Insects with Uncle Paul, which loosely corresponds to the Cycle 1 science topics of the Foundations program. In this volume, Uncle Paul models classical skills as he invites his readers to explore the mysterious and intricate world of insects. We witness the construction of subterranean cities built by the “noble” ant, observe the patterns of brilliant butterflies and learn the stages of their metamorphosis, marvel at the architecture of the epeira spider’s silky web, and discover the painful weaponry of bees and wasps.
While observing nature, Uncle Paul weaves in ancient stories. For example, the family observes the sacred beetle laboriously moving its “ball of provisions” across the pebbled ground. He tells the children the ancient Egyptian fable of the beetle. Other stories that go beyond the study of insects are included. Uncle Paul takes the children on adventures of calculating the age of ancient trees, experimenting with different types of metals, and learning how flax, cotton, wool, and silk are made.
You can build on your student’s interest in history by continuing the conversation in Ancient World Echos, a family read-aloud filled with myths, fables, and short stories.
The Five Core Habits in Action
A classical teacher, Uncle Paul instructs the children by naturally weaving in the Five Core Habits of grammar—Naming, Attending, Memorizing, Expressing, and Storytelling and questions from the Five Common Topics—definition, comparison, relationship, circumstance, and testimony.
Examples of these skills are found throughout the book. Let’s take time to observe how these skills bring the study of nature to life. In the chapter, “Butterflies,” Uncle Paul brings the children out into his garden on a spring day and exclaims:
“Oh, how beautiful! Oh, my goodness, how beautiful they are! There are some whose wings are barred with red on a garnet background; some bright blue with black circles; others are sulphur yellow with orange spots; again others are white fringed with gold-color. They have on the fore-head two fine horns, two antennae, sometimes fringed with aigrette, sometimes cut off like a tuft of feathers. Under the head, they have a proboscis, a sucker as fine as hair and twisted into a spiral. When they approach a flower, they untwist the proboscis and plunge it to the bottom of the corolla to drink a drop of honeyed liquor. Oh, how beautiful they are!”[7]
In this passage, Uncle Paul begins outside and helps the children attend to the details of the butterflies. He richly describes the various colors, textures, and shapes on each one. He names the parts of the butterfly’s head and describes how it drinks “a drop of honeyed liquor” from the flower’s corolla. Using precise descriptive words, he defines words like proboscis and explains clearly how it is used.
Later in the chapter, Uncle Paul helps the children recall what they remembered about the metamorphosis of the grub they had observed a week before. He encourages them to compare the grub’s metamorphosis to the metamorphosis of the cabbage caterpillar they see in the garden.
“You remember the lion of the plant-lice, the grub that eats the lice of the rosebush and, for weeks, without being able to satisfy itself, continues night and day its ferocious feasting. Well, this grub is a larva, that will change itself into a little lace-winged fly, the hemerobius, whose wings are of gauze and eyes of gold.”[8]
Uncle Paul describes the process of metamorphosis using several types of insects and then encourages the children to compare the similarities and differences. As they describe their own observations, Uncle Paul listens attentively and asks clarifying questions. For instance, when observing the green cabbage caterpillar, Uncle Paul tells the children to ask their neighbor, Jacques, about the “great pains’ he takes to protect his cabbage patch from this voracious insect. Using this example of circumstance, the children are prompted to see the relationship between the greedy behavior of the cabbage caterpillar and the result of a ruined cabbage patch. These connections help the children recall and memorize facts about the complex process of metamorphosis.
To stir their interest, Uncle Paul helps the children anticipate what they will learn by giving them hints. He expresses his ideas by drawing detailed diagrams. He asks them to imagine possible and impossible circumstances as they explore the solutions to unexplained insect behaviors.
Encountering Wonder: A Conversation with Creation
In the story “The Epeira’s Bridge,” Uncle Paul presents the problem of how the Epeira spider spins a web across a stream. He asks, “What will the little creature do? Put your heads together, children; I am waiting for your ideas.”[9] The children each present their proposed hypothesis, which leads to more questions! “The Epeira’s Bridge” concludes with the children marveling at the spider’s simple but ingenious solution. The conversation brings the children to a moment of wonder about their Creator.
“Where does it [epeira spider] get that science, Uncle?” asked Claire. “Animals have not reason. Then who teaches the epeira to build its suspension bridges?”
“No one, my dear child; it is born with this knowledge. It has it by instinct, the infallible inspiration of the Father of all things, who creates in the least of His creatures, for their preservation, ways of acting before which our reason is often confounded. . . .”[10]
In the end, Uncle Paul’s invitations to explore the world always point to God’s divine work. He reminds the children, “You will find in them [true and real stories] at the same time the marvelous which pleases so much at your age, and also the useful . . . Believe me, a true story is much more interesting than a tale in which ogres smell fresh blood and fairies change pumpkins into carriages and lizards into lackeys [or a video screen]. And could it be otherwise? Compared with the truth, fiction is but a pitiful trifle; for the former is the work of God, the latter the dream of man.”[11]
Fabre compares the value of stories told only to mindlessly entertain with the true, good, and beautiful stories that reveal God’s nature. Uncle Paul encourages the children to grow in their discernment and choose the better story. Just like Uncle Paul, we have opportunities to help our children grow in their recognition of the true, good, and beautiful.
An Invitation to Explore
Exploring Insects with Uncle Paul offers homeschool science as an invitation to step away from devices and toward God’s Creation, a world waiting at your doorstep. Unlike dry textbooks or superficial science programs, this book revives the wonder of nature study while cultivating curiosity, deepening understanding, and integrating faith with learning. This is what many homeschool parents seek in a classical Christian science curriculum.
Looking for more homeschool science resources? Check out our blogs, podcasts, and videos:
[1] Louv, Richard. “Gifts of Nature.” Last Child in the Woods, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, 2008, 10.
[2] Louv, Richard. “What Is Nature-Deficit Disorder? .” Richard Louv Blog Full Posts Atom 10, Richard Louv, 2019, richardlouv.com/blog/what-is-nature-deficit-disorder#:~:text=This%20expanding%20body%20of%20scientific%20evidence%20suggests,higher%20rates%20of%20emotional%20and%20physical%20illnesses.
[3] LaGros, G. V. “At Avignon.” Fabre, Poet of Science, The Century Company, New York, NY, 1913, 81.
[4] Ibid, 80
[5] Ibid, 81
[6] Meter, Stephanie B. “The Fairy Tale and the True Tale.” Exploring Insects with Uncle Paul, 1st ed., vol. 1, Classical Conversations MultiMedia, Southern Pines, NC, 2021, 31.
[7] Meter, Stephanie B. “The Butterflies.” Exploring Insects with Uncle Paul, 1st ed., vol. 1, Classical Conversations MultiMedia, Southern Pines, NC, 2021, 99.
[8] Meter, Stephanie B. “The Butterflies.” Exploring Insects with Uncle Paul, 1st ed., vol. 1, Classical Conversations MultiMedia, Southern Pines, NC, 2021, 100-101.
[9] Meter, Stephanie B. “The Epeira’s Bridge.” Exploring Insects with Uncle Paul, 1st ed., vol. 1, Classical Conversations MultiMedia, Southern Pines, NC, 2021, 122.
[10] Meter, Stephanie B. “The Epeira’s Bridge.” Exploring Insects with Uncle Paul, 1st ed., vol. 1, Classical Conversations MultiMedia, Southern Pines, NC, 2021, 124.
[11] Meter, Stephanie B. “The Fairy Tale and the True Story.” Exploring Insects with Uncle Paul, 1st ed., vol. 1, Classical Conversations MultiMedia, Southern Pines, NC, 2021, 31.
Written by:
