Using Scientific Method in Nature Journals

[Hunter]

Should we be applying the scientific method to nature journals?

 

I found this article meant for younger children, but think it might be useful. Is there anything better?

 

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=639

Edited November 20, 2010 by Hunter

[lovinmomma]

:bigear:

[Nan in Mass]

The link says that the article isn't available. Do you have a different link?

I would be interested in reading it. I had my children keep two notebooks - a nature journal and a lab notebook. They put wonderings and observations and notes in the nature journal, and inventions and experiments in the lab notebook. My children's nature journals weren't very sophisticated. I think if they had been, there would have been more scientific method involved in them. A wondering, a guess, and then long term observations or trying things would certainly be close, even if it were written up more informally. I hope more people comment.

-Nan

[Tullia]

I wasn't able to read the article; saw an error message :glare:. I always made a distinction between my son's nature journal and has lab notebooks. There's probably no one right answer to this, but IMO the nature journal's best tie-in to science would be practice of foundational concepts such as observation followed by drawing/painting/photographing and supplemented by writing projects based on definition and division (Martin Cothran's Material Logic gives a good outline of the elements of definition and division.) I tend to think of nature journals as primarily descriptive--an outgrowth of the older concept of natural philosophy and associate the "scientific method" with modern operational science--investigations of specific hypotheses in the lab. However, there's no reason why general observations made while doing a nature journal couldn't be refined and incorporated into a scientific investigation.

[Nan in Mass]

So, I've been thinking about this. I guess I had my children use their nature journals as a springboard for their lab notebooks. Wonderings sometimes (hopefully) grew out of the informal observations that they recorded in their nature journals. The wonderings were occasionally restated as a guess as to the answer or a guess about the situation observed (as a formal hypothesis) and an experiment to test that hypothesis designed and carried out. Sometimes, the experiment was an exploratory one that just had a purpose, not a hypothesis. In that case, whether the experiment went into the nature journal or the lab notebook depended on whether the child did the experiment right away when he was "out in the field" with his nature journal or whether he thought about it afterwards. If it was written in the nature journal, it didn't tend to get written formally. The child tended to say something like, "When I tried to get closer, the squirrel ran away." rather than "Hypothesis: When I approach squirrels, they run away before I can touch them. Procedure: Approach 3 different squirrels 3 times each and record what happens. Conclusion: Inconclusive. Discussion: It was very hard to try touching the same squirrel three times because the first time I tried to touch each squirrel, it ran up a huge tree and I lost track of which squirrel was which." Or something like that.

-Nan

Edited November 19, 2010 by Nan in Mass

[Hunter]

I reposted the link. It looks like Ellen Booth church had a few versions of her "7 steps" articles.

[Tullia]

I reposted the link. It looks like Ellen Booth church had a few versions of her "7 steps" articles.

 

Interesting article; thank you for reposting. In answer to your original question, I think it would be appropriate to use the nature journal to explore the scientific method especially for high school students. One of things I most like about nature journals (other than the fun of going outside with drawing materials and magnifying glass) is that the journal can be used to refine and practice a whole range of skills from different subjects.

 

BTW, I looked (briefly) for similar articles aimed at older students, but didn't find anything. I think that the outline presented in the article could easily be tweaked for older students, though. Maybe the nature journal is regarded as something more suitable for younger students? If so, that's a shame. I do know that one of the biggest regrets of my son's high school years was that nature journal time tended to be crowded out. My son, who is now a college student, mentioned to me today that he's bought new software that allows him to scan drawings and manipulate them digitally. He wanted to know where I'd packed away his old journals and offered to show me how to work on my journal entries too. Nice idea; hope I can remember where I put them :confused:.

 

FWIW, some of the simpler assignments I liked to spin off from the nature journal:

 

Descriptive essays

Compare/Contrast essays

Collecting and preparing specimens for the microscope

Practice techniques learned in art

Compose music/lyrics/poetry

[Hunter]

I get so frustrated with finding high school level resources for science that use the scientific method for anything outside of a laboratory. Sigh!

[Hunter]

Hmmmm....I think I might have latched onto something. AP environmental science webpages.

 

Here is a goldfish experiment, that has started my brain working.

 

http://tnst.randolphcollege.edu/Jubilee/jubilee10/Gold%20Fish%20Lab%202010.pdf

[Nan in Mass]

Hunter - I finally had a chance to look at the materials you posted. I think you and I are trying to do the same thing and some of my past posts might be helpful because various people posted suggestions for me. My son is doing natural history this year (10th grade) and I am trying to use the year to get him comfortable with designing and writing up his own experiments (as well as writing about science and reading science at a more adult level). I'll get back to you, also, when I have more time.

-Nan

[Hunter]

Nan I am very interested in further discussion about this. If I'm gone from the forum for a bit, I'll be back. I might be suddenly offline for at least a few days, without any notice.

 

In the meantime I'll do a search for natural history posts.

[Nan in Mass]

Hunter, you are self-educating, right? If so, I think I can find you a list of the more interesting science posts, the non-laboratory, do this at home if you have the guts, ones. I suspect if you put that together with the various posts listing trade books about science, you would have more what you are looking for. I also remember a thread about nature journals that contained a link to a website where adults posted their nature journal pages. It was great! Have you read A Short History of Nearly Everything? It is written by the author of A Walk in the Woods and is very funny in spots. He wrote the book because he realized he knew practically nothing about science. In it, he sets out to figure it all out. I will try to find the threads for you when I have a minute.

By the way, I am trying to teach myself to do watercolours. My husband and I went through The Artist's Way a number of years ago and it definately changed our lives. And my children went through Draw Squad. One of the great triumphs of my homeschooling is that my 20yo transportation major sports-oriented son and my 16yo headed-for-engineering, strategy games oriented son draw for entertainment from time to time, and grab a pencil and draw whenever they have to explain something. I worked pretty hard to make that happen GRIN. Doing natural history instead of biology was part of my strategy.

-Nan

[Nan in Mass]

Here is a site with beautiful nature journal pages: http://www.creatingnaturejournals.com/

 

And here is a batch of threads about science, science labs, and other things:

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=188368&highlight=nature+journal

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=222091

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=213948

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=193372

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=197760

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=161255

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=149026

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148763 (the bits posted by Kareni)

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148123

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=140685 (ksva's posts have some about doing science)

http://charlottemason.tripod.com/biology.html

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=133459

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=76733

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=138019

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=137850

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=129321

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=126223

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=126580

http://www.birdwatchersdigest.com/site/funbirds/journal.aspx

 

There was someone here that was doing a naturalist program associated with Tom Brown for high school science. The program name began with a k (I think) but that is all I can remember about it. You might be interested in that.

 

My children did Mother of Divine Grace's natural history syllabus. That had a nice drawing book included. You might want to look at Creepy Crawlers and the Scientific Method. The first three or four pages of that has the best explaination I have seen of how the scientific method works. It discusses things like the null hypothesis and repetitions.

 

Here is something I wrote to a friend when I was trying to figure out how to structure science for my son this year:

 

Many scientists do a series of experiments. It is fairly easy to reproduce that cycle at home. First you explore something. (This is the part where your nature journal is important.) This might be a set of observations or it might be a set of experiments where you aren't trying to prove a hypothesis, just exploring the characteristics of something (so in the writeup, you have a purpose instead of a hypothesis). In the process of doing this, you might notice something has a particular characteristic or is connected to something else. For example, you might observe the sky for awhile and then notice that it seems like lightening happens only when there are clouds. Your next experiment might be a simple true/false one. In the example, your hypothesis might be, "Lightening happens only when there are clouds," and you might watch 100 instances of lightening to see whether there were clouds every time. Having established that, the next experiments work with how much, what type, etc. The data would most likely result in a table or a graph or a formula or some other correlation. In the lightening example, what sort of clouds, temperatures, and humidities are involved? The final step is writing a paper and publishing the information. This is not what one writes in one's lab notebook, nor a lab report, but is much more like a technical paper. This information is what people mean by "the scientific process" and is explained in the beginning of every high school science book, but in a more general way, not in a way that relates it directly to types of experiments and their write-ups. At least, I haven't found it written up that way. TWTM does a good job of getting started with this process, but then sort of cops out when it comes to high school and says to do a textbook. I'm not saying that textbooks aren't the most efficient way to absorb the large body of general knowledge and skills that one needs for science, but I think there needs to be something else as well. Too often, school science experiments are really just science activities, not experiments. Activities are good for training one to use the measuring equipment and to observe and to record, and are good for demonstrating the concepts, but I found it very misleading to have them called "experiments". It kept me from figuring out what a real experiment was until I was out of school. My youngest doesn't have this problem because he has watched every episode of Myth Busters he can find LOL. Unfortunately, his idea of a science experiment mostly involves breaking or exploding or crashing something expensive and testing the results with expensive equipment. I am having a terrible time getting him to come up with an experiment having to do with a kid's microscope and our lake water, or something equally benign. He thinks of things, but they are not at all sophisticated. I guess he is learning how difficult it can be to get any sort of reproducible results, though. I'm not being very successful. I can totally see why teachers don't do this in large classes. I don't have the experience to do it with even one student, partly because he is less than enthusiastic, and partly because I don't have experience and knowledge. I can use a microscope because my mother was a biologist before she got married and showed me how to use one when I was little, but I am not exactly good at it. As usual, I waffle between thinking it is better to figure things out on one's own, and knowing how far a good teacher good teacher can take one. Sigh.

 

I wound up taking a 5 pronged approach this year. I am having my son read articles about what science is being done currently, design and do and write up experiments, read trade books, outline and learn to study science, and write about science. It is going fairly well, so far. I'm not sure how much he is learning, but his outlining is speeding up, he is getting better at doing science experiments, he is enthusiasticly following some current science that is being done, and he is getting better at writing science papers, so I guess we are getting somewhere. Last year, he kept a nature journal, learned to draw, did a number of projects (like tracking hurricanes), learned to use nature guides, learned quite a lot of natural history, and began learning to design his own experiments. So far this year, he has read A Short History of Nearly Everything (which he liked very much) and Your Inner Fish (which he thought was harder to read but still pretty interesting). He is now reading The Underground History (of something or other that I can't remember) and is finding it less interesting. I just got a bunch of other books interlibrary loan for him to inspect so he can decide what he would like to read next. It is mostly a matter of finding things with the right reading level and that don't go into too much detail about somehting he isn't interested in. He doesn't want to read pages of statistics about how much earth worms weigh. He was, however, interested in detailed information on how to tell the history of a piece of forest (he read The Forested Landscape last year). It is a bit tricky.

 

Hope some of all this muddle is of help.

Nan

[Hunter]

Thanks everyone for all your input!

 

Martha, I have the textbook Real Writing 2nd edition (later additions are very different). It has very detailed checklists for writing every different kind of paragraph, and some of the types are very applicable to science writing. I want to learn to explain, describe, compare, etc in my field notes.

 

I would like to work on my art a bit too, but...that is not where my current fascination lies.

 

Nan, I'm learning now that what I want to do isn't a nature journal, but more of field notes and lab journal.

 

With my youngest child, we spent a lot of time on manipulative experiments, and as I read some of your old posts, I'm remembering we included purpose in addition to, and in place of hypothesis too, and we studied real lab journals and how different they were from the average high school experiment. Like you, doing what scientists did on the job, scared me, making me feel like it was too easy, because any lesson plans that included it were for junior high and elementary.

 

We too ended out starting out with simple experience, but I learned to relax when my son would finish the 1st round of experiments and then come up with a whole new level of more sophisticated questions, that again led to even more sophisticated questions and experiments, and more research.

 

I've forgotten a lot of what we did, but as I read more of your posts it's coming back. But we did mostly manipulative experiments, and I'm struggling to adapt this to observational experiments. I ordered the Creepy Crawler book and am hopeful it will be helpful.

 

And yes, this is all self study with no time limits or anyone looking over my shoulder. My children are grown and were accelerated and entered college and employment quite early, and finished homeschooling 5+ years ago.

 

Studying is my favorite way to self-soothe when stressed. Especially researching and organizing what I plan on doing, even more than actually carrying out my plans :-)

 

So right now...I'm interested in applying the scientific method to nature journals/field notes/lab journals/natural history.

 

Thanks for all the links. I'm having a grand time reading them.

[Nan in Mass]

At the Audubon sanctuary near us, there are adult volunteers who are doing real science. The naturalists on the staff at Audubon will set up a study and then use the volunteers to gather data. There are a few volunteers who are running their own studies. For example, there are beavers on the property. They, naturally, have their own idea of how the property should be landscaped for maximum usefulness. This conflicts with Audubon's ideas. Audubon is trying various beaver-deceivers. The naturalists need to study the beavers to figure out which beaver deceivers work but don't adversely affect the beavers. Volunteers watch the beavers and take notes. One woman has done this daily (in season) for years. The naturalists consult her and honour her for her knowledge. One naturalist is studying dragon flies. I guess my point is that you can do real science wherever you are. (If you live in the city, you can use people as your subjects.) You don't just have to do experiments for the sake of learning how to do experiments. You can do real science that contributes to the knowledge of the world. Did you find Correlano's posts? The ones where she is trying to help me with science experiments? She pointed out the key word "field". If when you do your searches, you use that word, you will be more successful. And if you can get to an Audubon sactuary, you probably will find naturalists who can help you. If nothing else, their reference books are great fun.

 

Have you read King Solomon's Ring? It is easy to read and great fun. If you live in New England, Reading the Forested Landscape is good. I like the Stoke's nature guides because they contain more information than usual. The best book I know for learning to write for science is Powerful Paragraphs. It is clear, clear, clear and the examples are good, unlike many writing programs. The five paragraph paper format is the one my husband uses at work all the time. He was adamant that my son learn it. People here complain about it because it isn't suitable for essays and persuasive papers, but it is the basis of technical writing. My husband says that usually the last paragraph (the one where you sum it all up) is left off.

 

And in case this information is useful: My husband keeps an engineering journal for work and we modelled our son's lab notebook after it. At Staples, they sell these. They are soft cover bound books with the pages all pre-numbered. They seemed a little big, so we have been using a largish graph paper composition book. First my son went through and numbered all the pages. My son wrote a title on the first page: Laboratory Notes (you would write Field Notes), Name, Date. Then he wrote Table of Contents on the right hand side of the next spread, skipped a few pages, and then began recording his experiments. He begins with the date and then follows the format we worked out (it is a pretty ordinary format, but if you want it, I will email it to you). He writes in pencil and if he makes a mistake, he crosses it out and initials it. He records the experiment in the table of contents. I don't know for sure, but I should think that a field notebook would work the same way. Mine were a little less formal with their nature journals. Those were bound sketch books from the art supply store. The title page was similar, but we didn't number the pages or make a table of contents. The pages each (hopefully - sigh) had the date, time, location, and weather conditions, if they were observations. If they were information from research, then they just were dated and a note made of the source. The best piece of equipment we had were the binoculars. They are great for looking at things without scaring them. You can see something like a bird from 10 feet away in great detail, which is fun, and it makes it possible to observe things across a field or pond. You can also look through them backwards and see them magnified. It isn't as nice as a microscope, but it is better than nothing. If you buy a pair, look for the word "wide". Or look through a few and compare. The bigger a spot you can see through them, the easier it is to find things. Also, it is much easier to track moving things. My other tip is that if you are going to use a biology book for reference, try to find a college one, not a high school one. The high school ones simplify by skipping steps and glossing over the more complicated bits, making it difficult to figure out things like how mitosis works. This is frustrating for someone who is really trying to put together the pieces.

Have fun!

-Nan

[1Togo]

Nan,

 

What was your starting point for putting together the natural history course? Does this type of course get history or science credit or both? Do you think this can be part of a high school science credit if the course includes lab and field work?

[Tullia]

Thanks everyone for all your input! ...

 

I would like to work on my art a bit too, but...that is not where my current fascination lies....

 

Thanks for all the links. I'm having a grand time reading them.

 

The flexibility of nature journals is what makes them so appealing to me; you can use them however you think will work best for you and even change the emphasis whenever doing that seems in order. I'm enjoying reading the links too. I want to resume working on my nature journal--just for me now that I'm retired from hsing.

 

And, here's a not so subtle hint for Nan: I really hope you'll collect your home school philosophy and ideas into a book someday.

[Nan in Mass]

It definately wouldn't be a history credit. It doesn't really have anything to do with history the way the word is used in education today. I used Mother of Divine Grace's natural history syllabus as a starting point. It is extremely light, but I like that because that leaves lots of room to suppliment. My son read other books about natural history, worked on a list of skills that I had (like use a dichotomous key, use a microscope, do some mapping, learn the terminalogy needed to use different nature guides), kept a more extensive nature journal than the one outlined in MoDG's syllabus, kept a lab journal, read the chapters about chemistry and cells in a high school bio book, designed more labs than the one project required in the syllabus, and did some projects (like mapping hurricanes). I gave my older son 1 1/2 credits for natural history and my younger son will have two credits (we skip biology). I might rename the course "field something or other". There is no reason you would have to do this much for one credit of science if you are going to do biology. I did it because natural history is a place where my children got to actually be scientists instead of students of science, and because my family happens to live under circumstances that require a fairly extensive natural history knowledge base. There is a book called The Amateur Naturalist that would make a good starting place. Just be aware that some of the information (the section on classification, for example) is outdated, outdated enough that my son noticed. Perhaps your library has it and you could use it to help you decide what you need to put into your own program. This year, we have 5 things that we are doing - looking at current research, reading science trade books, working on future science classroom skills like outlining and studying a textbook, writing science papers (involving research), and designing and writing up experiments. I worked out how often I want to do each of those things per week and that is what we try to do. This year I am not trying to cover specific topics or work on his knowledge base; I am concentrating on skills, things like trying to get him reading more adult science material. It is going very well, so far. It totally won't help when it comes to passing any standardized tests, but hopefully it will help when he is actually taking science classes in college.

 

I approve of your idea to do wonderment science. : )

-Nan

[Nan in Mass]

I use my nature journal as a time-keeper. The first time one of my children was away for more than 6-day-scout-camp, I was distraut. My sister pointed out that in 3 months, when my 13yo returned from Japan, it would be a new season, and all I had to do was hang on until spring. She suggested that I keep a nature journal, a simple one where I wrote down something I saw outside every day, and that would make me more aware of how the spring was coming. The first robin was a big deal! I've done it while my children traveled ever since.

 

Yikes about the book idea. I have thought about it, though. Seems like I post enough here. If I just gathered them all up, it would be enough for a book...

-Nan

[1Togo]

Nan,

 

I agree that you should work on a book. Until then, your posts are helpful and inspiring. With your suggestions and what I have found on my own, I now have direction. I do have one more question. You mentioned that you skip biology. Do you just fold that into the natural history course?

[Nan in Mass]

No. Some of biology gets covered in natural history, of course, but some of it doesn't. We just don't do it. My older son did natural history for two years, human anatomy (lightly) for half a year, conceptual physics for a year, and then chemistry at the community college. My youngest will do natural history for two years, then do the rest of his sciences at the community college. He'll have chem and physics and we will try to fit in another one somewhere, since he is headed for engineering school. The older one got into a math/science oriented, not very competative state college without biology. Hopefully it won't cause a problem for the youngest, either.

-Nan

[Hunter]

This has been a great thread!

 

Today I got The Nature Connection an Outdoor Workbook by Claire Walker Leslie, for free, at Borders with the coupon and Borders Bucks holiday special they were running. I like it better than her books for adults.

 

I too love graph paper composition books! That is what I will be using.

 

The nature journals as a time keeper is a good idea. I have a lot of memory loss problems due to my Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I use a modified form of the morning pages and Franklin Covey worksheets to try and stay on track, but...I still often feel lost in time. I think taking time to document the seasonal changes in an organized fashion might help.

 

Binoculars are now on my wish list :-)

 

I need to look more into groups to join. I think that will be good for me. I was starting to do a lot of TAW artists dates in the spring, and starting to make contact with resources, lectures, etc...but had a bit of a relapse during the summer and just got all off track.

 

I'm still working through the links and other online explorations.

 

I also bought a book on bird watching at Borders for $1.33 and ordered another by a woman about her pet chickens. I have a workbook I started on birds last summer. And the library has a good documentary series.

 

I think I want to do bugs first though.

[Nan in Mass]

I'm pretty sure that you were involved in some of those threads. I didn't check them as to applicability or whether you already were familiar with them. I always like rereading, though.

 

The whole timekeeping thing worked really well for me because I don't do time the way other people do. (Ask my poor husband. At times he finds it convenient and at times no end exasperating. He is a linear person.) The seasons are a form of time that I do actually "get" and believe in more than regular time. You can tell me over and over again that whatever uncomfortable thing I am dealing with will be over in yea amount of time and no matter what I do, I can't make myself believe it. Everything is forever. Seasons, though, seem to be the exception, so if I attach events to the seasons, I find I can anticipate them. I keep waiting to outgrow it but at this point, I'm beginning to think maybe it isn't an outgrowing sort of thing. Perhaps it will work similarly for you.

 

I have a dragonflies that are black with red hearts along their tails. They are gorgeous. Their wings shimmer in the sun. Bugs are good GRIN. I'll never forget the day my flight obsessed little boy realized that bugs flew! He had been studying birds and airplanes and rockets, and then all of a sudden he realized that there were things that flew that would land and take off on his hands!

 

Stokes has an insect guide that isn't so much a book that helps you identify insects as one that tells you in more depth about the habits of some insects. And there is Fabre's. I looked at a book called Thermal Warriors, too, when I was looking at reading material for this year, and decided it was more detail and a higher reading level than we were looking for, but you might see if your library has it. My library has a nice natural history section.

 

Cool about the Claire Walker Leslie book. I'll have to see if I can get a look at it. Youtube has some botanical painting demos that I keep meaning to watch. And our library has a great book that I got for my mother, who is a botanist and who naturally tends to do botanical watercolours, in which the artist mixed pen-and-ink with watercolour with the most gorgeous results.

 

What a fun thread! You have inspired me. You are a bit ahead of me. When I am done homeschooling (sniff sniff) in a few years, I want to do what you are doing.

 

-Nan

Edited November 24, 2010 by Nan in Mass

[Hunter]

Google "phenology". This is EXACTLY what I need! Very exact instructions and a reason beyond my own needs to collect data.

 

I keep gravitating towards paganism to get my seasonal fixes, but I think phenology might be a better fix, than religious rituals.

 

The rabbit trails of googling "phenology" lead to some excellent observations on shadows and where the sun and moon are in the sky, which are excellent activities for winter city dwellers. Also collecting data on ice build up on water. There are nearby rivers.

 

The study of the rising, setting and placement of the sun and moon and logging atmospheric conditions looks to be great preparation for the busy spring activities of logging migration and budding.

 

My first project is to try to find the most accurate way to measure temperature on my balcony. I could make this into an experiment, maybe. I've never had an accurate outdoor thermometer set up.

 

The buildings blocked my view of the moon from my balcony most of the warmer months, but I'm looking forward to increased viewing ability this winter.

 

I need to purchase a compass and whatever that thingy is that measures altitude, so I know where and when to look for it to peak out from the clouds.

 

I also want to buy a door mat and some boots to put by my balcony sliding doors and start taking the time to step outside and view things every couple hours. During the summer the sun rose in the same break between buildings where the moon is now starting to rise, and I got into the habit of sipping tea out there while watching the sun rise. hot cocoa while watching the moon rise, will be nice.

 

I'm excited about all the little projects I'm stumbling on that are perfect for winter studies to fully ready for the spring projects.

 

What else can I measure accurately from a balcony? Pressure. Humidity, but not rainfall.

 

There is much I can just look up online to at least get into the habit of logging conditions EVERY day no matter what.

Edited November 24, 2010 by Hunter

[Nan in Mass]

Are you allowed a bird feeder on your balcony? I live on the edge of a lake (right on the edge) so nature observations are obvious and easy for me. I do have a tendency to hibernate inside, though, so I have my life set up so that it forces me to step outside. I have to go outside to get wood for the woodstove. I have to go outside to reach the basement to put in laundry. In nice weather, I try to hang my laundry on the line, or at least drape it over a drying wrack on the deck. I have to feed the birds every day. That daily trip to the bird feeder (ok LOL it is all of about 75 feet) is really important. It makes me look around, get a breath of fresh air, see what the weather is doing. If you can't have a bird feeder, can you have a bird bath? Or a small pan of water that would let you record wind ripples and sun bounce? Can you have plants that you have to step outside and water? If you can't have plants, can you have a pan of moss? Can you make a sundial? Perhaps a handheld one, that you would use in conjunction with a compass when you are out and about? I know wind direction wouldn't be something that would be accurate for atmouspheric conditions, but it might be interesting to see how the wind speed and direction vary from day to day on your own balcony. Maybe you could make a wind vane or wind chimes. I have a tiny bell attached to a tree branch under our bedroom window that we call the storm bell because it only rings when it is stormy. That was an accident, but worked out nicely. How about clouds? Their direction? How about smells? Sounds? I don't know. Just thinking up some ideas. I will have to do that googling. : )

-Nan

[Hunter]

I generally go outside every day...but I tend to rush from one cement jungle to another, without stopping to spend time in the parks, then arrive home exhausted and then stay inside. My doctor says I need to SIT outside and absorb some vitamin D, but I forget :-0

 

Wind comparisons would be very interesting. We get wind tunnels and wind shelters as I call them, that vary considerably. Also, I think it would be interesting to log the wind from my balcony, just to, I don't know :-) know the wind speed in MY place :-) I should challenge myself to do some wind projects.

 

Sun is the main problem for my balcony. It gets about 1 hour of sun in the early morning, in early summer, and none by late summer. I am allowed plants though, and really need to get some.

 

I was feeding the birds, but a large flock of pigeons found me, and we are forbidden to feed the birds, so I had to stop. And the bird poop mess was...wow! I'll have to maybe try a bird bath and see what happens. Or a small feeder that is pigeon proof.

 

I have free electricity. I'm thinking of indoor growth lights and some herbs, but the initial set up is quite expensive and involved. I get no sun in my apartment, at all, and it is very warm and dry, with the free heat that everyone cranks up.

 

I know I'm too old...but...I'm thinking of keeping some type of insect this winter :-0 And weather monitoring, as the places to start.

 

I want plants...but...it's just not falling easily into place. And my building does have a nice garden out back if I get off my butt and go downstairs. And in the high-rise building my post office box is in has LOTS of amazing exotic indoor gardens, if I just STOP to enjoy them, instead of rushing home. I should get just ONE shade loving plant though, to start.

 

There is something nice about indoor and balcony nature. Traveling to nature just is not the same.