how to do the 'nature study' thing...

[countrygal]

So, I am interested in doing nature study as science. Right now we are just reading occasional books on whatever we get from the library but aren't doing anything activity-wise, but I know they'd like it. We live in the country and have a lot of nature around us! But what exactly am I suppose to do? I tried searching the forums but it was taking to long to find anything worth reading (send me a link if this has been discussed before.) Mainly, how can I get my kids to draw what they see? They like to draw, but it will likely be unrecognizable and they'll complain they don't know how. Should I draw it? Take a picture of it? Or forget the drawing? I'd like to have some picture of what they are studying (say, tree bark this time, or wild seeds, etc...) to that we can have a neat notebook! Plus, they can't write much but I can write down their narrations, I don't mind that. Should I just scrap the notebook idea and just talk about what we see and how it compares to what we read? My two oldest are 5 and 7.

[jar7709]

Oh. There's so many ways and I think everyone does it differently. Imo, don't worry about the 'right' way and just go outside, enjoy your children interacting with the world, and pay attention. Bring a magnifying glass if you feel like it. If the kids don't want to draw, maybe *they* can take pictures. Bring cuttings home and look them up at home. If you feel you need more direction, a few good books are 'the Nature Connection' 'Private Eye' and 'Sharing Nature With Children' by Cornell. Those three books have very different approaches that work well for different types of families and learners. Habits of observation is really what it is about, and there are a million ways to get there.

[sparrow]

You can find TONS of information here:

 

http://handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com/

[swellmomma]

We do it differently depending on the day. Journalling or drawing does not always happen, that is just one aspect of it. SOmetimes we head out of doors with a mission in mind : go pond dipping and document what we catch, go walking in the woods to spot animal tracks and name them. Sometimes we happen to be out and see something and stop to take the time to watch it (like a woodpecker) or collect it (feathers on the ground or a great rock etc). Sometimes we study the nature in our home, so our pets, or the items in our nature drawers etc. Then we learn more about those things using our handbook of nature study, or field guides. Sometimes in flipping through the handbook we randomly come across something we want to learn more about, and seek it out. This is particularily true of plants.

 

Sometimes we pull the telescope out and explore the stars. Or the magnifying glasses, bug catchers and nets. Or the microscope to view drops of pond water.

 

Nature study is raising caterpillars and releasing butterflies, it is hatching chickens, or keeping an ant farm. It is spending time in various environments and conditions from open meadows, to forests, to urban parks, to ponds, lakes, rocky ledges etc.

 

The biggest part of nature study is not the journalling or drawing it is in the observation. Those things help teach kids to take teh time to really focus and observe. Amazing things happen in your world when you learn to stop, and truly see. That is what nature study does no matter how you implement it.

[Esse Quam Videri]

Great thread and responses... left me itching to get outside.

[BugsMama]

We use The Nature Connection (10 dollar book on amazon).... and I blog about what we've been up to often (Nature Study). Its easy!

(I just changed the theme and am slowly fixing the picture formatting- excuse my dust over there!)

[BugsMama]

For drawing, the draw write now books have really helped my kids :) and it's translated over to their nature study sketchbooks.

[countrygal]

Thanks for the ideas! I was stuck on the notebooking and how that was suppose to work. I'd still like to do it, but I think I'll pass and just enjoy what we see and talk more intentional about it. I think I'll study up so I know what I'm talking about! :)

[sweetpea3829]

We do it differently depending on the day. Journalling or drawing does not always happen, that is just one aspect of it. SOmetimes we head out of doors with a mission in mind : go pond dipping and document what we catch, go walking in the woods to spot animal tracks and name them. Sometimes we happen to be out and see something and stop to take the time to watch it (like a woodpecker) or collect it (feathers on the ground or a great rock etc). Sometimes we study the nature in our home, so our pets, or the items in our nature drawers etc. Then we learn more about those things using our handbook of nature study, or field guides. Sometimes in flipping through the handbook we randomly come across something we want to learn more about, and seek it out. This is particularily true of plants.

 

Sometimes we pull the telescope out and explore the stars. Or the magnifying glasses, bug catchers and nets. Or the microscope to view drops of pond water.

 

Nature study is raising caterpillars and releasing butterflies, it is hatching chickens, or keeping an ant farm. It is spending time in various environments and conditions from open meadows, to forests, to urban parks, to ponds, lakes, rocky ledges etc.

 

The biggest part of nature study is not the journalling or drawing it is in the observation. Those things help teach kids to take teh time to really focus and observe. Amazing things happen in your world when you learn to stop, and truly see. That is what nature study does no matter how you implement it.

 

^^This

 

We did "nature study" off the cuff last summer and it was really just so much fun. I'm sure my neighbors think I'm nuts, but that's ok. We sit on 3 acres of land, the perimeter of which is rimmed by tall grasses, a swamp, pond, cattails, etc. We scoured the milkweed for monarch caterpillars...must have raised a good 30+ butterflies throughout the summer. We caught all kinds of frogs, as well as a fist-sized giant toad which we kept for a number of weeks. We took walks along the perimeter of the property, looking for insects to feed the frogs and toads, and also identifying plants, spiders, etc. When we came across a partially chewed tree, we were excited to discover that we had a beaver living on the property. We found wild strawberries growing on the property, and a wild apple tree (which was humorous, given that we had planted a dozen fruit trees during the spring).

 

We participated in a study of fireflies, observing and documenting fireflies, their light patterns, etc. I think that was through Boston Museum of Science.

 

This spring, I'm planning on building a nature path through the tall grasses, which we'll maintain.

 

Nature study is whatever you want it to be!

[Kalmia]

I have done a lot of reading about the childhoods of naturalists and a common theme was that they just mucked around in nature, usually alone. Nowadays, the alone part isn't always wise, so you and the kids can muck about in nature together. Nature study is an observation and discovery style "science" and lends itself to using reference books (field guides, natural history guides) rather than curricula. You can't really fit nature study into the box. Declare that today that you will observe squirrels, and guess what, you probably won't see any squirrels, but you might see an orb weaver and a trout lily. So let what's out there guide your learning.

 

Following the seasonal round of a local natural area over a period of years will give your children a good grounding in adaptations, food webs, life cycles, reproduction, seasonality, morphology, population, competition, and ecology without every cracking open a curriculum.

 

Often people tell me that the nature journaling part of nature study doesn't work with their young children or small-motor challenged students, replace the journal with photography. Keep a physical album for them to leaf through and recall their adventures in nature. Oh, and young children love collecting things. Make sure you know what is legal to collect and not (wild birds' nests, eggs, and feathers are not legal to keep). They can make leaf collections, insect collections, seed collections.

 

Most of all have fun.

 

Read the archives of my blog for some ideas if you'd like: http://naturestrollers.blogspot.com

[Arcadia]

Thanks for the ideas! I was stuck on the notebooking and how that was suppose to work. I'd still like to do it, but I think I'll pass and just enjoy what we see and talk more intentional about it. I think I'll study up so I know what I'm talking about! :)

 

There is no need to study up to enjoy nature study. For example, the parks here have information booklets on local birds and other marsh animals. We pick up a booklet and binoculars, and just hike around the park observing. When we encouter something we don't know, we just take a photo and ask the park rangers at the visitor center.

[Down_the_Rabbit_Hole]

Nature study looks like:

watching birds at a feeder

looking up birds you saw

identifying each tree/plant/flower/weed in your yard

catch a bug and look at it

catch a caterpillar and watch it turn into a butterfly

plant a seed and watch it grow

look at animal tracks in your yard on on a trail

identify tracks

look for seeds

identify seeds

look for mushrooma

identify mushrooms

measure a tree trunk each month

record your measurements

follow an ant back to it's home

go to the same spot on a trail and notice all the things that are different from the last time there

observe a tree's leaves each month

record tree notes

make a bug collection either physical or drawn

identify each bug

get a pet (any kind) and observe and record

go sit in a park and listen

watch a mama bird build a nest

watch the mama bird and the babies

record info on mama bird

look at the empty nest (wait a few weeks to be sure it is truly empty, sometimes mama bird will lay more eggs)

record info in nest

lift a rock and look at the bugs or worm holes

record what you see

watch rain, snow, fog

keep a daily record of the temperatures

keep a record of the moon

and so on...

 

Nature study is about observing nature at home or away, in the city or in the country, on a trail or a path. once you start looking you will find it.

Nature notebooking or nature journalng can be done alongside nature study but it is not a needed. I have found the biggest hindrance here is the lack of drawing confidence. I have heard people say they will start a nature journal once they can draw better. Chances are they still haven't started. I am not an artist and my nature journals need labeling to help know what it is you are looking at, but I am getting better with each drawing. BUT not all nature journals need drawings. Making lists and recording what you see...something as simple as 2/13/20113 Robins arrive or snowed while the sun shone....this is enough. I have several journals going at once, one where I draw and one where I record daily things. The record book has pages dedicated to weather, moon, bird sitings, and interesting things. If you want your children to keep a nature journal it is important that you keep one too. Let them see mom cannot draw very good either but that does not stop her. When my kids were little I would sit outside with a sketchbook and draw a leaf or a bug, they would wander over and want to know what I was doing, next they want to make a drawing too. As they got older I would tell them to find a mushroom and draw it, or find a seed pod, draw it. They also can draw things they want along the way. If your children feel upset by their drawings, tell them to write about what they see instead. A nature journal is simply a journal about the nature you see, either draw it or write about it or both. My kids have no rules with regards to their nature journals except to take care of them.

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

I also recommend the book Drawing With Children to help practice realistic drawing techniques.

[Holly]

This may have already been suggested, sorry if I missed it! If drawing is a problem, you could have them make leaf or bark rubbings...or collect nature items to tape in their journals. We just picked up a mini-microscope for our nature bag, so that will give us more to look at. Or instead of drawing, they could write (the temperature, weather, etc.). I've also seen nature checklists for little kids...they check the box of animals or plants that they see on their walk.

[countrygal]

You know, I guess we've done a lot of that! My dad use to do that with us. He'd be like "sh.... what bird is that?" And quiz us just on the sound. I like the idea of keeping a daily notebook and just writing something, even if it's just a sentence about the weather. I think then we'll have something to look back at to read and remember. (Maybe it's the sentimental me that wants the notebook.) We have a lot of wildlife - yesterday a wild tom turkey and 2 hens went walking 15 feet from our garage... through the yard. We've have bald eagles that live nearby, I saw one today. My goal is just to be more intentional and interact with my kids. Time to slow down. I think I've been taking our nature haven home for granted.

[Nan in Mass]

We did lots of nature study.

 

I did the observation part from the time the children could look where I pointed, so that part mine had down, pretty much. Most of that was done just by keeping our eyes open and pointing things out to each other. You can tell your children that animal eyes (which they have) notice things which move. I wouldn't start with nature journals. Those come later. Begin by teaching your children to sit still and watch a certain area without talking. At the end of five minutes, you all can compare notes on what you noticed. You can increase the amount of time slowly. Just getting them to stay in one place and not talk will probably be a challenge at first. You might have to help them with the describing part. Don't put the focus on identification until after your children are observing well. You probably will have to help them describe by asking leading questions. Say they see a bird. Ask what colour the legs were. Was it fluffy or sleek? What colour was the head? If they can't remember, then you will have practise still watching and observing separately. With the bird in front of you, try asking the questions. In the beginning, they may have trouble even thinking of attributes to describe. You might, too. It helps to read some descriptions by other people. A visit to a natural history museum that has pages of nature journals posted in front of certain displays can give you some idea of what sorts of things are useful. Reading entries in an identification book can help you, too. Don't forget that as well as colour, size, texture, and shape, you should pay attention to where the object is (did you see it in the swamp? a meadow? high up? low down? in sun? shade? with others? alone? camophlaged (sp?)), what sounds it makes, and how the object moves (jerkily? smoothly?). Think about observing with all five senses. When discussing what it is doing (looking? pecking? grooming? drinking?), take the opportunity to point out the difference between guessing (the bird is looking for food) and describing (the bird is turning its head left and right). Speculating is good and you should teach that, too, but make sure they know the difference between describing actions and guessing reasons. Ask why and how questions to encourage speculation. Part of being able to describe things well is learning the proper vocabulary. At the front or back of most identification books is a labeled diagram or list of vocabulary. With young children, I think it is better if YOU memorize the list and use it properly and leave them to pick it up naturally, in context. If you use words like thorax and nocturnal, your children will, too. I think this works much, much better than giving them worksheets with blank labels to fill in or something like that. If they are older, point out the diagrams and encourage them to use the proper vocab. If they are writing their descriptions, then they will WANT to use the vocab because it is more efficient lol. There are games you can play for observation, too. You can mark off a small area with a piece of string and count the number of bugs or blades of grass or trees or whatever in that area. This helps them to look more deeply at one spot. As you walk along, you can point to a plant or tree whatever and ask them to try to find another like it a bit farther down the path. In order to do this, they need to take note of what the first one looks like. You don't have to help them do that - you just have to point out what is different when they guess wrong. This is a good way to start using flora words like alternate branching and toothed. You can start with easy obvious things, like things like a dandylion in bloom, and then move on to harder things.

 

After you have your children observing and describing well, you can get a bunch of identification books and start having them look things up. TWTM has a nice list of children's guides. My youngest (the one who did TWTM from the very beginning) had his in a small backpack and carried it around with him when we went for walks. I was hesitant to buy them at the beginning because I thought he would outgrow them and they were expensive, but they turned out to be worth every penny. He learned so much from them, general academic skills like the difference between a table of contents and an index and alphabetization as well as specific natural history skills. The identification books will help give them examples of some of the sorts of things can go in nature journals, too.

 

While you are doing that, you can teach your children to draw. I happen to like Draw Squad for this because it is super easy to use and appealing to children, but there are lots of other resources out there. (Despite all the rarayoucandoit in Draw Squad, the drawing instruction is very much like what I received when I took Drawing 1 in college lol.) I found it was easier to teach them to draw NOT at the same time I was trying to teach them to keep a nature journal. And you can teach them to write. Again, I found this easier NOT at the same time as the nature journal. The nature journal was just one use for both of these skills.

 

While you are doing that, you can get lots of non-fiction out of the library and read it - books about weather, geology, geography, mammals, black holes, whales, trees, etc. Be picky. Some children's books offer great explanations about things like air pressure when discussing hurricanes and others are contain almost no information. This is great for building vocabulary and helping them to get the hang of describing things.

 

While you are doing that, you can also teach the scientific method. TWTM suggests some good resources for doing this and has a very nice children's version of questions that can be used for the write-up of experiments. I found the first few pages of Creepy Crawlers and the Scientific Method very useful for learning how to set up an experiment for children. Make sure you understand the difference between an experiment, an activity, a lab report, a nature journal, a lab notebook, and a scientific report or paper (the lab report written up to be presented to be published). Again, I found this easier to teach when we WEREN'T standing up to our knees in the lake trying to actually DO natural history.

 

A key component (componant? I can't spell) of all this is teaching your children how to measure things and how to use observation equipment like a microscope. I suggest you start with a pair of binoculars and a magnifying glass rather than a telescope and a microscope. It will be easier to teach them to use the latter if they already know how to use the former. To use binoculars, start by making the two eye pieces the same focus, since you don't know how different your children's eyes are. Then teach them to look at the object and keeping their eyes on the object, raise the binoculars to their eyes and move them around a TINY bit to find the object. Then they can focus the binoculars with TINY movements until whatever it is is clear. Don't forget to teach them not to look at the sun (be ready to knock their hands aside if they look like they are going to do it accidentally) and not to focus the magnifying glass at an object unless it is in the shade or you will burn it. You can teach them how to not to use the very end of the ruler (which has a cut-off bit usually), to convert from feet to inches (or the metric equivalent), about paralax error, how to measure across a meniscus (sp?), about converting from diameter to circumference, about volume measurements, and lots of other science skills. I found that it worked well to do these things while we were working on our nature journals or an experiment. (Your milage may vary.)

 

When we did do nature journals (after they could give me a good oral description and were observing well), I taught mine to put the date, location, and weather at the top of the page. We got those sketch pads where each page is half unlined, half lined until my children could write neatly without lines. I didn't worry about spelling or punctuation at first. Mine began by going outside, finding something to draw, and then writing three sentences describing something about it. They did it every day. As they got older and better at this, we looked at professional examples and they added background to the things they were drawing and labels and the descriptions began to be longer. I began to insist that they spell any technical vocabulary correctly and write neatly. They could add colour if they wanted (mostly they didn't).

 

I tried to find some real life naturalists for my children to observe or work with. Our local Audubon sactuary has children's programs. We read some autobiographies of naturalists. I tried to find some community science projects to participate in, like fish counting. I tried to have them do a long-term experiment. (One year we tracked hurricanes. One year we measured the temperature of the yard at different levels throughout the winter. There are some great threads here that describe how to set up a large natural history experiment.) I tried to tell them about some of the things scientists are studying now (you can buy a copy of the magazine Nature or see what your library has). I tried to get my children to think of science as a community of scientists who are expanding our knowledge by doing research and experiments to answer questions about how the world (and universe) works and then telling each other about them. I tried to help them make connections between natural history and other sorts of science and engineering, like pointing out that scientists discovered that slightly rough surfaces slide with less friction through water or air than smooth surfaces by wondering about why shark skin is rough, and how this idea can be applied to ship hulls, aircraft, and medical devices that carry blood.

 

HTH

Nan