~Victoria~ Posted February 16, 2014 Share Posted February 16, 2014 Would you guys share your favorite nature study guides, curriculum, journaling, articles, etc resources? I have looked at CLP readers, The Nature Connection, and Outdoor Hour Challenges (but not in great detail) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KSinNS Posted February 16, 2014 Share Posted February 16, 2014 Ambleside online Handbook of Nature Study by Comstock. a bit old fashioned but a dandelion is still a dandelion your favourite field guides The Cornell Lab of Ornithology website (the online bird finder/bird information is amazing). They even have some free curriculum, though I haven't used it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rosie_0801 Posted February 16, 2014 Share Posted February 16, 2014 What do you want nature study and nature journalling to be like? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
~Victoria~ Posted February 16, 2014 Author Share Posted February 16, 2014 I don't know :). I want to go out once a week to a park or our local nature center and let my son explore. Then I want there to be a specific task he has to complete: locate a plant, draw an item, find an item in a field guide, something like that. I'd like to do one "project" each semester (like composting, raising butterflies, having a small garden). The other day I found 5 pine cones on his dresser and he said he had found them in a neighbor's yard. I though to myself, "you're going to love nature study!" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rosie_0801 Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 We're on to our second year of nature study, having started at the beginning of dc's K year. I have one book and some preprepared journalling pages which we sometimes use, but generally she draws freehand. Really, what you've outlined in the above post is fine and all you need to do is go out and do it. :) I'll pm you a link to my dd's journaling beginnings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dsbrack Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 I really enjoyed reading through portions of Comstock's Handbook of Nature Study mentioned above. My library had it so it might be worth checking yours. There are some great ideas in there that you could modify for the animals and plants in your area. My plan for the summer is to take our bug jar, net, hand magnifier, and a notebook to the forest a few times a week and just draw what we see. I'll probably get a regional insect field guide and maybe a plant one too. My son loves bugs so I imagine most of the summer will be spent scooping up different creepy crawlies and figuring out what they are. :laugh: Then, maybe we can find a library book to read about what we find. I'm planning to keep it very simple. We are using BFSU for science during the school year but I love nature study in the warmer months. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susie in MS Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 I love HONS and CLP Nature Readers! I don't generally go out looking for a specific plant or critter, because half of the time we have done that we get disappointed. There is so much variation. So we go out looking for something in general (3 types of leaves and bark, or 3 types of critters), or we just go out and look. A while back, maybe a year ago, dd and I read that worms are really transparent and the color you see is from the dirt they ingest. Well yesterday while we were in the yard we find a half of a worm floating in the bird bath. Because water makes things more detailed we were able to actually see the dirt inside the outer worm casing. It was totally cook and dd was beside herself. So we read about a year ago and experienced it yesterday. No dissection necessary in this case. Then this morning we were reading about galls ....again. We have read about these strange cocoon like things before. Well when dd was wading in the ditch she found a little branch of what we think may be Mistletoe and on it were 2 tiny, very sticky white balls. We took them inside to see if they were a small variety of galls (have no idea if they actually come in this size) or a seed of sorts. After taking it apart and looking under the field scope we determined it was a seed. You could see a green thing inside the white sticky ball, but it looked more like a teeny tiny bud. So while we didn't find a gall, we did still have a very interesting observation, and again dd was beside herself . We have only done a couple pages of journaling as we just don't have much time, but I want to get more into it as dd ages a bit. I love your large term projects! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susie in MS Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 Oh and if you mosey over to the AO board they have a weekly discussion about a lesson in the HONS book. I don't participate due to time, but it is really cool! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swellmomma Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 What we have been doing is having the kids pull out their nature journals and document something they saw, sometimes they draw the picture, sometimes I have photos I print off, then we look it up in the handbook of nature study and investigate further. I never wanted nature study to be an assignment, I want it to be something they do for pleasure and their own information so that is why they each choose their own thing to journal about. In the warmer months it might be an insect or animal they saw, a feather they picked up, or the hornet nest we cut open after killing the hornets(it was in my hedge and had to go anyway). In the colder months we often will pick an animal from our own home (such as when my female tortoise laid an egg a couple weeks ago), or an animal from the pet store we saw. We point out nature study type things constantly while out and about and the kids have all developed a good eye for the world around them (noticing things most people ignore like the leaves changing on a tree before a storm, or the marks left by an animal nibbling on the bark, or the hawk up in the sky etc). We don't pull out the journals every week, but when we do the kids get very excited. We also pack them in our things when we head to camp etc because there is always new things to explore away from home. Primarily I focus on simple observation (pointing things out and showing them) and excitement for the things we find. Out walking in the woods we have found bones, tracks, scat etc that we don't journal about but we examine, and perhaps look it up later, perhaps not. Pond dipping is something we love to do but seldom journal about. pulling out the telescope on a warm night makes it fun to examine the heavens (and they consider it a treat since it is usually past bedtime) but again it is not journalled. Your best resources will be your eagerness, your sneakers, and perhaps some field guides. This is one area where a curriculum can actually hold you back imo turning it into an assignment rather than a wonder kwim. ETA: we also have a nature center set up at home. This houses all the little things they find plus items I buy to add to it (rock samples, muskrat fur, rabbit fur, ostrich egg) and items gifted to us for this purpose (burmese python skin, porcupine quills etc) This center is out all the time for the kids along with magnifying glasses so they can examine any of the items over and over in their own time. A good chunk of their summer involves running up to me with feather, pine cones, rocks and bones and declaring they would be perfect in our nature center. This year we are doing microscopy in science and then I will be leaving the microscope out all the time in this center too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
~Victoria~ Posted February 17, 2014 Author Share Posted February 17, 2014 I had a 40% off coupon to Mardel so I went and hot the CLP Nature Reader 1 today - I like it! I also went by our Hastings and they had Texas guides for Butterflies, Wildflowers, Trees, Birds, and Tracks (Mammals). They were all clearanced out so I paid $15 for all of them. They are laminated pamphlets, and Noah has already been looking at the bird one. I subscribed to the One Hour Challenge newsletter, so maybe there will be enough recommendations in that to guide me each month. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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