How do you start a nature journal?

[pocjets]

What ages? And what do you require? 

Thanks!

[Rosie_0801]

You buy a pretty note book, some coloured pencils and a nice, new pen. Most of those things will get lost along the way, but you asked about starting, not continuing. :p

 

This is one of my dd's earliest nature journal entries:

[Guest]

As soon as they can hold a crayon.

 

No requirements.

 

Take them outside and be enthusiastic about it.

 

Keep my own nature journal.

[freelylearned]

Keep your own journal alongside your kids. Encourage your kids to use as many senses as they can when they are in nature (except taste, usually!). We take along a small field guide specific to our area and I have the Audubon bird app on my phone.

 

My oldest has a choice of writing a few sentences about something in nature or drawing and labeling a picture of something he needs. He's not a fan of the journaling part of nature study, but he is observant and will look up animals and plants in a nature guide and tell us about what he learned.

 

My 5 year old likes to do leaf rubbings, trace rocks and sticks, and draw trees. She enjoys matching colors in her journal to what she sees. If we identify a bird, she likes to draw its picture copied from our field guide.

 

My 3 year old has a notebook, too, but he usually asks me to draw a puppy for him to color in.

 

Sometimes I let the kids take a picture of something they see to draw when they get back home.

 

Start close to home. There's a lot to see in your backyard or at a local park. Find one place and visit it often. We have a grove of trees at the park near our house that we visit at least once a week

[Hobbes]

I bought 5x8 unlined spiral notebooks with kraft paper covers from Ikea (lightweight and attractive). They decorated the fronts. We bring a bag of coloured pencils, a sharpener, and the notebooks when we go nature walking. I require them to date the page, but the rest is wide open.

[2_girls_mommy]

For the most part, we just use a composition book. Since they were little we drew what we observed.

 

At my kids' ages now (middle and high school) our current ones have better drawings, notes about the weather, date, where we are, temperature, what we see and hear, and a bit about the sky, wind, and moon. We do take field guides and identify birds, but we haven't ever started learning trees and flowers too well yet, but I plan too. And we draw what we like.

 

Our main focus is to sharpen our drawing skills, to learn to love nature, to slow down and appreciate God's Creation, to make memories together, more than learning specific nature things, though we have learned tons along the way and all have different things we are into about it. Odd now takes more photos than she does drawing entries, but she's still there with us, sharpening her chosen art medium skills.

 

This summer I read the book, Keeping a Nature Journal by Clare Walker Leslie, and took a lot of her ideas.

[Alexigail]

We're using the Nature Portfolio from homeschool journey. I love her stuff!

[Shoes+Ships+SealingWax]

We're using the Nature Portfolio from homeschool journey. I love her stuff!

Those are AWESOME! I really love the History samples, too... I wonder if those would be overkill alongside History Odyssey??

[Mimm]

I googled pictures of other people's nature journals to show them ideas and possibilities and get them into the idea. I got them a nice book and let them pick out markers and colored pencils that were just for nature journaling. We did it sporadically but weren't worried about it.