This is how your own personality comes out in your nature journal.
My daughter and I each were sitting on a rock and looking pretty much at the same scene below Yosemite Falls. How could our perceptions have been so different?
It is just so interesting to me that we could each focus on something different…..I focused on Half Dome and she focused on the lovely stream of water and rocks.
I just thought you might be interested to see how there is no “right” answer when you are nature journaling.
“The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
***Note to those just starting out with nature journals***
Everyone feels that little twang the minute a blank page is opened in the journal itself. I want my journal to be perfect and wonderful and worthy of awe but I don’t always seem to get what is in my head down onto the actual page so be comforted when you feel as if you are the only one that views your first efforts as inadequate.
I will try to explain what I have learned about nature journals and include some of my actual nature journal pages from the last eight years to help illustrate what I have discovered. Please know that it takes a lot of courage on my part to share my feeble beginnings and to show just how much I still have room to grow. Sharing these pages, others can see that this is a work in progress even for those of us who have been at the process of nature journaling for a number of years. (You can click on any of the images and they will enlarge.)
Here are some pages that show how I just do the best I can to get down on paper what I am seeing at the time. I don’t draw faces very well so I just left it blank. I also will sometimes just trace something like a leaf or a flower into my journal and then add a bit of color. It works.
The process of finding something you want to include in your journal is more important than the actual journal entry. When you are trying to keep a nature journal, you actually need to have some sort of contact with nature and that is the first step….usually the hardest step is just getting out the door of your house. The actual getting outside into your little square of nature is more valuable than the journal entry itself if you really think about it. You are outside under the big, beautiful sky. You are spending time with your children and showing them by your example that you value being out-of-doors. Anything that happens while in the process of finding something to record in your journal is the real experience of the nature journal.
It is my journal and it can be any way that I wish it to be.
Here I am trying to show the progress of our garden.
I opened my journal this morning and this pressed flower fell out. I had pressed it between the folds of a napkin and put it in my nature journal. You can also find leaves pressed between the pages of my nature journal.
There is no magic formula but your success is equal to the effort you are willing to put into it.
I started to work with watercolor and I was brave enough this summer to actually do a watercolor straight into my nature journal. You can decide what you need to teach yourself in order to make your nature journal your own expression of your experiences in nature.
This is a more recent journal entry that I made *after* working through the book Sketching in Nature. I can already see the difference. I am starting to be able to take some of the ideas of others and make them my own in my personal nature journal. I am working on drawing the water so that it looks like it is moving…it is coming along.
I have recently become fascinated with the journals of Lewis and Clark and those of John Muir, the conservationist. The connections between their journals and their legacy is indisputable. Our journals and those we encourage our children to keep will be a link to their deepened understanding of how wonderful and exciting a world was created for us to live in.
Outdoor Hour Challenge #21
Keeping a Nature Journal
“As soon as a child is old enough, he should keep his own nature notebook for his enjoyment. Every day’s walk will give something interesting to add–three squirrels playing in a tree, a blue jay flying across a field, a caterpillar crawling up a bush, a snail eating a cabbage leaf, a spider suddenly dropping from a thread to the ground, where he found ivy and how it was growing and what plants were growing with it, and how ivy manages to climb.”
Charlotte Mason in Modern English, volume 1 page 54
Outdoor Time:
Use your 10-15 minutes of outdoor time to casually observe whatever comes your way. Many families are finding that if they are diligent about keeping their eyes alert to things around them, interesting subjects come up while going about their everyday life. Try to view your whole week as outdoor time and if you are out running errands, keep alert to anything you can observe as you walk along. Children can over time start to see more and more details and as their skills and senses are trained, your outdoor time will become more of a way of life.
Follow-Up:
After you have your outdoor time, provide an opportunity for working on a nature journal entry. My son was around three years of age when he started making “entries” into his journal. He would draw and I would label for him. You can help your child think of something to draw after discussing the day’s activities. Here is a link to the Outdoor Hour Flickr group with examples of nature journals done by participants.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/naturejournal1/
I thought I would share a quick little nature journal idea that we like to make for an outing or a special roadtrip.
Materials:
Fold the paper in half.
Punch two holes near the edge of the folded side of the paper.
Put the rubberband around the twig and then down through one of the holes.
Stretch the rubberband on the backside of the paper and up through the other hole.
Put the rubberband around the other end of the twig.
There you have it.
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Add decoration to the cover if you wish.
Outdoor Hour Challenge #5
Making a List
1. Have you decided on a focus area yet?
If you have a focus already, turn to the table of contents in the Handbook of Nature Study and skim down to your area of focus. Look down the list of subjects covered in your area. Highlight or underline those items listed that you think you will encounter during the next five to seven weeks. For example if your area of focus is garden flowers, skim down the list and see if you recognize any flower names that you have in your backyard or area. I actually see ten flowers that our family may come in contact with in our region. Pick one item in your focus area to study, turn to those pages, and read to your child about that subject. At the end of each section, there are observation ideas for each subject and these observation suggestions will be the parent’s reading assignment this week.(see below) As you find things in your focus area, keep a running list in the front or back of your nature journal of those items.
Reading Assignment for parents: Read the observation suggestions in the Handbook of Nature Study for the item you chose to read about with your child. Keep these ideas in mind as you have your outdoor time this week. For example, if you are focusing on garden flowers and you are going to read to your child about tulips, turn to the end of the section on tulips and read Lesson 151 which includes eight suggestions for observation. Keep these ideas in mind as you head out for your nature walk.
2. During your 10-15 minute walk, use your senses to not only observe but to hear the sounds of your surroundings.
“ …the mother must not miss this opportunity of being outdoors to train the children to have seeing eyes, hearing ears and seeds of truth deposited into their minds to grow and blossom on their own in the secret chambers of their imaginations”
“No reading aloud or storytelling–in fact, there should be as little talking from her (mother) as possible, and what little there is should have a definite purpose.” Charlotte Mason volume one, page 45
3. Follow up with a discussion. Did you see anything new to add to your list of focus items? Did you complete any of the suggested observations? Do you need to do any further research to answer questions?
4. Give an opportunity for a nature journal entry. Try to encourage a simple drawing, a label, and a date. Pull out the previous challenges and review the alternatives for younger children.
The main idea of this challenge is to start a list of things you find within your focus area. You can use paper clips to fasten a list into the front of your nature journal. The list can be removed when you change your focus and it can be taped or glued into your nature journal on any page you choose.
The list can be simply the names of the items or you can add the dates you observed them and the location if you want to be more thorough. Sometimes my whole nature journal entry is just a list of things that I see on a particular outing.
The beauty of a nature journal is that it is yours to do with as you want to. I hope to give you a lot of ideas that you can choose from over the coming challenges.
This challenge is found in the Getting Started ebook which is included in every level of membership. The ebook provides the challenge as shown above as well as custom notebook pages for your follow up nature journal if desired.
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This challenge is found in the Getting Started ebook which is included in every level of membership. The ebook provides the challenge as shown above as well as custom notebook pages for your follow up nature journal if desired.
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Outdoor Hour Challenge #2
Using Your Words
1. Read page 15 in the Handbook of Nature Study. (The Field Excursion) Read page 23-24 in the Handbook of Nature Study. (How to Use This Book) Make note of any points you want to remember. My favorite is “The chief aim of this volume is to encourage investigation rather than to give information.” This is where many people misunderstand the HNS. It is not a field guide but it teaches us how to help our children with nature study. |
2. “It is a mistake to think that a half day is necessary for a field lesson, since a very efficient field trip may be made during the ten or fifteen minutes at recess, if it is well planned.” Challenge yourself to take another 10-15 minute “excursion” outdoors in your own yard again this week. Before setting out on your walk, sit with your children and explain to them that when you remain quiet during your nature time, you are more likely to hear interesting things. Brainstorm some sounds they might hear and build some excitement about remaining quiet during their nature walk this week. Take your walk and if they get rowdy, use the universal finger over your lips sign to get them to quiet down. Set a good example and be quiet yourself, modeling how to listen carefully.
3. After your walk, challenge your children to come up with words to describe the following things:
One word to describe something they heard. (For example: rustling, snapping, crunching or chirping)
Two words for something they saw. (For example: tall trees, frozen water, red birds)
Three words for something they felt. (For example: freezing cold wind, rough sticky pinecone)
4. Optional nature journal entry:
Use their words as the basis for a simple nature journal entry. If the child is too young to write in the journal himself, you can write for them. “Everything he learns should be added to his nature notebook by him or, if he’s too little to write, his mother.” Charlotte Mason, volume 1, page 58.
At this point, you can pull out some colored pencils or crayons and invite them to illustrate their nature journal page if they want to. I always leave it as an option for my boys and I would say about half the time they draw. I feel like the nature walk and the discussion is the meat of our nature study and that it is the most important part of what we do. “No child should be compelled to have a notebook.” HNS page 14 (Next week we will read about drawing in our nature journals in the Handbook of Nature Study, page 17.)
5. If in your discussion of your nature walk your child expresses a particular interest in something they saw or heard or felt, make a note of it for further research later in the week. Remember to check your Handbook of Nature Study index for more information about your nature interests.
This challenge is found in the Getting Started ebook which is included in every level of membership. The ebook provides the challenge as shown above as well as custom notebook pages for your follow up nature journal if desired.
