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/
We’ll see if we can do this! Thanks for more inspiration!
PS- visit my blog to see how things are growing in my garden now. 🙂
I’m so excited because we will be starting back to a bit more structured schooling at the end of this week. Hopefully this will put us back into doing the challenges, I’ve missed them! And I definitely like this one because recently we’ve gotten out of the habit of doing our notebooks.
Thanks again for your inspiration.
Blessings,
Melissa
http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/melissal89
This is just what was needed by our son! I had almost given up hope that he would do any journalling about his Nature studies – but the incentive of a certificate might just get him going again!
He enjoyed finding out more about one of Britain’s most common wild flowers today.
~Chrissy
http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/mamasmurf/561293/
My girls are taking the challenge, we’ve already numbered off 30 fresh pages in their journals. My personal challenge is to complete my journal by Dec. 31, so this will help me as well since my children journal more when I do. We’ll all inspire each other.
~Becky
Great timing…
I just bought new sketch pads for our nature journals!