O Lord, how manifold are your works!
In wisdom have you made them all
the earth is full of your creatures.
Here is the sea, great and wide,
which teems with creatures innumerable,
living things both small and great.
Psalm 104:24-25
One of the biggest hangups for getting my kids to use their nature journals on a regular basis was that the majority of recommendations were to bring journals out into the field and draw something while on the outing. For me, always with a very small baby and a troublesome toddler in tow, I found it torturous and frustrating to try to guide my scholars to select their specimen to draw in their nature journals. Then, to actually draw the specimen (and not a car or princess) and then color it the color God made it and not a rainbow of colors that simply never happened consistently. Why would I subject myself to this madness? (You can check out my video about "How I do Nature Study with Small Children" here.)
So, for a while, I stopped trying to get nature journals to happen at all.
As a listener of The Mason Jar Podcast, I heard Cindy Rollins say several times that she would simply have her children draw from nature journals while she was reading aloud. This, I could do! Sitting at a table and drawing from nature books would allow me to easily see everyone and would allow us to be a little bit more organized, plus they could hear me. Finally, they could have their colored pencils ready and not risk dropping them all over kingdom come.
This simple idea of doing nature journals inside the home sitting around the table planted a seed for me. I then started exploring how modern naturalists use their nature journals. My favorite resource is Keeping a Nature Journal by Claire Walker Leslie and Charles E. Roth. The ideas you see here combine the work and experience from this book with the work of Anna Comstock in Handbook of Nature Study and, of course, the ideas found in Charlotte Mason’s writings about this topic. To get me started I decided to use Ambleside Online’s Nature Study rotation selections for the current year to eliminate decision fatigue.
Now, the purpose of using the nature journal at home is to TRAIN your children how to use a field journal on their own at a later date. Laurie Bestvater encourages us in her book The Living Page that “the Nature Notebook will have to be presented by the teacher at first… as the student gradually becomes the self-learner who relies on this companionship unconsciously.” For some children this training may be a few years. For others, your structured time with nature and journaling may ignite their interest and they may start picking up their journal on their own. One of my children, within the first 12 weeks of having a plan, began picking out poetry to write into the nature journal about the current month, and later I caught that same child sketching a few different trees into the nature journal. Another child was taken by our study of the stars and planets and decided to draw an unassigned constellation into the nature journal. This shows me that we are on the right track, though my instruction will continue.
Download these Nature Journal Prompts here:
My goal is to give my children the tools they need to keep a nature journal as adults. I’m not even concerned if they decide to keep a nature journal in their adulthood or not. But, I know there will be times when they will be alone, times when they will need to focus their thoughts and ideas or even escape. If keeping a nature journal will help them, I want it to be an option. And this is why it’s important that we have a plan to train the habit of using the nature journal regularly and also to teach what elements are available to be placed into a nature journal. (Hint: every subject can be utilized to study nature.)
A nature journal can be used out in the field AND can also be used inside the walls of your home. I prefer to get our kids started using a nature journal in the home at a table both after we’ve gone out and explored or perhaps even in preparation for an outing to train our eyes for what to look for and help us to pay closer attention to what we see.
“It would be well if we all persons in authority, parents and all who act for parents, could make up our minds that there is no sort of knowledge to be got in these early years so valuable to children as that which they get for themselves of the world they live in. Let them once get touch with Nature, and a habit is formed which will be a source of delight through life. We were all meant to be naturalists, each in his degree, and it is inexcusable to live in a world so full of the marvels of plant and animal life and to care for none of these things.”
Home Education by Charlotte Mason pg. 61
Once you’ve picked out your topic, you will want to start using your nature journal to record your findings, start drawing or even finding poetry to describe the parts of nature you grow to love more deeply. I’ve included a list here of types of entries that you may include in your journals. You will notice that they aren’t all of the drawing variety. As I’ve studied naturalists, I’ve found that some love to write words in their journals, some love to draw and date their art and some make lists or track measurements and statistics. In fact, there are as many ways to enter information into a nature journal as there are subjects to study. But, that’s a bit overwhelming when we are starting out, isn’t it? So here, I am giving you some ideas for types of entries to make in your journals. You can see it as a menu. Take what you like and leave what you don’t.
Sign up below to receive my free ebook Nature Study Hacking. I’ve included lesson plans for those who would like a guide to get you started doing nature study and using your journal habitually without the burden of deciding what to do next.
Here’s the list of ideas for you to inspire your nature journal entries:
1. Copywork: Anatomy Page (Science/Language Arts/Art)
copy parts and draw a diagram from a model
parts of a flower/tree/horse/eye
2. Copywork: Theme Page (Science/Language Arts/Art)
copy classification types/sizes/shapes etc (i.e. leaf shape, various angles of subject, bird feet types, tree shapes, caterpillar/chrysalis/larvae/eggs/plant it eats etc)
3. Draw Specimen: Label with common name, label with Latin name (Art, Language Arts)
find an interesting fact about a subject
Draw parts – i.e bud, flower, leaf, bark pattern, whole shape
4. Narration: (mother record’s into Nature Notebook if child is too young to write well) (Language Arts)
From a recent nature outing, record the date and location then:
- What did you see and where?
- What were the weather conditions?
- What did you like?
- What did you not like?
5. Narration: Observe a habitat – draw or write about what else lives in/on/around/under/with your subject (Science/Language Arts)
6. Rubbings, tracings and pressings (Art)
7. Phenology wheel month-by-month/day-by-day (Science)
- Select something with a cycle to observe
Caterpillars, trees, phases of the moon, weather patterns etc
8. Phenology wheel to track one subject throughout the year (Science)
9. Find a poem about the subject and copy it into your Nature Notebook (Language Arts)
10. Track growth or patterns with a bar graph (Math)
11. Learn the history of the subject you are observing, use an encyclopedia, reference book or search the Internet with you parents. Record your findings on your page.
12. Draw a map
Your home, favorite hiking spot, layout of a garden, neighborhood walking route and notable plants/animals/birds you encounter
Nature Study Series Resources:
What is Nature Study? (Start here.)
Do Nature Study with your children and like it!
Getting outside with children for Nature Study
Getting started doing nature journals with your kids You are here!
Nature Study Hacking| Flowers Lesson Plans