About
With the rise of digital technology creeping into nearly all aspects of our lives, I want to cultivate the habit of getting my children out in nature regularly throughout the week. Through the years, I've tried various strategies for implementing "Nature Study" with my family. Nature Study is the study of the physical world collectively and doing it in a formal way means that you spend a set amount of time learning about, say, birds and later you may learn about trees etc and eventually, you learn a lot about the world we live in.
The greatest problem I've run into, however, when implementing nature study with my children is the vast amount of information available making it feel impossible to figure out where to begin. Other have suggested doing nature study "as you go." Unfortunately, for those who are new to nature study, this advise isn't helpful and usually leaves the novice naturalists frustrated. "As you go" never happens because they simply don't have a plan. And a goal without a plan is just a wish.
When I was pregnant with our 6th child, I found that I had to plan out our children's school work in greater detail and also more simply. I had sever fatigue and spent many months laying on the couch. It was at this time that I developed a way to simplify our families lesson plans. This simplification spread throughout our homeschool. What I found in my planning was that in order to simplify nature study I had to do a ton of research and dive deeply into each topic that I wanted my children to study in order to come up with a simplified plan. And that, my friends, is how Nature Study Hacking was born.
Since I'm a researcher and minimalist by nature, I studied deep and wide to find out the best practices from naturalist and educators for how others have taught and implemented nature study at home and at school. My lessons are based on Anna Botsford Comstocks book Handbook of Nature Study. I've simplified her lessons into more palatable bites and combined them with nature journal prompts to help guide you and your students through the variety of ways available to journal about nature using your chosen subject as the platform for inspiration. My goal is for my students to have a deep well to draw from when they are older and working in their journals apart from my guidance.
I want to guide them now so they have the skills in their later life to know how to use a nature journal.
The result has been revolutionary for us. My children are now regularly picking up their nature journals on their own to make entries, whereas we weren't using them enough before to get them in the habit.
I decided to make these lesson available to other families so you too may enjoy the same benefits we are seeing in our home!
If you'd like to see what it's all about, you can download a free sample below! My gift to you! Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the woods!
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Copyright Joy Cherrick