Exploring Nature Through Journaling
Explore and discover nature with Hands-On Education
What Is a Nature Journal?
A nature journal is a wonderful way to record our observations in nature. A nature journal will look different for everybody and may include drawings, paintings, photographs, descriptions and even pressed plants and flowers.
This summer Hands-On Education are excited to launch our first nature journal! This is a fantastic way to support children in developing a closer relationship with the natural environment around them. I began designing this journal when Teddy and Harry were younger. After taking the boys out on our nature walks with our sketchbook and pencils in hand, I quickly realised a blank sketchbook was not right for us. The boys felt overwhelmed by the blank pages and didn’t know where to start or what to do. This nature journal provides children with large and beautiful images to colour, nature hunts to follow and templates for children to record their observations.
How Can I Make the Nature Journal?
Once you have paid for and downloaded the PDF, you have access to the complete document. You can either look through the pages and print a single page at a time or create a book the way I choose to, whichever is most suitable for your situation.
If you choose to print the entire document I recommend printing the first page onto card for sturdiness. Then print the document using the double-sided setting (if possible) to save paper. When creating the book, you can use a hole punch and then insert them into a binder. Alternatively, I use a fairly simple Fellow’s binding machine to make the holes and bind the pages together.
How Do I Use the Nature Journal?
- Plan a nature walk: have an idea of where you will go on your nature walk and what you might see. This way you can encourage children to look for particular aspects around you.
- Journal outside or at home: some children may find it exciting to be outside with their nature book and crayons. Others may find they are more comfortable drawing when they get home. Or maybe a combination of both!
- Copy pictures: invite children to copy images in the nature journal or provide books with images for them to look at.
- Nature hunts: this nature journal provides a variety of nature hunts to follow. Choose one of the hunts to encourage children to look for specific items.
- Drawing around nature items: to get children more familiar in drawing shapes, invite them to draw around different nature items instead of drawing what they see. For example, place a leaf at on the page and invite your child to draw around it. This will help them to get the right shapes.
- Time to play: allow time for your children to play in nature and enjoy the surroundings around them. This is really important as the nature journal should not be thought of as an assignment or homework.
What Is a Nature Walk?
A nature walk is what it sounds like – a walk in nature! There are a number of natural environments you can go to in order to make your observations in nature. This might include your garden, a forest or even the beach. Nature is all around us and there is no limit to how much exploring is possible. Even a corner playground possesses some of nature’s secrets.
What Should We Observe?
There are so many different aspects within nature to observe. Firstly, consider the season and where you will go on your nature walk. You will find plenty of daffodils in parks and gardens around February. Where as in the autumn you will find a plethora of conkers.
Here are a few ideas of things to observe throughout the year:
- Winter: bird nests, stick shapes and lengths, evergreen trees, snowdrops (usually seen in January), moss.
- Spring: daffodils, dandelions, frog spawn and tadpoles, blossom tress.
- Summer: butterflies, bees, birds, flower colours and identification, sea shells.
- Autumn: deciduous trees, leaf colours, leaf identification, sycamore seeds, conkers, minibeasts (look under longs and stones), fungi, worms and snails.
- All year round: weather, cloud formations and cloud shapes.
Developing Observational Skills
Using our nature journal was a fantastic way for Teddy and Harry to develop their early drawing and observational skills. The pages I designed were able to inspire and encourage them to interact with nature and see it in ways they had previously missed.
Now that they are older, they are no longer as intimidated by a blank page and have continued to create a nature journal; only now it’s a sketch book. As a family we try to go out at least once a month looking for different aspects in nature as the months and seasons change. They then draw what is found either while outdoors or once back home.
Our favourite Nature Study Books
There are so many wonderful books about nature that it’s difficult to recommend only a few. Below I have narrowed it down as best I could. Please note that I have either borrowed or bought all the books I recommended and I am not being sponsored to list them.
I love finding books with beautiful illustrations and artwork to inspire the boys in their drawings and observations. Once I have found an author or illustrator I really like, I often look for their other books and projects. It’s great when you feel you can connect with a book and know there is more to discover!
These are our favourite nature stories to inspire beautiful artwork and drawings:
- Slow Down by Rachel Williams and Freya Hartas
- A Butterfly Is Patient by Dianna Hutts Aston and Sylvia Long
- Robbins! How They Grow Up by Eileen Christelow
- Pond by Jim LaMarche
- Are You a Bee? by Judy Allen and Tudor Humphries
And these are our favourite picture biographies about inspiring naturalists. We have enjoyed finding out about the lives of these extraordinary people who have fallen in love with nature and its many wonders.
- The Boy Who Drew Birds: A Story of John James Audubon by Jacqueline Davies
- Out Of School and Into Nature: The Anna Comstock Story by Suzzanne Slade
- Small Wonders: Jean-Henri Fabre and His World of Insects by Matthew Clark Smith
- The Bug Girl: Maria Merian's Scientific Vision by Sarah Glenn Marsh
- Buzzing With Questions: The Inquisitive Mind of Charles Henry Turner by Janice N. Harrington
- Beatrix Potter And Her Paintbox by David McPhall
Finally, here are a couple of our favourite pottery books. Again, they are beautifully illustrated and the words have inspired our observations and supported us in finding our own words to describe what we see.
- Treasury Of Verse by Enid Blyton (this book is no longer in print but if you are able to get hold of a second-hand copy, I strongly recommended it!)
- Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of The Meadow by Joyce Sidman
- Insectlopedia by Douglas Florain
- Nature Poems: Give Me Instead of a Card by Nicola Davies
- Song Of the Water Boatman and Other Pond Poems by Joyce Sidman
We hope you enjoy playing in and exploring nature this summer! The aim is for our nature journal to assist those that need a little help to get started. Hands-On Education’s nature journal includes:
- Large images to colour.
- A variety of nature to hunts follow.
- Observational templates for children to record what they see.
- Please check it out on our shop or website.
Here are some further sporting topics you can explore exclusively from Hands-On Education.
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