A year ago, a great flock of a dozen bluebirds flew into our yard for the day, the Sunday just before the cold spell returned. We delighted in their flitting from tree to grass and back to tree, blueness flashing by.

I got out the Handbook of Nature Study and started reading a bit about the bluebirds to the kids. Then I read to them from chapter 5 of The Burgess Bird Book.

The next day, instead of starting with math as we usually do, I had the nature journals ready. After Morning Time, I announced boldly, “I am going to paint a bluebird so I can always remember yesterday.” I plunked myself down at the dining room table where we do school and proceeded to sketch my bluebird. I had taken the color image and the coloring image from this page, and had arranged them to make a single coloring page in a Word document. I used one of the bluebirds from there as my guide.

The kids sat with me and started coloring their coloring pages. The criteria was to color them identically to the model. It was interesting how Bear (7) took this to heart and tried out a bunch of coloring pencils to get the hues to match exactly. I showed her how you can layer colors as you color. She liked that.

Then J-jo (5) declared he was done and I asked him if he wanted to draw and paint a bird in his sketchbook. Of course he did not. So we compromised and he cut out the birds from the coloring page and glued them into the sketchbook. I cringed a bit at wasting a perfectly great page of watercolor paper! (We use these beautiful, sturdy books.) Bear meanwhile did decide to paint a bird and wrote quite a long entry about the bluebird. It helped that she saw me write more than usual.

We started our journals exactly two years ago and they are barely filled. My goal is to make sure we do some sort of keeping in them weekly, even if the weather does not cooperate. I have been inspired by these daily nature study plans and am trying to bring nature inside more often as a compromise. It’s not my ideal, but it is better than not doing nature study.

What does nature study in your home look like?

Yesterday evening was a cooler one and the kids and I enjoyed drawing the day lilies in our yard.  Drawing the pistil.
We colored them with watercolor pencils.
Then brushed over the color with a wet brush.
We always add the date and a few words.

J-jo’s (4)

Bear’s (6)

Mine
Nature drawing in our journals is one of my favorite things to do with my children.

I’ve been trying to send the children outside more, especially with the warmer days.  I know that being outdoors is important, but it sure can be challenging to spend time outside with busy schedules.  Yet,  I lived outside as a kid.  What has changed?  In fact, this is why I’ve been wanting to read Last Child in the Woods {affil. link} since it came out years ago. However, the library only has it as an audio book and I would fall asleep every time I tried to listen to it, not because it isn’t inspiring (far from it), but because it was usually bedtime when I was finally able to carve out time to listen. I finally just included the parperback in my last Amazon order and have been reading it during Bear’s gymnastics practices.  It’s eye opening and clearly, I don’t send my kids outside enough anymore and I want that to change.  I used to make a huge effort when Bear was younger to make sure we went outside all the time.  Now that she is school aged, I find we are doing school and letting it and gymnastics eat up all that fresh air time.  So last Sunday, when the weather was warm, I sent them out.  What follows is a great inspiration to me that sometimes it’s what happens in spite of the schedule that is most meaningful.

 The Secret to Get Your Kids Enthused About Nature Study:

If you send your kids outside to play,  chances are they will come running in with massive clumps of these pretty purple flowers (a weed, rampart in all the yards on the street), ecstatic to have picked flowers for mom.  Mom will probably excitedly grab her nature journal and say, “These are so beautiful, I want to record them in my nature journal.”
And if mom picks up her nature journal and starts to draw, two other children will rush to get their nature journals and start to draw, too.
Chances are that if mom writes out the Latin name for the flower, a certain 6 year old will eagerly do so as well.
Moreover, if the 4 year old sees everyone writing, he will insist on his own pencil and refuse that mom scribes for him.
And if the children are content and fulfilled doing this impromptu activity with mom, chances are they will be excited to point out more things found in nature.

The moral: Children love to imitate us and do as we do, so dig in and enjoy some nature study, too.

One of the play things in our yard are the ten stumps I salvaged from the neighbors when they had their tall pines removed last year.