Our Homeschool Nature Journal
About once a week we will be doing drawings/paintings for our nature journals. I’m really excited about our new nature journals as it’s a great way for the kids to take the lead on what they are learning. Over the summer the boys and I have practiced painting with watercolors and copying illustrations from books or drawing bits of nature we found while outside. So I thought nature journals were a natural transition for us.
We frequently go on nature hikes and play outside where the boys are always finding fun little treasures that they want to explore. I recently purchased some research books to help us study the nature we find.
Yesterday, we discovered some cicada exoskeletons at the playground and brought them home. We looked up cicadas in our books and online to learn about their life and why they shed their exoskeletons. We examined the exoskeletons and used color pencils to draw our cicadas.
The boys really took the lead on this project once I set it up for them. We used our National Audubon Society Field Guide to look up an image and a few facts about the cicadas. We also searched YouTube for a timelapse video of a cicada emerging from it’s exoskeleton. After they complete their drawings I will 3-hole punch the card stock and place it in a 3-ring binder so we can look back at all of our nature experiences throughout the year.
What we use to create out nature journals:
- Neenah Premium Cardstock, 96 Brightness, 65 lb
- Prismacolor Col-Erase Erasable Colored Pencils
- Reeves 10ml Watercolor Paint
- Paint Tray Palettes with Ten-well Thumb Hole
- Loew Cornell 4136 White Nylon Set Paintbrushes
- Aurora 2-Inch Capacity Three Ring Brown Kraft Recycled Binder
Some of our research books include:
Nature Anatomy: The Curious Parts and Pieces of the Natural World
National Audubon Society Field Guide
National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America
Trees of North America: A Guide to Field Identification
