First Nature Journalling Lesson

I explained to Nuh that we would be learning about nature in school, so we would look at plants, flowers, insects, birds etc.. We would go on walks where we collected nature or took pictures and we would then draw what we had seen in a special book called a nature journal.

I bought three hardbacked books with okish quality paper in them, one for me, one for Nuh and one for Zuh. I bought these from 'the works' I know that you can get them from Amazon though (see link below).. We then decorated the front of our Nature Journal with our names and flower stickers.






sketch book on amazon







I then collated our field kit. I used a large 'tuff bag' to keep the field guide books in and a smaller 'tuff bag' inside of it to keep the drawing pencils, eraser, sharpener, brushes and water colour pencils in.
I usually take bottle of water with me to paint with. I know that the CM method requires watercolour paints, but at such a tender age I though that water colour pencils would be better.

For our first outing I wanted to look at flowers, as I know that Nuh likes them. So we headed to Normanby Hall which has a nice walled garden that contains lots of flowers. As we walked around the garden I pointed out different flowers and we talked about how different they were. I then asked Nuh to choose a flower that he would like to draw in his nature journal. He chose a 'cosmos' flower, we found one on the floor (bonus, I would not advocate picking flowers). I told Nuh that this type of flower is called 'cosmos'  we then examined the flower, we talked about how many petals it has, the colour and shape of the petals, the colour of the centre of the flower. I did not want to introduce too much terminology at this point as he is only 5. We talked about the leaves and the stalk. We then sat at a picnic table and drew the flower in our nature journals. Once we had drawn the flower in our nature journals I then looked up some information in one of the field guides, I told Nuh that the flower comes from Mexico ( He knows where this is from Montessori Geography) but we have introduced it into our country by bringing the seeds here and growing them. I also informed him that they are annual flowers, which means that they will die at the end of summer. I then wrote this in his journal for him as he is incapable of writing this much yet.

 ( I know I made a mistake in his journal and wrote perennial , oopps...)

Nuh's drawing of a cosmos

I also drew one in my nature journal, I like to journal right along side of Nuh, one it teaches him how to draw and two encourages him by seeing his mummy doing it. Three I love it, I love anything arty.


Other items that we use for nature journalling are a field microscope, and a flower press for preserving specimens. We then tape these into our nature journal.

I bought both of these items from Amazon. You can get them here:

PINTOY FLOWER PRESS


FIELD MICROSCOPE