Course Sample for Our Nature and Outdoors Homeschool Science Course
Hello and welcome to these lessons for the family, and all ages, on exploring the outdoors!
For this first month, we’re going to look at Evergreens (if you live in a colder climate) or Sand (if you live somewhere warm). And we will also get our nature journals ready for all the things we’ll be putting in them.
A few books you might like to take out of the library for inspiration:
Keeping a Nature Journal by Clare Walker Leslie
How to Keep a Naturalist’s Notebook by Susan Leigh Tomlinson
Draw Real Animals! by Lee Hammond
Drawing From Nature by Jim Arnosky
The first thing you need to do, if you don’t already have a nature journal, is to think about what kind of journal you want. It doesn’t have to be fancy, and it’s a very personal choice.
Some people like to get a sketchbook and draw or write directly into it. Some people like a composition book with a blank space above and lines to write below. I use a three-ring binder. I always have a sketchbook and camera with me, but when I get home I like to punch holes in the sketch page, print the photos, and add them into my binder. You might even (with a parent’s permission and supervision) post your photos and observations on a blog instead, and have the whole thing printed at the end of the year.
A nature journal does not have to be full of drawings. I can’t draw very well, but I love to take photos. So I always try my hand at a sketch for practice, but I like to add in photos, poems, maps, comments, and information about what I saw.
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