IF YOU ARE NEW TO NATURE JOURNALING PLEASE LOOK AT OUR NATURE JOURNALING PAGE FOR MORE INFORMATION.

Nature Journaling  is an incredible tool for students to practice literacy and learn how to incorporate numeracy into their observations.

At this age children will have a greater focus on the statement "I Notice..." & "It reminds me of...".  Depending on the age and ability of the child, words, pictures and numbers will be used more than others to make their observations.  For deeper conversations educators will engage in back and forth conversations with the children and can help scribe their thoughts and feelings to their journal pages.   With permission Bethan Burton has allowed us to link to her website as she has written a blog post for Teaching nature journaling at all ages.  

Here are some more of Bethan's ideas to get you started.

• It is going to be MESSY at this age and there will be lots of play!

  • • Engage the fives senses (whenever possible)

    • Make leaf prints ( paint the leaf and press the print into the journal)

    • Make leaf rubbings

    • Trace the items they are looking at 

    • Make hand prints with mud

    • Add leaves into the journal using tape

    • Count the birds/squirrels/insects etc. - make a graph

    • Use chalk to follow an ants path on the ground and then have them transfer that into the journal.

Here is a downloadable lesson from John (Jack) Muir Laws and Emilie Lygren book: How to Teach Nature Journaling. All resources shared with permission.  "I Notice..., I Wonder...?, It Reminds me of..."

GIVING FEEDBACK here is a fantastic resource from Jack and Emilie

NOTE: You are encourage to spend time in the outdoors Nature Journaling.  However, you can also bring nature inside, look out your wonder window, have a refrigerator Safari or even observe a house plant or pet.

Find a space to explore that will allow you to see flowers. These can be flowers in a garden, wild flowers on a lawn, trail or in a forest, flowers in pots in your home, or flowers you find in a book or magazine. Start with one flower. Count the number of petals on the flower. 

• Find a flower nearby, does it have more or less petals than the first one you looked at?

• Can you count the number of flowers you can see in the same area?

• If you didn't plant the flowers you counted, how did they get there?

Don't have any flowers? Look for leaves, pine cones, seeds or even blades of grass!

NOTE: This can be used with the Nature Journaling activity above 

Go outside into the garden or use containers indoors to plant some seeds.   Count your seeds.  How many seeds are you putting in a container or a row?

As your seeds begin to sprout, measure their height everyday.  Keep track of this in a journal, don't forget to draw a picture of the plant each day showing how it is growing.  Use non-standard units of measurement to measure the growth of your plant. For example: use 10 of one of the objects below to create a measuring tool. Line them up in a row and use them to compare the height of each plant.

• Paper clips

• Fingernail length

• Pencil

• Stick

• Lego

• Or other common objects

NOTE: This can be used with the Nature Journaling activity above 

Go for a walk outside, look in your backyard or around the house and collect a number of items.  If outside look for sticks, rocks, leaves, pinecones, etc.   If indoors look for lego, cars, crayons, etc.  Once you have collected all your materials you are going to do the following:

1) Use two hula hoops,  two ropes, two circles drawn on the ground in chalk, two placemats, or anything else that can be used to create two distinct places.

2) Then begin to sort your items, you can sort them by:

• • Colour

  • Size

  • Texture

  • Shape

  • Any other characteristics you can think of

3) If your items fall into both categories the sorting area can be overlapped.  Refer to the picture on the left.

NOTE: This can be used with the Nature Journaling activity above