Nature Journaling with Preschoolers

Creating a Home Nature Journal

Spring is in the air and with it the start of our Nature Journal. As a child I remember Nature Journaling with my Mum and Dad,  it was filled with leaves we picked up, drawings we made and observations it was a scrap book of the changing seasons for us to have and look back on throughout the year. It’s a childhood memory that I want to pass to my children and something that will help us to explore the changing seasons and the back garden nature throughout the year.

This year is the first year we’ve started with J and I’ve created a very simple one to start off with. Using A3 paper I’ve folded in half and then folded in half again and cut along the top edge to make a folded Nature Journal. Then using some yarn I tied the pages in the middle making a very simple book.

On the front I wrote Nature Journal and he wrote his name and we left space for a picture or something to be added to the front cover and then we started with our first entry.

Frog Spawn – yes finally our frogs have laid eggs and we’ve collected the spawn and it’s currently sitting on my kitchen side in a Tupperware box waiting for our observations over the next few months as the frog spawn develops.

To the page I added the word Frog Spawn and then J copied the word Frog underneath and then drew the spawn.

T is keeping her own Nature Journal – I’ve made bigger pages for her and her first entry for her Nature Journaling is Horse (not quite sure why it’s a horse – but I’m guessing there is a connection going on there somewhere).

We’ve spent the afternoon frog hunting and talking about the frog life cycle as well as reading a few of our favourite frog books with all the enthusiasm.

The advantage of the format of book that I’ve made is that I can add more pages to it throughout the year different sorts of paper and sizes will fit in when folded and I can’t wait to find out what additions we make to our book over the next year.

Do you keep a Nature Journal?