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Learn to slow down and enjoy life as you observe and reflect upon the world around you. In Part One of this book, you will learn what it means to keep a nature journal, how to start exploring, and how to express your thoughts using the written word and drawings. If you’re not a great artist, don’t panic! This book will help you lay aside your fears as it encourages you to improve your skills through practice.

Part Two of this manual focuses on the ongoing journal, providing ideas to keep your journal active throughout the changing seasons. Centering a portion of your seasonal observations on a stationary object or place such as the tree across the street, an easily observed park or street corner, or even the moon will lend a sense of continuity to your entries.

The final section is entitled “Learning and Teaching Nature Journaling”. This segment consists of a number of exercises to help the reader gain confidence with basic drawing skills including contour, capturing basic shapes, foreshortening, perspective, and shading. The author has also provided helpful tips to simplify drawing flowers, landscapes, weather, reptiles and amphibians, birds, and other objects which may prove difficult to capture on paper.

The last few chapters of this section are devoted to the idea of teaching the art of nature journaling to people of all ages, and adapting nature journaling to a group activity. This portion stresses the role of the teacher in creating learning situations that stimulate learners to begin writing or drawing in a journal.

The book has just a bit of evolutionary content in it, but nothing that can’t be avoided. A helpful appendix at the back of the book gives suggested reading, additional resources, and a suggested scale for teachers to assess nature journaling skills. Complete index. - Rachel

Customer Review

 
Julie M. from Red Bluff, CA wrote the following on 05/29/2007:
I bought this book when we switched our method of homeschooling from using textbooks to using unit studies. (Ch. 11, Journaling with School Groups, even has a few pages about using journaling as a part of "an interdisciplinary, hands-on curriculum" that helps a newbie like me add journaling to unit studies.) I have 5 children ages 3 to 17. We needed something that could cover many grade levels and be used over and over. This manual serves both of those purposes. We were almost completely new to journaling and this book has taught us many new things like how to sketch an object even if you can hardly make stick figures. We have started to incorporate days in our school year for the kids and me to pack up our drawing materials, notebooks, water and snacks and go exploring. Sometimes we drive to a new place, sometimes we stay in our front yard. This book was meant to be read by the teacher and the ideas in this book are to be shown/taught to the students. Older children could read through the book and use it on their own. Just the feel of the cover and the heavy sheeny pages make you feel like you are picking up a special book. There is one drawback to this book, especially if older students are using it on their own. It has references to both evolution and mother earth. At first, it is subtle, then builds towards the end of the book. Some of the comments are quotes from other people in the margins of the pages, but the quotes make up a lot of the book. I feel this book has a lot of good to offer. I just wished I would have been "warned" before I bought it.