International Nature Journaling Week
Friend of LU, ChatGPT, helped create this image.Ahh, welcome to June – the magical month where life seems to take a deep breath and relax. The pace is slow, the sleeves are short, and the days are long; it’s not too hot and nature is chirping, blooming, frolicking, and breathing deeply with the rest of us. Education shifts from a grind to a glide, when we allow ourselves and our learners to let go of outcomes and just enjoy the process. Summer camps are all making and playing, skill-building and relationship-building, singing and discovery. The pressure is off.
Which is why June is such a perfect month for International Nature Journaling Week!
Nature journaling is a way to record your interactions with the natural world. It’s a practice that combines slow looking (usually reserved for art) with scientific thinking. It’s a set of tools to bring a deliberately sharp focus to the incredible wonders that may otherwise blur in the background of our busy lives.
The nature journaling process is simple. You need something to write and/or draw on (a dedicated journal is great, and so is a piece of scrap paper or the inside of a cereal box or…), and something to write and/or draw with (colors optional!). Alternatively, create a digital journal that would allow you to record sounds and your own thoughts. Find something that grabs your interest and observe it for a while. It could be a plant in your living room, your cat, the ocean, a cloud, a crow, a boulder… you get the idea. And then, use the nature journaling tool set (illustrate, measure, count, describe, compare, zoom in, zoom out, etc.) to record your observations with pictures, words, and/or numbers. For example, you might want to sketch the shape of the plant’s leaves or the pattern in your cat’s fur. Note the number of seconds between waves or the number of layers in the rock. Describe the texture of the cloud or the qualities of the crow’s calls. Capture everything you notice about what you’ve chosen to observe. You can also record questions (I wonder…?) or connections (this reminds me of…) that come to mind. Give yourself plenty of time to observe, wonder, and connect… then observe, wonder, and connect a little bit longer. (This is where nature journaling becomes a practice – the more you look and listen, the more you see and hear.)
White Oak Lifecycle - Watercolor Art Print by Rosalie HaizlettI was introduced to nature journaling by the crack team of educators at the San Diego Zoo; and it was the inimitable educator, theologian, and nature lover Dr. Marion Danforth (a woman I am very lucky to call mother-in-law) who let me know that there is a whole week dedicated to this very cool practice. The topic came up when we were checking out Tiny Worlds of the Appalachian Mountains: The Watercolor Paintings of Rosalie Haizlett – a fantastic exhibit at the North Carolina Arboretum (on view till Sept 7!) by an author and illustrator who, we could tell by looking at her work, practiced nature journaling as part of her artistic process.
Haizlett’s beautiful watercolor paintings depicting details of her natural world reminded me of why nature journaling is so powerfully Learning Unbound-y. It’s an experiential method that makes topics less abstract and more personal; the kind of method that can increase empathy, decrease depression and anxiety, and make learning stickier. It’s an artist’s entry into science; a scientist’s entry into art. It sparks curiosity that can translate to authentic, inquiry-based learning (wonder how that hummingbird can flap her wings constantly but stay in the exact same spot? Let’s investigate!). It can be tailored to pretty much any learning objective by simply giving the journaling a focus – for example:
Elementary students can practice representing and interpreting data by turning measurements from their nature journal into charts and summarizing their findings.
Middle schoolers studying sensory receptors in science can observe birds or insects and focus their journaling on the animal’s behavior, noting potential stimuli and how they might be affecting that behavior.
High schoolers working on writing informative/explanatory texts can take the information collected in their nature journal and turn it into an essay about what they observed.
Students learning about color in art can methodically mix colors and create tints and shades to match the colors in the object they’re observing.
…and these are just the tip of the iceberg! If you’re a preK-12 teacher, could you use nature journaling as the basis for a cross-curricular unit on writing and science? If you’re an informal educator, could you use nature journaling as the basis for a curriculum that combines your institution’s focus with standards that teachers need to address? If you’re an educator who’s taking it easy this June, could you use nature journaling as a way to slow down and reconnect—if not fall deeply in love—with nature?
International Nature Journaling Week is free to participate in, and you don’t even need to RSVP – there are simply themes and prompts for each day of the week (which you can sign up to receive by email, if you choose), and then of course there is the option to share and see what others are doing on social media. Hey, maybe you could pair this 7-day journey with the 7-day Sky Before Screen challenge! Wooo now we’re talking sitting quietly being one with nature and ignoring our phones at least until we want to post our nature journaling pages for the world to see!