Our Nature Journals

I have seen "Nature Journals" around the homeschooling world but never tried them because I wasn't sure my kids would like them.  Boy, was I W.R.O.N.G.!  I found these great nature journal sheets at Living and Learning At Home blog.

We walked around our neighborhood looking at trees, grass, leaves, the beautiful mountains that we live so close too, etc.  After we talked about everything we saw, we came home and started drawing.  This was a great writing exercise for T-Man and Muffin dictated to me.  I love writing word for word what she says because I know one day she will look back at these and laugh. 

T-Man wrote about leaves changing color and trees losing them.

Muffin wrote about the grass turning brown, Halloween and colorful leaves.

We plan to do these once a week and by the end of each school year, they will each have a beautiful book of nature journal pages.

(We did this in October, just getting around to posting it now.)

Leaves anyone??

We don't have a lot of trees in our yard but we do have a few.  The leaves have really been falling the past few days.  T-Man decided that he wanted to go rake them up.  Well, I have absolutely NO problem with that!  What kind of mother would I be if I objected to him cleaning something up?  (Hehe)

So out he goes with the rake.  A few minutes later, Muffin goes out to help.  Every few minutes, I am checking out the window to see that they are still getting along and to my surprise, they are working together to pick up the leaves!  I am ecstatic! Working together nicely and cleaning up?  Wow....what a fantastic morning!

Next time I look out the window, about 5 minutes later, they are both on the tramp with the container of leaves.  Uh-oh......what do I do?  Do I tell them NO and have them dump them in the garbage can?  (I seriously considered this one.)  Do I let them make a mess with them and have fun doing it?  Yep, I chose the 2nd one.  I grabbed my camera and got some shots of them having fun after their hard work.....even if it means the leaves will eventually end back up on the grass.

Thinking about going crazy with the leaves......

Still thinking....

And it has started!

There you go....let LOOSE!

Today's lesson:

For T-Man, it was WORK (which he hates to do).  He did most of the raking and did great at it.  The best part is that I didn't even have to tell him to start it in the first place....or finish it!  :)  This makes me one happy mama!

For Muffin, it was working with T-Man and obeying.  She is a very independent squirt and has a hard time dealing with someone telling her what to do.

And then of course we can't forget about the most important lesson of all!  PLAYING!  They are kids after all!  :)