Nature Journaling

In October we took the online Bravewriter "Nature Journaling" class and spent the month outside with our sketch pads and pencils.  We recently moved to a forest so our outside time was easily everyone's favourite part of our school day. 

Here is a sampling of some of the pages from Matt's Journal:

Don't you love the descriptive language?!!!

 

One day we went on a "Colour Walk" and Matt's colour was red.  This is the descriptive paragraphs that came out of the walk:

Apples are one of the things I know are red but trees and leaves take on the colour when they’re getting ready for fall.  Once in the fall, when we were going to the mall to shop, we saw bright red trees.  The red was a pink-red like strawberries and the leaves looked like they were on fire. I used to have a small maple in my backyard but I moved to a forest and now I have millions.  I liked my old maple tree because my dad planted it for me when I was a baby.  

 

Maple trees can be red but cedar trees can also be red under the bark.  I know this because I’ve peeled off some of the bark from a cedar tree before.  When you peel back the dark brown (like a brownie) bark you see another really thin layer of bark that is the colour of red clay. Once I was running through my forest in a game of chase when I tripped over a cedar root and fell down with a crash.  In the split second before I got up and ran again, I saw the thick line of red on the exposed root.  

Cedar trees feel rough like sandpaper or sand on the seashore but maple trees are smooth like silk fabric.  Also, cedar trees have needles instead of leaves.  I like all trees but you can probably tell that maples are my favourite!  I feel happy when I see maple trees outside my window because I have different kinds of maples – one is a red one and one is a green one in the fall. 

 

 

Here is a sampling of pages from Bekah's Journal (she loves words!):

 

 

 

Bekah wrote this after examining the similarities and differences between leaves from the same species:

Hello, I’m here to talk to you about a fascinating recent discovery - even if two things are from the same species (plant, animal, or even human), they don’t necessarily have to look the same. For instance, when I picked up two maple leaves in my backyard, upon first inspection, they were basically the same: both were from a maple tree and both had three main sections. Upon further inspection, however, they were different sizes  - one  the size of a dinner plate and the other  a dessert plate. They were also different colors - one a lime-green with a bit of something else and the other a Dijon-mustardy color with spots like wet cedar bark. Furthermore, one leaf had unusual markings -  little poppy seed-like dots left by some crawling critter and two holes made by a hungry herbivore. The stems were both a purple-red with a bit of yellow and  dotted with swollen nodes.  Although looking closer, they were also different - one stem was shorter than the other, with more yellow and even  a bit of white!

So you see, even if something is from the same species, it will not necessarily look the same as another in that species.