This is my 16th post of my #write28days series of Homeschooling Helps, Hints and Resources. Today I want to talk about nature studies. The best part about doing these studies is you can do them regardless of where you live. You can do nature studies with just a notebook, pencils and anyplace outdoors. Or lacking the ability to find somewhere outdoors to do due to surroundings or due to climate, the Internet provides a vast amount of information helpful for this study.
Whether you decide to use a formal program, elaborate notebooking pages, or free notebooking pages you find online, nature studies provide even the youngest of children a way to examine the world around them. Another thing I loved about nature studies is that all of my children could do it together at the same time.
While there are sites that provide formal nature study resources, I do not feel they are absolutely necessary. For our family, a blank drawing notebook, pencils, colored pencils and any place outdoors worked fine for us. Whether we utilized our own backyard, a park, or other outdoor venues, my children could draw, take pictures to later add to their notebooks and make their own drawings of, or even pick up leaves and other items to study when we arrived home.
So if you want a simple way to explore the world around you, try some nature studies for yourself.
So if you do nature studies yourself already or decide to try them for the first time, I would love to hear from you.