When we started kindergarten homeschool with my oldest, I knew I wanted to spend our days outside of the typical classroom setting and explore more in nature. Having a living education was a relatively new philosophy to me, but I was immediately drawn to the benefits it had in our daily connections together as a family. The idea that learning opportunities are all around us was profound. Although I knew I didn’t need a curriculum for this age, I wanted something that would help guide me in a direction that invited my children to learn through nature in a playful way.
At first, I attempted to make a general list of nature topics I wanted to discover with my kindergartner. Topics like insects, weather, seasons and even bodies of water. I quickly realized that it was too much pressure each week. I simply wanted a booklist for topics, simple suggestions of related activities and a guide for nature journaling.
Exploring Nature With Children
When I came across Exploring Nature With Children, I was immediately intrigued. The community alone was encouraging enough with many activities being shared for each topic. We jumped right into week three of the 2020-2021 curriculum schedule studying the Autumn Equinox and my daughter was so enthralled with celebrating the new season! You can actually get the curriculum calendar for free over on the website here!
The booklists for each week are enough to study a topic with a kindergartner. Reading books related to each nature topic and creating nature crafts is what we enjoy most from the nature studies. Exploring Nature With Children goes deeper with beautiful poems, extended activities and nature journal prompts during a recommended weekly nature walk. This particular curriculum opens the doorway for many family-oriented outings, connection through nature, and plentiful opportunities for nature-focused discussions as a family. It’s delightful, simply laid out, and I appreciate how the curriculum works for so many age groups!
HOW WE DO NATURE STUDY
For kindergarten, we are doing Nature Studies 1-2 times a week. Our time spent in nature studies consists of me reading several books about our nature topic. We then move onto reading a poem out loud during our morning time and a craft. My kindergartner will recite parts of the poem and recreate pieces of the poem with painting, drawing, play-dough or clay
Weekly Nature Walks
“Every walk should offer some knotty problem for the children to think out, ‘Why does that leaf float on the water, and this pebble sink?’ and so on.” – Charlotte Mason
We take our nature walk and enjoy the fresh air and moments to be outside exploring nature up close. It’s not totally practical to be outside walking in AZ summer/spring time for long, so during those seasons we may go virtual somehow or wait until we travel up northern AZ when we camp and hike in cooler temps.
By going on our weekly nature walks, I’m teaching my kindergartner to be observant, to study the details of things outside and to ultimately slow our pace and appreciate the beauty God created for us to immerse ourselves in. It’s been a delight to watch my daughter grab her magnifying glass, point out dragonflies, stop and watch the ants take food to their ant hole, and collect nature treasures to bring home and study further (or use for nature crafting).
Nature Journals
My kindergartner might memorize simple facts of the topics we study, but mostly we enjoy a group extension activity given from the curriculum, crafts and drawing in our nature journals. When I started journaling with my kindergartner, she was even more excited for nature studies because we were doing this together. If I’m being honest, I am enjoying being able to learn right alongside her!
Our nature journals are very simple with a drawing or two of the weekly topics, and 1-3 word narrations of what we observed. In the future I am looking forward to the art of phenology wheels and more detailed nature journaling together! I would also love to add Juniper Grove Journals to our nature studies in the future! But for now, we use these simple spiral-bound notebook pages that work just the same!
Exploring Nature With Children is a living education curriculum
I am very grateful that I stumbled upon Exploring Nature With Children. I can see many opportunities this curriculum will give my children and I to be mindful and stop to observe what God has created. We are already so eager to learn about the various nature topics and look forward to each week!
Exploring Nature With Children isn’t just a checklist of nature topics to be discussed only once in a lifetime. It’s a living education that I’m hopeful my children will appreciate one day when they catch themselves purposefully taking a pause in their busy lives and observe the beauty around them through nature.
