Posted in Nature Studies

In 2004 we started to do Nature Journaling as a part of our Nature studies.  We did not journal every week or even ever month.  We were very inconsistent.  In 2006, I read Karen Andreola's Pocketful of Pinecones and I got motivated again to begin and we did a little. But that was the school year we started to pack up and move. So I put the nature journaling on a back burner. Now that we are homeschooling  I really wanted to get started again but I did not really know where to begin.

A few weeks back I heard about this website http://www.handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com on one of my Yahoo groups.  I read the One hour challenges and decided to start this week.  I saved it until Friday so that Sarah could join in with us since she gets out of school at noon on Friday.. 

This has been a VERY rainy week.  Joel took this picture of Joshua on Tuesday in our backyard. But today we have not had any rain at all. So it turned out to be the perfect day for doing nature study.  Since we have so many unfamiliar plants in our yard I decided to start there.

Here is Rebekah and her work! The name of her plant is named Alpinia.

This is Sarah and her art work!

Joshua even got in on the fun.  He enjoyed the bugs and ants best.

After we went in we looked on line to find out the names of our discoveries.  Since these are tropical plants that we are not familiar with(with the exception of the petunia and periwinkle)  and we did not know their names.  Even my horticultural husband did not even know the names of these two plants.  It was a challenge finding the name of my plant because so many people classify it as a bird of paradise based on the description. It is one of my favorite plants in our yard.  We also have a variety of this plant that has a longer stem and hangs.  Right now the bloom is very small so when it is full grown I will take a picture and post it. So we all learned something today.

Here is my plant that I focused on. It is called  HeliconiaI know I am not an artist but I really enjoy recording our outings in my journal.

I hope that you find Journaling as fun as we have.

Note:  I did not get this post like I had planned.  When I woke up this Saturday morning it was raining.  It has rained all day.  I am so Thankful to God that he gave us such a nice beautiful day yesterday to enjoy his creation.  He blessed us so much yesterday exploring His creation and making memories with my kids.