Nature Journaling

Nature journaling has been a big part of our homeschool since we started almost a decade ago. But this year my kids have really gotten into a groove, and our whole family is loving nature journaling in a new and special way.

I want to share all the details about how our family incorporates nature journaling into our homeschool and all the supplies we use and love. If you just want the details on the supplies, I put together a list for you!

Check out our favorite nature journaling supplies.

What is Nature Journaling?

Nature journaling is the simple art of keeping a record of what you see in nature. It’s a practice that is part meditation, part mindfulness, part creative release, and part old-fashioned fun.

Nature might seem like a big, scary word, but nature is ALL around us. Most of our nature journaling is done right in our own backyard. Some of the best nature journaling I ever did was when we had moved to a new house with a tiny lot. We had one newly planted stick of a tree in our yard. I had to look hard to find nature! But it’s amazing what you find when you keep your eyes and ears and senses open to finding it.

Nature journaling is keeping a record of what’s happening in the world. It’s notes on the weather, plants, animals, and changes taking place over time.

It’s using words, pictures, and numbers to help keep this record in a journal so that you can refer back and enjoy watching changes unfold through your journal.

Nature Journaling Mistakes

We’ve been nature journaling for many years, but this is the first year I feel like we are doing it “right.”

I am a perfectionist in some areas, and I definitely think I stressed my kids out about their nature journals in the past. We had beautiful nature journals feature lots of different flora and fauna that we saw in our area, but adding to the nature journal was an event. We sat down once a week to make an entry in our journal. We usually chose just one specimen rom the week and made a beautiful watercolor painting of that specimen before doing a little research and adding some notes to the page.

But what I’ve found this year is that nature journaling as a daily practice (or near daily) is so much more effective. This of course means there isn’t as much time for detailed paintings and the finished products aren’t as aesthetically pleasing.

But the beauty of a nature journal isn’t in the art. You do not need to know how to draw, sketch, or paint. You don’t need to do tons of research or know a lot about nature already.

Nature journaling is amazing because it meets all of us where we are right now.

The Logistics: How We Nature Journal Daily

We keep our supplies in our “nature journal kit.”

It’s a flat-bottomed tote bag with handles that has a drawstring on the inside so nothing falls out. I got it for $3 in the Target Dollar Spot a few years ago and it has been a workhorse! Any bag or basket will do.

I keep our nature journaling kit in our school room so it’s easy to grab and head out side anytime. We often take an outside break during our school day for the kids to get some wiggles out and play. After about 15 minutes of play, one of them will usually run inside to grab the nature journal kit and start journaling outside.

If we don’t do it during our school day, we will often nature journal in the late afternoon after our school work and any activities are finished.

We almost always nature journal together, side by side. It’s not something my kids do alone very often. It feels like a special time of community for us.

At the core of our nature journaling is putting what we see and experience into our journals. We are quickly sketching what we see and adding notes to enhance the observations. We don’t worry about how great our art looks, spelling, grammar, or anything that takes extra time.

We probably spend about 20 minutes a day nature journaling.

Supplies for Nature Journaling

We used to use a lot of supplies for nature journaling, but to make it a daily practice that’s easy to pick up and transport outside, we’ve scaled back our supplies to the bare basics.

The most important supply is a pencil with a good eraser. My kids always wear down the erasers on the pencils so we keep a separate eraser in the kit.

We love using watercolor pencils for most of our nature journal sketches. They color just like regular soft-core colored pencils, but you can add water later to blend colors. I like these colored pencils because they are triangular in shape and don’t roll everywhere. We’ve had this set for more than five years and it’s still going strong.

We also like to have watercolor crayons on hand. Again, these color just like a nice, high-quality crayon, but you can add water and blend them. We keep these in a little bag so they look beat up, but they work great!

We use these watercolor brush pens to blend our watercolor pencils and watercolor crayons. The water lasts forever, I only have to fill them with water every month or so.

I also keep a couple Micron pens in our kit. These are my favorite pens to write notes with. They are too delicate for younger kids to use (they push too hard), but great for my older kids ages 10+.

And lastly, I keep a few random supplies in our kit. We always have a manual pencil sharpener for urgent sharpening needs. I like to keep a few binder clips to be able to clamp down pages when it is windy or clamp down a specimen to draw or trace. We seem to use tape a lot also, often to tape up a specimen to sketch.

Nature Journal Notebooks

After a lot of experimentation over the years, we use these gorgeous watercolor notebooks.

I love the beautiful fabric covers. We are using our journals outside daily, which means they need to be durable. You can see they are dirty, but I think that just adds to the charm!

It’s also important that a journal have a hardback cover or you’ll need a clipboard or other study surface to draw and write on. I prefer to pack as little as possible in our nature journaling kit so the hardback covers work best for us.

The paper inside your journal is super important. If you plan to use water on your entires, you’ll want to choose high-quality, heavier weight watercolor paper. We have tried a lot of mixed media journals and the pages curl which is frustrating. So we stick with these journals now because the paper is amazing.

Another thing to note is the size of the journal. Each person in my family has their own preference for size. For several years we all used the landscape version of this journal, but my 7 year old is beginning to write more in her journal and needs more space as she still writes in large print. So I got the larger square version for her and decided I love that size for myself too. It’s given me a lot more room for detailed observations.

Resources to Learn About Nature Journaling

Here are some of our favorite books about nature journaling.

I especially love How to Teach Nature Journaling because it includes different exercise and activities to help expand your nature journaling capabilities. He also has excellent video lessons that correspond to the book. We watch one every week!

This book is an amazing peek inside a nature journal and the world of possibilities.

This book isa homeschool staple and is great inspiration for simple nature drawings and facts.

Nature Journaling is For Everyone

Nature journaling has become such a sweet and fun part of our family culture. Even my husband started nature journaling this year because he saw how excited our kids were about it. It’s am amazing activity you can do at home or anywhere in the world. We recently took a trip to New York State, and we enjoyed nature journaling on the go, too.

Nature journaling is for all ages and abilities and requires no skills except a willingness to get outside and see the world around you!