Happy Earth Day! Today, we will be heading out for our Annual Earth Day Nature Walk. While it certainly sounds fancy—you know, adding the word “annual” and Capitalizing Every Word—it’s really just a simple walk in the woods, something we do often. This year, however, we’re adding something new to our walk: we made a field journal to bring along!

Earth Day Activities for Children

There are so many ways to teach children about this incredible planet of ours and how to protect it. With young children, the first step is to simply get outside and experience nature.

I recently shared a quote by John Cleal over on Instagram that sums it up perfectly: “We must teach our children to smell the earth, to taste the rain, to touch the wind, to see things grow, to hear the sun rise and night fall—to care.”

Before children can protect our planet, they must first care about our planet.

This can mean going on a nature walk to cultivate your child’s relationship with nature. Perhaps adding in a nature scavenger hunt, or—one of my personal favorites!—creating a nature belt for little ones to collect treasures as you walk together.

With little Norah, we will be enjoying the classic nature belt on our Annual Earth Day Nature Walk. But for my boys, who are growing older and wiser every day, I thought we would do something a little different this year.

This year, we are making field journals to observe and document our time in nature!

What is a Field Journal?

A field journal is the perfect place to collect and record observations from your time out in nature. This journal can be a collection of notes, hand drawn pictures or diagrams, printed photos, and even specimens such as petals and leaves. There is no right or wrong way to create a field journal!

In The Backyard Naturalist Family Unit Study, children create a field journal to record their observations throughout the unit, resulting in a beautiful keepsake full of nature learning, as well as a deeper love and appreciation for our planet.

So, are you ready to create your very own field journal!?

How to Make a Field Journal

Making your own field journal nice and simple! I explain exactly how we made ours below.

I also encourage you to download this handy step-by-step printable to have accessible while creating your field journals. Kids can reference the photos as they work at their own pace to create and decorate their field journal. It includes cover page labels that you can color and glue to your cover as well:

Materials

To create your field journal, you will need:

• Recycled cardboard (e.g. cereal or cracker box)
• Paper
• Hole punch
• Stick
• Rubber band (or some twine)
• Scissors
• Markers, pencil crayons, or other nature items to decorate your field journal

Instructions

First, cut your cardboard so it is slightly larger than your paper (about a quarter or half inch along each side). We used two separate pieces of cardboard, but if you have one large piece, you could also fold it in half and create your cover and back all in one.

Next, punch two holes into the cardboard and paper along the side in the middle.

Now line up your stick to make sure it is long enough (it should be about two inches longer than the distance between your two holes, but shorter than the height of your cover).

Thread one end of the rubber band through the first hole and loop it around the stick. Repeat this process for the other end of the rubber band, threading it through the second hole and securing it around the stick.

If you don’t have any rubber bands (or yours aren’t quite the right size to hold the stick snugly in place), you could also thread two pieces of twine through the holes and tie them around the stick.

Now it’s time to decorate!

You can decorate your Field Journal with markers, pencil crayons, or natural objects such as flowers, leaves, twigs or feathers.

If you download the Printable Field Journal Instructions found near the start of this blog post, you could also print and glue the provided labels onto the cover for your children to color in.

Last but most definitely not least, it’s time to take your field journal outside and explore!

The Backyard Naturalist Family Unit Study

If you enjoy activities like this and getting outside in nature with your children, you’re going to love The Backyard Naturalist! You can see the topics included, as well as a sample from the unit, right here:

https://shop.howweelearn.com/products/family-unit-study-the-backyard-naturalist

Thank you so much for reading, sweet friend. Happy Earth Day!

xo
Sarah