Why Nature Study?

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Kids who spend time enjoying the out-of-doors experience many benefits

In an article I’ve quoted in a past post, by Adam Voiland entitled, Why Kids Need a Big Dose of Nature , Mr. Voiland interviews Richard Louv (author of the excellent book, “Last Child in the Woods”), about the today’s children and their lack of contact with the out-of-doors. Voiland asked Louv, ” In addition to preventing disease, is there evidence that exposure to nature can actually boost abilities?”, and Richard Louv responds:

“Much of the evidence points to benefits. We see increased self-confidence, better body image, and cognitive benefits. Kids who spend more time outdoors tend to do better on testing; they do better on science; they tend to play more cooperatively.”

I agree.

As I said in my other post, one of the biggest benefits to nature study is just being in nature, and the health benefits of being outside, enjoying creation. It can’t be underestimated. There are other benefits I’ve found to nature study too:

1. Nature Study Can Help With Attention

For one thing, being outside and starting to really observe the world around you helps you to better take a look at everything. You start to notice details you never noticed before. As a mom or a teacher, if we ask our children more pointed questions to get them looking closer at the natural world around them, they may start to notice these details on their own. Essentially, you start to train them to pay attention to details.

This eventually spills over into other subjects and diciplines. Attention to detail is a huge benefit in all subjects and endeavors.

2. Nature Study Provides a Practical, Hands-On Frame of Reference for Science

To read about the parts of a flower in a science textbook is one thing; to actually go outside, look at all different kinds of flowers, and try to identify the parts is another. You can learn about botany in a classroom or from a book all you want, but until you actually interact with nature, most of it will just be theory.

To put it another way, in the Bible, in the book of Proverbs, Solomon frequently refers to Wisdom, Understanding and Knowlege. A lot of us have Knowledge– that’s knowing facts. And facts are good. Understanding is when you can see how those facts fit together. You don’t just know the parts of a flower; you understand what they do and how they work together to form fruit and more seed. Wisdom however is being able to take what you know and understand, and apply in in practical ways. When a child (or adult) really grasps a concept, instead of just knowing facts about it, they have truly learned.

Hands on nature study provides a way to help make those lessons on the natural world stick in the minds of our children. It also will help our children to develop a love and respect for the world around them, helping them understand and care about conservation issues in a practical way.

3. Nature Study Provides Fresh Air and Exercise

By default, nature study requires some walking, some out-of-doors time, and a little bit of exercise while all of that learning is taking place, vs. spending time in front of a box. This is good for both health and emotional well being.

In fact, according to this article from the New York Times website, A Dose of Nature for Attenion Problems, a recent study points to simply being in nature as beneficial to those with attention deficit disorder. I know as someone who also has ADD as an adult, nothing clears my head and helps me focus quite like an afternoon outside. The author writes,

“A small study conducted at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign looked at how the environment influenced a child’s concentration skills. The researchers evaluated 17 children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, who all took part in three 20-minute walks in a park, a residential neighborhood and a downtown area. After each walk, the children were given a standard test called Digit Span Backwards, in which a series of numbers are said aloud and the child recites them backwards. The test is a useful measure of attention and concentration because practice doesn’t improve the score. The order of the walks varied for all the children, and the tester wasn’t aware of which walk the child had just taken. The study, published online in the August The Journal of Attention Disorders, found that children were able to focus better after the “green” walks compared to walks in other settings.”

What benefits have YOU noticed when partaking in nature study?

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Hooray for Imperfect Nature Sketching

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Right off the bat, there’s something you need to know. Nature sketching is not about drawing perfectly.

The whole point of the DVDs I’m doing is this: most kids (and adults) are afraid to sketch because they feel they aren’t “good enough” or “can’t do it”. Most of the time they don’t know where to start. That’s where my DVDs come in: I want to help them get a good starting point, and to know how to start drawing common flowers, plants, animals, and so forth in nature.

Wanting to pay attention to details or to do a good job is a commendable trait, unless it paralyzes us into doing nothing because we are unable to do things perfectly the first time. We need to break free, and help our children break free, from the variety of perfectionism that keeps us from trying new things. We need to run from the fear of failure that keeps us from venturing out of our comfort zones.

If you have a child like this (or if you are an adult like this, who is always afraid of “doing it wrong”, let me give you and them permission to scribble, make stick figures, and use crayons if you want. Your nature sketchbook doesn’t have to look as though it will be in a museum in 100 years. Your nature journal/sketchbook needs to reflect your experiences out of doors, things that have caught your eye, details you noticed. If you don’t want anyone else to see it: no biggie.

Like many other things in life, the more you sketch and journal, the better you tend to get at it, and the more comfortable you will be doing it.

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Nature Study Supplies

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A reader recent emailed me to ask:

I’m a little confused at to what I really need to do some nature study this summer with the kids. Is there anything in particular I need?

Short answer: no, just nature itself. A pair of comfortable walking shoes may also be a necessity (flip flops are a bad idea on a trail).

Now, there are some things that I’ve found to be helpful, but not really necessary.

You may find it generally helpful to have some kind of a back pack in which you can carry different things. We use a back pack as a picnic basket of sorts too, as we often have a picnic outside at the park or nature center when we go. In your knapsack, some things you may want to consider having on hand include:

Backpacking Indonesia

Backpacking Indonesia by KeithUSC on Flickr.com

  • a small first aid kit (maybe just a few bandaids and neosporin)
  • bottled water
  • bug spray
  • sun screen (especially if you are fair skinned like me and my crew are!)
  • snacks
  • and any of the other items I’m mentioning below.

A camera is a great thing to bring along. As I’ve said before, you can’t always make nature sit still long enough to draw it (or draw it well) but a photograph can be used to sketch from later. In this day and age of many affordable digi cameras (with many good ones under $40– including one my daughter just saved up and bought by Vivitar), you may want to consider a digi camera to be a birthday or Christmas present coming up. With a digital camera, you no longer have the two expenses that made my parents not allow me to have a camera for years: film and picture development! If you are looking for a digital camera of good general use with your older children, make sure it has an SD card slot. The ones that don’t often result in lost photos.

A Magnifying Glass is pretty good to have around for looking more closely at bugs, flower parts, and so forth. These are usually not a lot of money at all (Under $10). Glass ones may break more easily but don’t scratch up as easily as plastic lenses. I keep ours wrapped in a towel in our bag.

Binoculars can also be helpful for seeing something a long distance away. A camera’s zoom also works pretty good if you don’t have binoculars, and you can actually take a photo of it while you’re looking. :-)

One thing I really don’t recommend: A telescope is more trouble than it’s worth. Unless you are a serious astronomer with lots of patience, you may be disappointed.

A set of field guides is also nice to have, so that you can look up those things you are seeing, to figure out what it is you are looking at. I’ve written more about field guides here.

Some basic sketching supplies are obviously important for keeping some kind of a nature sketchbook. I’ve written about basic sketching supplies here, and about choosing a sketchbook.

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Nature Study Tips for Getting Started

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A Reader recently asked:

“Do you have any tips for getting started with Nature Study? I mean, what does it look like when we spend time outside learning about the natural world from nature? I hope I don’t sound dense for asking, but I can’t seem to wrap my head around it.”

Well, you’re not dense for asking it. I think there are many different views of how this can look. I have some tips of my own, which I’ve personally found helpful in getting started with Nature Study, but I want to emphasize that, especially in the beginning, the important thing isn’t what you’re “teaching” them, but rather just getting them outside, enjoying the fresh air, sunshine, and nature in general. It’s not about the perfect nature study curriculum, doing it “right”, or having the proper sort of sketchbook and drawing utensils. It’s about time spent in nature, exploring.

I like the very awesome tag line for the HubbleSite.org :Explore and Wonder from your own backyard. What is nature study? Explore and wonder from the bits of nature you have around you!

Here’s some more specific thoughts:

Gull steppin up to the line

by GenBug on Flickr.com

1. When Starting Off, Some Kids (especially modern, overly cautious kids) May Need Some Ideas, Guidance, and a Gentle Nudge

What do I mean? Most of the time, you can’t just say, “Okay, kids, today we are going to do nature study so you can learn some hands on natural science. Go outside and study nature!” That’s very broad and ambiguous. What do you mean by “go outside and study nature”? What am I to look for? What am I allowed (and not allowed) to do while outdoors studying nature?

From what I’ve seen, many modern moms are afraid to let their child climb a tree, run in a field, and so forth. Many schools have put in place “safety guidelines” that are so overly protective against any possible injury (the real fear being the l word = lawsuit!), that children are practically kept in a straight jacket. This fear and timidity from the adults around them, combined with too much time with “entertainment” and electronics (and by the way, I love my electronic toys too…the answer is not to get rid of technology but to not let it be our master), has caused the children to really not know what to do with themselves outside in a big field.

Sometimes they need a nudge, or an adult to point out some very cool thing in nature, to get them on their way. For example, some children may not know that by turning over rocks you may find crayfish in the stream, and they may  not be able to focus in on and notice a bullfrog hiding in the rushes along the side of the pond. After you’ve pointed out a few such things, they usually will start to notice more and more on their own, which is idea.

2. Don’t Be Too “Academic” or Structured About Nature Study

Some children (er, most…) tend to take a defensive position when they think something is too academic when they are supposed to be having free time. As such, from general observation again, watching television or playing video games equals free time in the minds of many children (and adults) I know, and nature study out-of-doors equals homework or school stuff.  That’s not how we want it to be.

I hope that your goals are bigger than just learning something outside, because mine are.

I want to cultivate a passion for nature, a love for the out-of-doors, and an enjoyment of spending time in the natural world. I want children that have learned things about the world around them when they thought they were just having fun outside. :-) This is a healthy habit that will act as a preventative against obesity and will help them with paying attention, among other things. Love of nature stays with a person their whole life.

Some days, you may not learn anything worth mentioning. Other days, you’ll learn more than you ever dreamed of.  The more love of nature you infuse into your children, the more opportunities you’ll have to learn outside another day. In a world where we are sadly often competing with TV, iPods, video games, and the internet, among other things, if we don’t ignite that spark in them and help them see that this is a great way to spend time, it will be harder to unplug them the next time we decide to have a nature afternoon. However, if it’s associated with a great memory and they became interested and excited about what they found, they’ll be bugging you for another nature walk, or afternoon at the park with the pond, or a day walking along the stream or in the fields.

3. Plan for Time Spent Out-Doors, but Be Flexible

Look, none of us can say, “…and on Thursday, May 27th, we’ll learn about Turtles in nature study…” because we have no clue whether or not that opportunity will arise. Will we see a turtle on that day? What if we see a family of cranes and spend hours watching, photographing, and sketching them? Does that mean we didn’t acheive our goal for the day?

I speak more to myself and my own obsessive-compulsive nature. I like to plan, but not only does nature often not sit still long enough for us to sketch them, as I’ve said before, nature also doesn’t always fit into our plans as planned. Nature study helps keep us pretty impulsive.

What we can do(as far as planning goes) is to plan regular days at the park, or at a field we have permission to be in, or at a public beach (for example). In doing so we can be planning in the backs of our mind as moms for what we might encounter. If we’re going to the park with the pond in it, we know we’ll likely see turtles, geese, ducks, cranes, and bullfrogs, as well as loads of bugs, reeds, and dragonflies, so we can prepare by bringing along the right field guides or other resources, and leave the rest of our planning open.

4. Nature study can happen anytime, anywhere, and even when you aren’t expecting it.

A few weeks ago, as I was spending time with one of my daughters, we stopped off at some wholly unhealthy fast food joint for a quick bite to eat before we made the long ride home. At the drive through, we had to pull forward to wait for our fries, and as we waited, we were surrounded by what my grandfather used to sarcastically refer to as “gutter eagles” (aka, sea gulls). Now, we had only planned on having a mom and daughter day out for her 12th birthday, not having a nature study session, so we weren’t prepared with field guides, cameras, or anything else. That didn’t stop us though.

We spent those five to ten minutes watching the sea gulls as they walked around the parking lot. One landed on my side mirror, and we got to spend some time looking more closely at him as he begged for food, as sea gulls tend to do. While looking at him we told each other about different things we were noticing about him — his markings, the way his tail looked  — the blotch of missing feathers above his shoulder (was he in a fight?) — the shape of his beak.

Hopefully these ideas have given you some food for thought, and gotten you started. What other ideas and tips can you share? What has worked for you? What’s been your greatest challenge?

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Nature Deficit Disorder?

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Do your kids suffer from Nature Deficit Disorder?

Tree Climbing -- IMG_5074

“Tree Climbing” by stevendepolo on Flickr.com

As a child, I spent who knows how many hours at the park, in the woods behind our cabin, exploring the shore-line of Brooks Lake (near Newaygo Michigan), and watching the DNR take eggs out of female salmon during salmon season along the Muskegon River. I spent time outside. I spent time getting dirty (dirtier than my mom probably would have liked), and I spent time in touch with nature. When we were very young, a block away and across the street, there was a vacant lot. It was actually the back yard of one of the neighbors there, unfenced, filled with lilac bushes, shrubs, trees, and what not. The neighbor kept the lawn part of it mowed, but the clusters of shrubbery provided unique spaces for my friends and I to play and to hide in. I was eight years old when the devastating news that our neighbor sold his corner lot there so that someone could build a mini mall on the corner came to me. That means that, before age eight, I was running around in someone else’s back yard, likely with other eight year olds, hiding in trees and bushes.

That was a completely different world from the one in which we now live.

I could hardly advocate, safely, just letting your kids run wild and unsupervised, especially in this sad day and age. In my own town, a quick scan of Megan’s List shows that we seem to be a haven for the kinds of neighbors you don’t want your kids trusting, who should still be in jail for the rest of their lives for what they’ve done. Still, we need to balance our due diligence and proper supervision of our children with allowing them to explore the world around them with some guidance and oversight.

In an article by Adam Voiland entitled, Why Kids Need a Big Dose of Nature, Mr. Voiland interviews Richard Louv (author of the excellent book, “Last Child in the Woods”), about the today’s children and their lack of contact with the out-of-doors. In the interview, Louv comments,

“Our constant use of television, video games, the Internet, iPods is part of what’s driving this. For example, a recent study from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that kids between the ages of 8 and 18 spend an average of 6.5 hours a day with electronic media. But time and fear are also big factors. Many parents feel that if they don’t have their kids in every organized activity, they will fall behind in the race for Harvard. And we are scared to death as parents now of ‘stranger danger’ and letting kids roam free. “

Recently, President Barack Obama said something similar, in a commencement address to Hampton University Class of 2010, “You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank that high on the truth meter. And with iPods and iPads, and Xboxes and PlayStations – none of which I know how to work – information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. So all of this is not only putting pressure on you; it’s putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy.”

Obviously President Obama was not referring to nature specifically, but I found myself agree with what he said about all of this becoming a huge distraction. I myself am a tech lover. I love my cell phone. I love my computer. I design websites to supplement our income, and do things like this blog and the videos I make to help us stay afloat. However, there are days when I have to tell myself, “NO! I need to turn off this computer, and go outside!”

I have hanging over my desk area a painting one of my kids did, with the words decoratively written on it by the late, great Charlotte Mason, who said,

“Never be within doors when you can rightly be without!”

But what do we mean when we say nature? When asked to clarify, Richart Louv echoed my sentiments exactly when he said, “When I talk about nature, I am not just talking about wilderness. The people who study this actually use the term “nearby nature.” Nearby nature can be the clump of trees at the end of the cul-de-sac or the ravine behind the house. Through a biologist’s eyes, those places can seem insignificant, but through a child’s eyes that ravine can be a whole universe. “

…just as my neighbor’s acre city plot seemed like a vast jungle for exploration back in my childhood, and just as I could never exhaust my grandpa’s shoreline along Brooks Lake in an afternoon, any place with the tiniest bit of nature can be a treasure trove of nature study for a child.

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Selecting Field Guides

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When you are keeping a nature journal, unless you have some sort of biology
degree, you probably are not going to know the exact kind of bird it is that
you’re drawing, or what kind of flower, weed, or other plant you have found.
One of the best ways to learn about the kinds of birds, weeds, flowers, trees,
and other bits of nature around you is through nature sketching with a set of
field guides nearby.

Field Guides

A Selection of Field Guides are helpful for identifying wildlife and nature around you when you are keeping a nature sketchbook

A few years ago, our family started to buy one Peterson Field Guide per year
for Christmas. Sometimes we bought them used at Amazon Marketplace or new
at the store. Whenever I saw a field guide at a garage sale, library sale,
or other sale, I snatched it up. We have about ten different field guides,
including guides for birds, wildflowers, trees and shrubs, rocks and minerals,
animal tracks, reptiles and amphibians, mammals, and a few others. These are
so useful as we sketch from nature. We can look up the details to see exactly
what it is we’re drawing.

 

Disclosure: The above links are affiliate links to Amazon.com, meaning I will earn a small commission for each purchase from them. However, as always, I never recommend anything I don’t whole heartedly believe in and use myself

I also enjoy Anna Botsford Comstock’s Handbook of Nature
Study. This is not
a field guide, but rather a supplement to help us to observe animals and nature
around us better. I found the questions helpful to get myself and my children
to pay closer attention to we are looking at when we study the world around  us.

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Steps to Observational Drawing

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Yesterday, I mentioned that Observation was the most important skill in sketching, especially sketching in nature. The question was asked, via email, how to develop those observational skills. Is there something in particular we should look for when we are observing before drawing?

First of all, decide what your subject is, and focus in on that. I think it’s best to understand it this way: you can’t focus in on 20 things at once, or each of those will look distorted in the final picture. When you are taking a photograph with a camera, the camera can only focus on one thing. There needs to be a subject, a main focal point in your picture. Decide first what that is. Maybe it’s a snowman (as this month’s drawing lesson will feature) or a rabbit, or a flower. We’ll look at what is going on around our subject, too, but we need to first decide what our subject is.

Here are some general tips that I look for when observing nature for the purposes of sketching:

1. Light

Pay attention to the light as it hits your subject. What direction is the light coming from? Is the light hard and bright, or softer? Note where the shadows are. Notice where shadows form on your subject, and where the light creates highlights. A good example of this would be a very shiny red apple. Take some time to look at one, and you’ll see areas of shadow, and areas of highlight. What does light do on the surface of your subject? Is it reflecting back, or does it simply make the area brighter?

2. Shapes

Often, we draw by using light guidelines to start. Using some basic shapes (squares, circles, rectangles, ovals, curves, lines…) we can create some general guidelines to help us lay out our picture, before going back and adding more detail. Look at your subject. What shapes do you see under the surface? Sometimes it’s easier to see shapes in some objects than others. For example, a snowman is usually three circles and then a triangular shaped carrot nose. Pretty simple, right? After drawing those guidelines, we are able to go in and fill in more detail, but the simple shape guidelines help me get most of my picture down before I start getting too bogged down with details early on.

3. Textures

What kind of textures do you see in your picture and on your subject? Short fur, long fur? Scales? Reptile skin? Bumpy leaves or smooth, waxy leaves? Soft pussywillows or thorny rose branches?

4. Colors

What colors do you see? Don’t just look and say, “That’s a carrot; it must be orange.” Look closer. What do you see? What shades of orange, yellow, brown, and gray do you notice on the carrot? Pay attention to the subtle differences in color on a subject. For example, I just sketched a rabbit, and one thing I notice when I look carefully at this one rabbit in my yard is that he seems to have a gray undercoat, with some white in it too, and brown fur over that fluffy gray/white undercoat, with some black. When I first look at him though, I see a brown bunny with a white tail. When I take a closer look, I notice all of these different colors and how they work together. The light also affects how the colors look too, of course.

Also, notice how the colors of things around your subject are affecting the color of your subject. Sometimes, color from other objects will reflect up onto the subject very subtly.If a girl is wearing a red blouse, sometimes the underside of her chin will look slightly reddish, from the color of the blouse.

5. Setting

While we’re mostly focusing in on our subject instead of letting ourselves be distracted by trying to focus on too many things at once, we should notice the setting we’ve found our subject in, too. When a rabbit is in the snow, can you see all of it? Does the snowman sit perfectly on the top of the snow too? Probably not. look at how those things around the subject affect it.

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Observation is Foundational to Nature Study and Sketching

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A girl playing in the tide, experiencing nature first hand

Observing Nature is the Most Important Skill for Drawing Nature. Photo by Renaudeh/Stock.xchng

I apologize for my absence. The truth is, a few things came up, including some extended family health issues, a sinus infection on my end, and also a trying time of uploading my video for my first Monthly Drawing Lesson DVD (it took several frustrating days to get the formatting to work properly, but praise God, thanks to the miracle of digital video and modern technology, my DVD video lesson is created and on it’s way! more on that later). The good news is, I’m healthy again, most of the family issues have been sorted out for now, and I know now how to make and not make a video, so next month it will go faster.

Someone recently asked me what I thought was the most important skill for drawing. I think they were expecting me to talk about some kind of watercolor, pencil, or pastel technique. At first that’s where my own mind went as I pondered the question. Then I realized that no technique for using media is as important as the skill of OBSERVATION.

When I am doing a nature drawing, or drawing for my sketchbook, most of the time, I spend twice as much time looking at the subject I am about to sketch than I spend actually sketching it. Later on, I may go back and redraw it a few times, adjust the coloring, lay it out in a nicer, more artistic layout for a more visually pleasing end result, but when I get down to it, most of my time and energy is spent on seeing. Looking. Experiencing. Watching. Paying attention.

This, friends, is the biggest benefit of keeping a nature journal and doing any kind of nature study. It’s not “Here’s your lesson plan; today we’ll learn about owls.” Nature study is looking at what is going on around you. Nature study is paying attention. Nature study is observation.

A deer in the snow. Photo by SDHCF via Stock.xchng

Photo by SDHCF/Stock.xchng

When I was a child, our family had a cabin “up north”. When we were up north, we often went on what we called “deer rides”. I’m not sure how this tradition started, but us kids would be in pajamas, just as the sun went down, and we’d pile in the car. These were the days before car seat laws, so I was usually on my mom’s lap, so I could see better. We would drive down country roads trying to see what kind of wildlife we could spot, mostly deer of course. We usually had some kind of snacks with us, as if we were going to the movie theatre.

We weren’t stopping and drawing them or even photographing them. Part of me thinks we may have been scoping out hunting spots for my dad. ~smile~

Also near our up north, we would go to some friends who lived on a lake, and when the adults wanted to get rid of the kids, they’d say, “Go see if you can find a turtle” or something of that sort.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was learning nature observation. I wasn’t studying a biology book or a field guide; I was learning what the different kinds of turtles in that lake were by observing them and finding out about them later.

“What kind of turtle is it when it has a pointy nose and a brown, rubbery back, Grandpa?” “What do you call the ones with spots on the edge of the shell?” “What kind of bird is that floating on the lake?” You learn what rabbit tracks in the snow look like by seeing them enough times, and finding out (using a field guide or the internet) whose tracks those are. We have an assortment of rabbit tracks in our yard, with cat prints right behind them, my daughter pointed out today.

Observation is foundational to nature drawing. Looking at the wildlife around you. Looking at the flowers and the trees around you. Until you learn how to really see what you’re drawing, you won’t be able to draw as well from observation. We’ll talk more about that in later posts.

It takes time, but it’s pretty relaxing.

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