parenting in the age of climate change
This is a beautiful story by Katherine Applegate is about community, friendship, the importance of home (a “sense of place”), the interconnection of plants and animals and people. I strongly recommend this as a starting place for eco-based discussions! How To Use The Discussion Guides: My suggestion is: before you begin reading the story with… Continue reading Discussion Guide for “The Wish Tree”
Parenting has always been difficult and stressful: colicky babies, babies who don't sleep at night; childhood illness; the pressure of finding the right college or apprenticeship, affording weddings and college bills (can you tell I'm knee deep in the college application process right now!)-- these things have been around for a very long time! But… Continue reading The Power of Parents
Real world climate conversations are messy and awkward and often uncomfortable. Here is a real world climate conversation between myself and my 12 year old. My 12 year old and I recently read a book-- called Wild Buildings and Bridges by Etta Kaner. It's an awesome book about how architects are learning from nature how… Continue reading Polar Bears and Anxiety
This post will guide you through an exercise/ meditation to help you and your children learn how to cope with the emotions that learning about climate change brings up. For more posts like this one, click on the "Mindfulness" tab in the menu Climate Psychologists tell us that the primary reason that we humans (especially… Continue reading Ice Meditation
Some of you may be wondering- but what about painting and drawing? I want pretty pictures in my nature journal! Well this post is for you! Finally, we get to the heart of things! "Personal Field Guides" (which is my term for what many just think of as nature journals) are really kind of the… Continue reading Personal Field Guides
Yay! It's Spring! And there is no better time to start a nature journal (more specifically a phenology calandar) then, well, yesterday! The plants are budding and the birds building nests so fast that it's hard to keep up! Phenology is the fancy scientific word for what Charlotte Mason would have called a "Calendar of… Continue reading Phenology Calendar
As far as Nature journals methods go, field notes is probably the method most likely to not meet our expectations. Generally because, our expectations become unreasonable. We expect to have beautiful, colorful, crisp, clean drawings and painting. We expect to magically know the names and fascinating biofacts about all we encounter. We imagine sitting in… Continue reading Field Notes
A page from our Species Account Nature Journal As we continue through the 6 methods of nature journaling. (By which I mean the 6 ways that I have tried out-- you may have found other methods; and if so I'd love to hear about them!), this week lets explore “Species Accounts”. A Species Account is… Continue reading Species Account
I'm not sure if now is the best time to admit it, but I'm not very good at keeping a bird life list. Actually maybe the more important idea here is not the life list its self but rather the idea that not every method of nature journaling will work for everyone-- and life lists… Continue reading (Bird) Life Lists
Last week I gave you a peek into my favorite method of Nature Journaling. A simple method of keeping a journal of the seasonal changes happening right around your own home. Journal pages. The yellow pot-it notes have our "species catalogs" on them Today, I'd like to share another simple journaling method; one that… Continue reading Species Catalog
Earth Sea Sky 