05/10/2025
🌳🐞🐦⬛🌼NATURE JOURNALS
1)We made the intentional choice to give the children journals made from recycled supermarket paper bags.
Would this help them to see help paper as not an endless commodity to consume, but something to treasure and make the most of? The paper had imperfections and was different to work with than freshly purchased paper. The children started their journals by designing a cover.
2)Emmi first thought of the idea of combining the pressed pansies with drawn flower stalks. This idea caught on as great ideas do within the group.
3)After two days of walking in Mātekai Park and coming back and reading “The Song of the Kauri” picture book, Levi was inspired to draw the majestic Kauri tree. Meanwhile his sister, Ella, captured all the feeling of a blossom tree on a blue sky spring day.
4) From the first day of Nature School the idea of documenting what we see in nature caught on. Birds, lady birds, butterflies, snails and even a very smiley faced maggot were drawn and painted!
5) The younger nature artists made beautiful collages from interesting cut out nature photos, Violet worked on her collage for ages. We were excited to see some children beginning to label their drawings, as Jack did with his sweet drawing of piwaiwaka/ fantail.
6) Five year old Leo, wrote independently in his Journal. “I loved the Nature walk. It was fun,” he documented a very special memory in Nature. Leo walked with Hari, making a new friend as we explored Mātekai Park. Leo drew the two new friends together.
7 & 😎 Neons’ birds; kingfisher, kereru, sparrow, song thrush and there were more birds too. Neon drew so accurately he could be an orthInologist, a bird expert. Neon was inspired by illustrations in a nature book of ngā manu of Aotearoa, both native and introduced.
9 & 10) Children have created a taonga, a keepsake all of their own, with treasured memories of being a Nature Explorer.
It’s a book/journal that will take you everywhere!
