In our most recent webinar, How to Keep a Nature Journal, Eric Heil and Peter Vitz expose the importance of journaling. They talked specifically about why and how nature journaling, the act of recording observations of the natural world in a notebook, can be of benefit to children and adults.
A recording of this webinar (as well as past webinars) is available for free on The Heights Academy Webinars Archive.
During the webinar, Eric and Peter list some reading recommendations for parents and teachers for studying, reference, or lesson-planning. That list is available below, along with some additional resources that Peter and Eric didn’t include in their slides.
- Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock
- A Natural History of North American Trees by Donald Culross Peattie
- Nature’s Events: A Notebook of the Unfolding Seasons by John Serrao
- Observing Insect Lives by Donald Stokes (and several other Stokes Nature Guides)
- Keeping a Nature Journal by Clare Walker Leslie and Charles E. Roth
- Botany in a Day: The Patterns Method of Plant Identification by Thomas J. Elpel
- Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv
- The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling by John Muir Laws (and www.johnmuirlaws.com)
- The Naturalist’s Notebook by Nathaniel T. Wheelwright & Bernd Heinrich
- natureoutside.com nature journal website by Steven Stolper
- The Forest by Roger Caras
- The Tree Identification Book by George W. D. Symonds
- Sketching Outdoors in Autumn by Jim Arnosky
- Find the Constellations by H. A. Rey (of Winnie-the-Pooh fame)
- Insects (A Golden Guide from St. Martin’s Press) Revised
- Peterson Field Guide to Birds of Eastern and Central North America, 6th Edition (Peterson Field Guides)
Any and all of these books will be a help to the beginner or expert nature student and journal-keeper, but not one of them is necessary to get started on your own effort. Just getting outside with an open eye to many little things will get you on your way!