Author: egawarkiewicz

“I have learned that what I have not drawn I have never really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle: the branching of a tree, the structure of a dandelion’s seed puff.” –The Zen of Seeing by Frederick Franck

Nature journaling is an excellent way to observe, appreciate, and document the natural world around you. You can have a “sit spot” – a place you regularly return to weekly, monthly, or seasonally – marking changes over time. Or you can wander far and wide, recording the myriad wonders of the great outdoors. Journaling can be a solitary activity, a quiet meditation on nature, or a social time to get together with friends and celebrate the beauty around us. 

A simple journal format is one we use for the Four Winds Nature Program, where students can reflect during each natural science lesson. It’s made with a cardstock cover and printer paper. Use a hole-punch and metal brads to secure the pages, and you can decorate the cover however you like. 

A more complex handmade option involves twine binding. The pictured brown journal was made during a Four Winds volunteer appreciation workshop with bookmaker Linda Lembke. 

You can also buy a journal with options like grid paper to structure your drawings, or a waterproof model if you want to journal in any weather. 

The type of writing or drawing material you use is up to you! A graphite pencil always works well, but you can use colored pencils, brush watercolors, or watercolor pens if you’d like to add some color. It’s also fun to add natural materials, like pressing leaves and then pasting or gluing them directly into your journal. Try a leaf creature!

Below are some examples from Four Winds staff and volunteers to get your creativity flowing.

Nature journal prompts:
~Write date, where you are, time of day, weather, temperature, and/or phase of the moon
~Do a blind contour drawing – draw the outline of an object, without looking at your paper. This can be a great way to warm up.
~Close your eyes and use your other senses to notice the world around you. What do you hear, smell, feel? Write it down, or draw a picture.
~Do a two-minute sketch looking at three objects, one on the ground, one at eye-level, and one up above you.
~Compare two things, such as leaves or stones.
~Use the statements,”I notice…” and ”I wonder…”, in your explorations.
~Draw a blind contour of a tree. Make up a dialogue with that tree. What does the tree have to say?

Want some tips? The Cornell Bird Academy offers courses, and Clare Walker Leslie has written many books on nature journaling.

“The heart of nature journaling is the learning of observation skills, not drawing skills.”
-Clare Walker Leslie

Dear Oak,
I am round and ready. Bursting
with hope, crammed with possibilities.
I know I must drop and sleep and
sprout and grow. So Slow! But then,
Oak, I’ll stretch up my arms,
strong and true. I’ll be your
friend, the one who rises
up beside you.
Love,
Acorn

–Dear Acorn (Love, Oak) Letter Poems to Friends by Joyce Sidman

As loose parts (open-ended materials), acorns are “crammed with possibilities” of play! Here are some acorn invitations (for children old enough that acorns aren’t a choking hazard):

Use tubes, gutters, or slides and roll them! How fast and how far can you make them travel? 

Use acorns to practice counting. Try labeling them with letters to make words or numbers to make equations too!

Use acorns in small world play. What different emotions can the acorns have? 

Become a squirrel and sort out the ones that are hosting a weevil larva! The acorns with weevils won’t keep for winter, so the squirrels often eat them right away (with the added protein of the larva!). When the acorns fall to the ground, the weevil larvae chew their way out of their acorn, creating a perfectly round hole, and then burrow into the soil to spend the winter underground. Squirrels are thought to shake acorns to separate weevil-infested ones. You can also do a float test; an acorn with a weevil larva inside floats unlike uninfested acorns that sink.

And read about them!

Whose fragments of exoskeleton are these?

These are the remains of millipedes! Notice the two pairs of legs for most body segments. This helps identify the creatures as slow-moving, decaying-vegetation-consuming millipedes and not their quick, carnivorous centipede relatives who have one pair of legs per body segment. 

Millipedes spend most of their time hidden away in moist, secluded spots munching on decaying leaves and wood. So why would all these dead millipedes be exposed on this rock and twig? Perhaps they were infected with a parasitic fungus! The genus of this fungus, Arthrophaga, translates to “arthropod devourer.” True to its name, before killing the millipede, the fungus is able to control the millipede to climb to a high point that will presumably help the fungi’s spores spread far and wide. Within a day of the millipede’s death, the spores all have been discharged, leaving an “enigmatic husk” of a millipede or a jumble of disjointed segments.

During the short window of spore production, the Arthrophaga fungus bulges between the millipede’s body segments. 

The yellow garden spider (also known as the writing spider, zigzag spider, or zipper spider, among others) is the species Argiope aurantia, known for their striking black and yellow patterning. They are in the Araneidae family of “orb weaver” spiders. While all spiders make silk, not all make webs, and while some make webs, orb weavers stand out with their beautiful wheel-shaped webs.

Most spiders have two claws on each foot, but orb weavers have an extra claw that helps them create more complex webs. Some orb weaver webs include a conspicuous zigzag pattern that has had passersby and scientists alike wondering about its purpose.  

These silky decorations are called stabilimenta because of an outdated hypothesis that they stabilize the spider’s web. It turns out that this extra silk is laid too loosely on the web to strengthen it, and can even be removed without disturbing the constructive function of the web. 

Another hypothesis is that stabilimenta attract insects by reflecting UV light. One study found that webs with stabilimenta attracted more insects, and in field observations, such decorated webs tended to have more prey in them. Alternatively, in one controlled experiment by Dr. Todd Blackledge at the University of Akron, webs with stabilimenta caught 30% fewer prey. His reasoning was that while UV light reflection makes the web more apparent, it isn’t necessarily more attractive; the web just becomes easier to see and avoid. 

Contrary to standing out, it’s also possible that orb weavers use stabilimenta as a defense as they sit in their webs for days at a time. Stabilimenta may break up their body outline, camouflaging the spiders from hungry predators. Stabilimenta shape varies widely depending on orb weaver species, appearing as large X patterns, or long “zippers”, or entire circles of zigzag silk. The reason for this? Well, maybe that’s just pure spider artistry!

Check out these books for more stories of spider artistry:

A child can feel the meaning of “shaggy” petting a shaggy mane mushroom and hear the meaning of “crunchy” crawling through leaves.

Along with many other benefits, the sensory-rich natural environment naturally boosts children’s language acquisition. A 2023 study found Dutch primary school students used both more language and more complex language while playing in a nature-based playground compared to a non-nature-based playground. Researchers noted that the open-ended environment, full of loose parts, guided the children’s language. Play in a natural setting encouraged math and science vocabulary, led to more negotiations to communicate the meanings children attributed to objects, and increased semantic complexity in exploring with their senses.

Having the sensory experiences in nature also seems to cement the words in young children’s minds, like remembering the word “owl” when they revisit a place they heard hoots, asking “tunnel?” when looking through the arching branches in a bramble patch, or running through the woods exclaiming “I see one! Mushroom!” again and again even weeks after a fungi search. The words learned outdoors hold special meaning tied with memories.

Books, of course, are also important for children to learn new words. While the Oxford Junior Dictionary print version has removed around 50 nature words (including: acorn, beaver, bramble, dandelion, fern, newt, otter, raven, willow, and wren), the following two books celebrate these “lost words”:

Jewelweed, silverweed, ear jewel, spotted touch-me-not — these are all common names of Impatiens capensis. Jewelweed often grows in lush patches along streambeds, wet meadows, pond edges, and roadsides and is producing flowers and seeds now. So this is a good time to look closely at this interesting plant and contemplate the many names. 

The name jewelweed could come from the fact that drops of water bead up on the leaves and glisten like jewels in the sunshine.

Underwater the leaves glow brightly due to tiny hairs that trap a layer of air, hence the name silverweed.

Ear-jewel is another name referring to the elegant earring-like flowers. These showy flowers produce nectar in the long spurs at the back of the flower. Keep an eye out for hummingbirds, bees, flies, and wasps enjoying the nectar, and beavers munching the whole plant!

Although another name is spotted touch-me-not, please do touch! When the green seedpods are plump with ripe seeds, the slightest touch will explode the seed pod, peeling the sides open and flinging out the seeds as a delightful dispersal strategy (and possibly also preventing predators from eating the seeds).

What name would you give jewelweed?!

Why are some of these staghorn sumac leaves turning fiery hues before the rest of the plant?

These bright-colored leaves are home to the pouch-like galls of sumac gall aphids. While lots of these galls can cause early changing colors and shedding of some leaves, the overall impact is thought to be insignificant to the sumac’s health.

Inside of the gall is a hollow chamber crawling with tiny aphids and their frass (poop).

In spring, female aphids lay an egg on the underside of a sumac leaflet midvein, which causes the sumac to form a gall around the egg. Through the summer that single aphid hatching from the egg produces hundreds of aphid clones parthenogenically (without males). These clones are born pregnant, ready to give birth to more clones in a couple of days. In fall, the galls split open to release winged females that fly to nearby patches of moss. Asexual reproduction continues here and subsequent generations survive the winter. The clonal colonies eventually produce males to mate with the females and in spring the mated females fly to sumacs to continue the cycle. 

Incorporating nature-based education into your teaching doesn’t mean starting from scratch. In fact, some of the most effective nature-based lessons begin by simply building on what you’re already doing. This was clearly demonstrated during the Four Winds Nature Institute’s “Add Nature to Your Curriculum” professional development workshop in Strafford County, New Hampshire.

Over two collaborative sessions, educators around the seacoast of NH came together to reimagine existing lessons through a nature-based lens. On the first day, teachers selected a unit they already use and worked with peers to explore how it could be enhanced with nature-based opportunities and connections to the natural world. For example, one group explored how to teach double-digit addition to first graders using natural materials. Instead of traditional base ten blocks, students could use sticks to represent tens and acorns for ones—bringing math to life through hands-on, nature-based learning.

After the school year wrapped up, participants returned to share and reflect on the nature-infused lessons they had developed. This second session was a rejuvenating experience—educators engaged in hands-on activities created by their colleagues, offered feedback, and discussed ways to adapt lessons across different grade levels. Together, they engaged with their senses as they searched for seed pods, measured with nonstandard units, and investigated animal habitats—immersing themselves in the same kinds of exploratory learning they aim to foster in their students. 

This approach shows that bringing teaching outdoors doesn’t have to be overwhelming. By collaborating and starting with familiar material, educators can take meaningful steps toward nature-based, inquiry-driven learning—one lesson at a time.

Throughout the summer, the Four Winds Strafford County NH Team partnered up with local libraries, inviting families to enjoy a storytime, a craft or scavenger hunt, and lots of mud kitchen and loose parts exploration.  Under the summer reading program theme, “Color Your World,” families participated in activities such as using natural materials to paint with, decorating wood cookies, finding colors in nature scavenger hunts, and more!

Families were also invited to let their imagination run wild with our mud kitchen.  This simply consisted of buckets of sand, containers/squirt bottles of water, and various pots/pans/utensils/trays.  We also provided loose parts such as acorns, sticks, and a variety of little toy animals.  Children enjoyed creating “soups” or “potions,” hiding/finding animals in the mud, creating habitats, and more. It was wonderful to observe children building so many different skills: teamwork, communication, cooperation, problem solving, and inclusiveness. With generous funding from the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation’s CLH Fund for Environmental Education, the Strafford County team looks forward to facilitating more of these programs that nurture a love of nature in our community!

Here are the books read at the various programs:  

“Leaves of three, let it be” is how the saying goes. While poison ivy has compound leaves of three leaflets (and the whole plant contains urushiol oil that causes an itchy rash in most people), there are many other plants with three leaflets that you can get to know more closely.

Begin by developing a search image of poison ivy. 

Poison ivy has a woody stem with usually short, unbranched shoots less than 2’ tall (it’s uncommon to grow as a vine in our region).

Poison ivy’s three leaflets together form one leaf. The leaflets are arranged in a T-shape; the middle leaflet has a longer petiole (leaf stem) and the side two leaflets have shorter petioles. Most poison ivy leaflets have some lobing on the edges (though some leaflets show none). Usually the middle leaflet shows symmetrical lobes on both sides, while the side leaflets have asymmetrical lobes with deeper lobes on the outer edge. 

Now for a challenge! Can you spot the poison ivy and the three-leaflet non-poison ivy plant in the photos below? 

Poison ivy in the red circle. Dwarf raspberry in the purple circle with regularly toothed leaflet edges.

Poison ivy in the red circle. Pointed-leaved tick-trefoil in the purple circle with smooth leaflet edges and larger center leaflet.

Poison ivy in the red circles – note how the young poison ivy leaves in the smaller red circle are more reddish than the older leaves. American hog-peanut in the purple circle with smooth-edged egg-shaped leaflets. Wild strawberries in the yellow circle with coarsely toothed leaflet edges. 

Poison ivy in the red circle. Jack-in-the-pulpit in the purple circle with three smooth-edged broadly oval leaflets that have a border of a continuous vein around the edge. 

Poison ivy in the red circle. Wild sarsaparilla in the purple circle with fine teeth along the leaflet edges. Wild sarsaparilla usually has five leaflets per leaf, but can also have three.