Nature Notes
03.30.20
Welcome to Nature Notes! This week’s challenge is to make your nature journal. You can follow along with the video for inspiration for a little bit of an idea on how to make your journal. You can use whatever materials you have around the house, and make it as big or small as you’d like. Happy creating!
How to Make a Nature Journal
A nature journal can be as simple or complex as you’d like! There are a couple of different ways to make an easy journal.
Method 1: Take 7 pieces of 8.5” x 11” paper and fold in half (hamburger style). Tie a string around the centerfold or staple along the fold to bind together. Decorate the top page as your cover!
Method 2: Take 7 pieces of 8.5” x 11” paper and cut in half (hamburger style). Using a hole punch or sharp pencil, poke 3 holes evenly spaced down the long edge of each page. Stack your pages together and tie together with string (floss also works). Decorate the top page as a cover!
Method 3: Follow Method 2, but this time add a cardboard cover! Cereal boxes, shipping packages, or cardstock make great cover materials. Cut a rectangle the same size as your pages, hole punch, stack, and tie!
Note: You can use either a landscape or portrait orientation or add pages later if you tie it together!
How to Use Your Nature Journal
A nature journal is a great place to write and draw about the things you observe outside. It’s compact enough to carry with you wherever you go. You can label parts of your drawings, create texture rubbings, tape in leaves, and so much more! Crayons, colored pencils, pens, and pencils are great tools to carry along with you in a bag.
Trust in Education has created weekly prompts for your nature journaling to help get you started, but feel free to add more pages and journal on your own as well! With seven pieces of paper cut/folder in half and going through six weeks of prompts, each prompt has space for two pages. Cut out each prompt and paste at the top of every other page, or write yourself!
Follow Trust in Education on Facebook or Instagram to check out weekly nature journalling happening there, or share what you’ve seen!
04.06.20
This week’s Nature Notes is brought to our by Kendall, one of our amazing Trust in Education volunteers! She’s going to teach you a little bit about habitats and then send you off on a habitat challenge. In your Nature Journal this week be sure to draw and write about your habitat observations and share photos with us at kcttrustineducation@gmail.com to be entered in our Fun Friday and drawing! Get started by watching the video!
04.13.20
This week’s Nature Notes is brought to you by our Director of Education Leia! She’s going to teach you a little bit about vernal pools and share all kind of sounds to listen for on your walks this week. Our lesson this week involves not only a video but also powerpoint, so be sure to watch the video and DOWNLOAD HERE! Be sure that you’re keeping record of your activities in your nature journal and submitting photos to kcttrustineducation@gmail.com for our Fun Friday and drawing!
04.20.20
This week’s Nature Notes is brought to you by the one and only RockDoc, Jon Dykstra! Jon is a fantastic KCT Education volunteer and on our Board! He’s going to teach you so many amazing facts about different kinds of quartz, show you mind-boggling examples, and challenge you to think of questions to ask. After this lesson, it’s time to take a walk and see if you can find any quartz around. Where do you think you should go look? Watch the video HERE.
04.27.20
This week’s Nature Notes is brought to you by Leia! She’s going to teach you how to assemble a Star Chart and a little bit about reading the night sky. Once you complete the activity, keep your eye on the weather and find a clear night to test out how good your star skills are!
Intro & Supplies
How to Craft & Use Your Chart
How to Assemble Your Star Chart
Place the cut out with the stars and constellations on the construction paper. Line the cut out marked “Star Wheel” on top of the previous cut out. Push a gold brads through the lined up holes in the middle of each of the cut out (The North Star), securing it with a piece of tape on the opposite side of the construction paper and staple the rectangular parts of the Star Wheel cut out to make sure that the cut out will not move as the circular cut out is turning. Line up the desired month and day with the desired time to “see” the stars in the night’s sky.
How to Use Your Star Wheel
1) Pick the date and hour you would like to observe
2) The top time is standard time whereas the bottom time is Daylight Savings time (starting March-April and ending October-November)
3) Hold your Star Wheel out in front of you, turning the entire wheel so that the “Facing” label of the direction you are looking at is pointed down (i.e. “Facing West)” is towards the ground if you are looking West)
4) The stars on the map’s horizon should match up with the stars in the sky (stars in the center of the oval will be directly above you)
05.04.20
This week’s Nature Note is brought to you by Dr. Pam Morgan! She’s a professor at the University of New England and on the KCT Board of Directors. Dr. Morgan is going to teach you about some of her favorite wildflowers here in Maine that you can see in the spring and give you pointers for drawing in your nature journal. When you find other flowers outside though, you may want to know what they are. Lucky for you, Dr. Morgan has some great advice on how to research flowers with your parents’ help!
The drawings you make this week are great to share with us! Email photos of your work to kcttrustined@gmail.com to be featured during our FUN FRIDAY on Instagram!
Finding & Drawing Flowers Identification
This week’s nature note is brought to you by Meghan M, a teacher, new Kennebunkport resident, and KCT supporter! Let’s get musical with Meghan this week as we use our sense of hearing to listen to the world around us as animals rustle about and play outside. Be sure to take your nature notebooks with you on your walk so that you can write down the sounds you hear (caw-caw, chicka-dee-dee-dee, etc) and maybe what animals you hear them come from!
05.11.20
This week’s Nature Note is brought to you by Dave Jourdan, a KCT Trail Steward! Dave is going to teach you about Shrink & Grow Science and challenge you to look at the world around you. Where do you see temperatures change? Does anything in your house shrink and grow? After you follow along with Dave, be sure to check out more temperature fun this week under Tuesday & Thursday’s activities!
05.18.20
This week’s Nature Note is brought to your by Kendall! Remember learning about what a habitat is with Kendall in week 2 of Quarantine Corner? Well now she’s back to teach you about some very special parts of every habitat and challenge you to a micro-hike. Are you up for the challenge? Share pictures of your micro-hike with us on social media or via email (kcttrustined@gmail.com).
05.25.20
It’s our final week of Quarantine Corner and we’re excited to send you off into the summer to explore Tidepools! Bailey is going to tell you about a couple different critters you can look out for while exploring and send you on your way to test your identification skills. Check out this week’s identification guides and activities under our Tuesday & Thursday Activities!