Greater Good Magazine: How Nature Journaling Helps My Students Feel at Home

 


How Nature Journaling Helps My Students Feel at Home



A place-based educator in California invites his students to spend time in, observe, and document the wild nature around them.

As temperatures cool and snow begins to grace the northern Sierra Nevada’s ridges and peaks, the “Mountain Kids” of Plumas County carry a simple but transformative tool in their backpacks: a nature journal. These journals capture each student’s experiences in pictures, words, and numbers, each page becoming a window into their weekly adventures.

I have been a place-based educator for three decades. Place-based education is a pedagogical approach that centers instruction and learning in the locale where a child lives and attends school. Each place holds nature and culture simultaneously. Children in the primary and intermediate grades are in a developmental stage where the physical and temporal place in front of them and at their feet is the context for cognitive understanding. Place is a literal here and now and also provides a structure of mindfulness.

Note:  The above comes directly from their website.  Click here to read more.

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