What Do You Put in a Nature Notebook?

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Everyone has different ideas about notebooking. Some only use traditional notebooking pages. My definition? If it fits in a notebook, it is a notebooking page!

What Do You Put in a Nature Notebook? Ideas and links to free nature notebooking pages

I do not have a formal plan for nature study. I play it by ear according to the season, the weather, and what kind of week we’ve had. We pick a topic, choose some printables to go with it, grab our nature bag, and head out the door.

I’ve learned to make it easy on myself by having a variety of notebooking pages ready to use. If I have to take time to hunt down what I want on the computer and print it out, we are probably just not going to get it done.

Organizing Notebooking Pages

At the beginning of each school year, I print out a stack of interesting nature pages and sort them into a big binder like this. My binder is divided into 5 sections:

Scavenger Hunts
Activities
Poems/Quotes/Bible Verses
Journal Pages
Guides

organize nature notebooking pages

I have a huge collection of links for printables that can be used for nature notebooks. I’ve been working hard to update my Nature Notebook Master List. Categories: notebook/journal pages, coloring pages, activity pages, scavenger hunts, lapbooks, learning pages, identification sites, eBooks, and nature websites. Over 200 FREE resources so far!

My kids each have a 1 inch binder for their notebooking pages. Pages that contain specimens or are extra-special get slipped into a page protector. We use paper with a reinforced, hole punched binding for drawings.

What to Put in a Nature Notebook

notebooking pages
a lapbook done on separate pages instead of a file folder
pictures
drawings
pressed flowers
leaf rubbings
coloring pages
fact sheets
weather tracking
nature poems or quotes
Bible verses
observation charts
a calendar with notes of firsts (first bud in spring, first baby duckling sighting)
diagrams
reports
scavenger hunt finds
photos of nature crafts
copywork

Our Nature Study Routine

We have a weekly routine that we like to call Nature Fun Friday. What we study is decided by several factors:

Nice weather – grab a scavenger hunt and go to the park
Yucky weather – watch a nature video, do some activity pages, or work on a nature craft
Interests – someone found something cool in the yard (or the pool!)
Series – we spent a few weeks working through a Texas insects activity book

Nature study doesn’t have to be hard or complicated. Explore and have fun!