Nature Study

Nature Walks

In addition to the nature study topic for the term, we take regular nature walks. I make an effort to plan our hikes or walks so we are visiting the same place at different seasons. Or in the spring when things are changing so fast, to revisit several weeks in a row to watch the changes. I grew up in where we live now – in the desert of Southern California. I thought there would be no place to go on nature walks to see anything besides dirt and tumbleweeds. But I have discovered the desert is beautiful! There five or six regular hiking trails within about 1/2 hr drive and one or two within a couple of miles so we get some variety in our (mostly) weekly hikes. We also try to get out once a month on the weekend for a hike with Daddy. On these occasions we usually venture farther from home for a day trip.

While we are on our walks I don’t have an agenda or object lesson prepared. I try to make it low key and enjoyable, teaching the boys how to enjoy nature by my example. I stop to inspect interesting flowers, trees, mosses, etc. I bring binoculars to look at birds we may see. It has been fun to watch the boys start to imitate this and point things out for me. When we don’t know what we’re looking at we take pictures so we can identify it later. I have created an album in my photo app for “nature identification.” I label the picture in the album with where we found it and what we think it is. It has been fun to see this collection grow. We also use it as reference when we find something we know we’ve seen before but can’t remember it’s name.

One of the best resources I have found to get me out in nature and help me enjoy it is having a hiking buddy. I have found a friend who enjoys nature and has flexibility in her schedule to join us on hikes (really, she is an answer to prayer!). She has been an example to both me and our boys for how to enjoy nature. I am not comfortable going on longer hikes by myself with the boys right now. Having her with us helps me feel safe and it is a source of accountability to keep scheduling the next adventure.

50 Mile Challenge

For 2024 the boys and I decided to hike 50 miles over the year. I got the idea from @thehomeschoolconvert on Instagram when she posted about her family goal of 100 miles. It took a little convincing, but when the boys realized that 50 miles was only about a mile a week, they agreed to try it. So I created a log for us to keep track and will be using the All Trails App to tell us how far we walked. Here is an editable version of our tracker if you want to create your own challenge!

Annual Hiking Logs

The first year we logged our hikes, we made it a challenge to hike 50 miles. We only got to about 30. So now we are just going to keep track of which hikes we do. I have created two versions of the log – one to keep track of cumulative milage and one to just log miles and time spent.