 Hey everybody, welcome to The Waldoch Way. I'm Jessica. Today's video is a homeschool show and tell. The homeschool show and tell series is an open collaboration hosted by Abby from Rooted and Rest and myself. The goal with this series was for us to be able to show that there is not one size fits all for homeschooling. And the way we do that is by bringing homeschoolers from around the world together each month to talk about a different homeschool related topic. We have discussed everything from homeschool planning to our favorite educational gifts and sneaky learning toys to joining us for morning basket, our favorite subjects and more. This month, we are going to be talking about nature study with you guys. And I am so excited because we love nature study, but I feel like nature study sometimes gets a bad rep because people feel like it has to be elaborate to be effective. And if you take nothing else away from my channel, I want you to take this away. Nothing, and I mean nothing in homeschool has to be elaborate to be effective. Like it can be so simple and still be super effective. This month though, we are all coming together to talk nature study and I'm just seriously so excited about it. I cannot wait to watch all the other channels and all the other videos about this. And I hope that you will too when you can do that by clicking the link in the description box down below for the playlist and then watching all of the videos from people that are collaborating with us. So let's talk nature study in our homeschool. You guys, it is seriously the most simple subject that I teach and I say teach in a very light manner because I don't actually teach it per se. Now I did used to teach at a co-op before this year because well, the pandemic and it was fantastic. It was a lot and free. And we use the exploring nature with children curriculum, which I love. We've actually been through it two full times with Emily and I would have loved nothing more than to have taught it a third this year at our co-op because it is a fantastic curriculum. If you are looking for a nature study curriculum, something that walks you through, hold your hand gives you topics each week exploring nature with children is what you want. It is written in a way that you can take as little or as much as you want. You can do it as light or as heavy as you want. It's just, it's fantastic. I absolutely love it. I happen to know and love the person who wrote it. Lynn is amazing and I love the curriculum too. I actually also have a look inside if you wanna know more about it. I will link that right here for you guys so that you can see more kind of like what the curriculum consists of. But other than that, we've never done a formal nature study of any kind. Nine times out of 10, our nature study is because something has wandered into our yard or flown into our yard or found its way into our yard. We live in an extremely rural area and there are lots of critters. There's just lots of critters, you guys. We have had lessons on sandhill cranes, possums, alligators, tons of different birds and that's all just because they have found their way into our yard. So that is probably the biggest way that we do nature study is something shows up, we are interested in it and we find out more about it. And it is really that simple. That is probably 80% of nature study in our homeschool is something shows up in our yard and we learn more about it. Another way that we incorporate nature study into our homeschool is by visiting our state parks or national parks. We love going on adventures together. So when we can and we're trying really, really hard to make more time for it. When we can, we like to adventure to our state parks and our national parks. We recently went to Blue Spring State Park which is a state park about two hours from us that is known for manatees in the winter and it did not disappoint. So the springs are a constant 72 degrees which means that in the winter that is much warmer than what the river is and the manatees go there to stay warm. So we were able to see hundreds of manatees in Blue Springs when we were there and it was amazing which that of course led to us coming home and learning more about manatees. So that is always a great thing too. I mean, we never plan anything elaborate. We just get out in nature and enjoy it and kind of see where it leads. That is probably how we do nature study is we just enjoy nature and see where that leads. Now, we do live in Florida which does mean that we have some wild weather and when it's not being wild, it is blistering hot. So there are many times when we cannot get outside or we can't get outside as much as we would like to get outside. So while we love the simple fact of getting outside nature and learning more about it sometimes it's not always a possibility and when that's not a possibility we use a program called No Sweat Nature Study and it is with Cindy West and I absolutely love Cindy West and it is live classes two times a month. Two times a month she picks different topics. She releases the schedule a year in advance so you know what it's gonna be on and then you also have access to all of the previously recorded sessions as well. Now, because the weather in Florida is normally blistering hot in the summer and that tends to be when we don't go outside as much, we don't always do the live classes. The way we choose to use that membership is to use it when we need it. So we use the times that it's comfortable to go outside and the times we're enjoying outside, the times when the weather's cooperating to get outside. And then when we can't get outside we will use either a live lesson if it's scheduled when we can't get outside or that library of lessons because there are so many in there and we will use that as our nature study instead of being able to go outside. So that's what we use that for and I love it. It's fantastic. She helps you through actual nature journaling. She has your child nature journal and label. So it's a really great introduction to nature journaling and through that, it has also kind of taken the pressure off of what I even thought nature journaling was supposed to be. And so now we all keep nature journals and so thank you, Cindy, for that. And she has your label and she teaches you about it as she's drawing it and talking to you and showing you it's just a really, really fun class. So if you live in an area that has like blistering cold winters or, you know, atrociously hot summers or you just have wild weather or maybe you live in an area where you don't have alligators and sandhill cranes and possums in your backyard because I know that that's not exactly the most common thing in the world. I really highly suggest if you don't have that to get the no sweat nature study because it's easy and you don't have to worry about teaching it. So it's not putting one more thing on your plate because Cindy's gonna teach it for you. So those are my tips for nature studying. My top tip would be just to get out in nature, period. Get out in nature and enjoy it. Take some of the pressure off of yourself. You don't have to, you know, journal while you're out there. A lot of people will just see it, you know, enjoy the nature while you're there, go for hikes, enjoy what you see and then come back and draw something in their nature journal that you saw while you were out and about. Or, you know, just talk about it. I mean, it doesn't have to be elaborate to be effective. Don't forget that. Just get out in nature and enjoy it. And if you can't get out in nature and enjoy it, then sign up for Cindy's no sweat nature study membership so that you can still be getting nature in without having to worry about getting out in bad weather. Hope you enjoyed hearing and seeing a little bit about how we incorporate nature into our homeschool. And I would love to hear how you incorporate nature into your homeschool. So please tell me in the comments down below, what do you use for nature? How do you use it? You know, how do you incorporate it? What's your favorite thing that you've learned about nature? Maybe this school year. I would love to know more. And then don't forget to go to the description box and click on that playlist so you can see what all of the other homeschoolers had to say about how they incorporate nature into their homeschool.