How to Start a Nature Club
Lecia, one of my readers, recently emailed me to ask the following question:
Several moms in our homeschool group want to start a nature club but we have no idea where to begin with forming a club. Can you tell me a little about yours? Thanks for the help!
Thank you for your question Lecia and since this is a popular one I decided to write up a blog post entry about it.
This spring and summer will be my second time leading a nature club for our homeschool co-op, and I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am. Our nature club was a huge success last year and I truly loved leading it. As you probably know from my blog, I am very passionate about God’s creation and especially about sharing my love of it with others, and a nature club is an excellent way to do just that!
Here is my list of steps and recommendations for getting a club started:
Determine the interest level in your group. – Poll your group to see if you have a high enough interest level to make it worth officially forming a group. In my opinion, two or more families is great! These things have a tendency to grow quickly anyways once word gets out.
Determine a vision for how you want your nature club to be ran. – Would you like a more structured time including an appointed “leader/teacher” for each meeting and a focus topic for each meeting such as birds, wildflowers, etc? Or would you prefer a more relaxed club where you just meet and freely enjoy nature together? Again, you could poll your group to determine what the majority is looking for in the club. Determine if you want parental involvement to be mandatory at each meeting. I recommend this for a couple of reasons: parents will be responsible for their children and not the leader(s), and I highly believe in parents being involved with and connecting with their children in nature study.
If a more structured time is desired, appoint a leader or leaders who will steer the meetings, being sure the meetings stay on task to what is desired of them. – Perhaps all the members would be willing to take turns leading a meeting; however most often there are a small group of people who are “natural leaders” and/or are more knowledgeable on the subject of nature and will gladly do this. Or perhaps you will determine that having just one leader/teacher works fine too.
Determine the frequency of your meetings and the topics and locations. How many times a month will you meet? Will you meet year round or only in the warmer months? Where are the places you could meet? Make a list of local parks or other locations that your club could meet. After doing all of the previous, make a list of the dates you will be meeting and locations where you will be meeting. Decide what you will do in the case of inclement weather. Will you reschedule?
After determining this, and if you chose to make your meetings a little more structured, make a list of topics your group would like to see covered throughout these meetings. When you are picking topics, match appropriate locations that would work well. For instance, a particular park may have huge wildflower fields that would make it perfect for a wildflower focused meeting. Or another park may have a beautiful creek which would make it perfect for a creek focused meeting. When determining what to teach on the focus subjects that you will be covering keep in mind the NaturExplorers unit studies at Shining Dawn Books each have a section dedicated to giving you ideas of things to do with Nature Clubs and Co-ops. I use these for each of our nature club meetings.
After you have all these details, put the information together coming up with a calendar of dates, meeting topics and locations for your club.
Now you are ready to start implementing your meetings! It is helpful to send out weekly reminders to the group, perhaps via email or another online means. In the reminders it’s helpful to list all the basics (where, what when, etc.) and also any helpful information such as if the children should bring anything special (nets, containers, etc.) or wear anything special (mud boots, long pants, old clothes, etc.).
I have tried to be very thorough in these recommendations for starting a nature club, hopefully I have not left anything out. And hopefully I have not left you feeling overwhelmed. If done correctly a nature club will NOT be overwhelming and tedious to run. It will be well worth the minimal effort! Do not make it too structured and “textbook educational”, keep structured teaching time minimal and hands-on exploring maximal.
Lastly, here is how our nature club looks:
We meet only in the spring and summer, starting in April and going through July. We meet every other Friday morning from 10:00am to 12:00pm, having a total of eight meetings. Some of the families stay after the meetings to have a picnic lunch together. Parental participation is mandatory. We start our meetings with a 10-15 minute teaching session on the chosen focus. Then the remainder of the time is spent exploring and doing fun hands-on activities. I send out reminders at least 5 days in advance giving all the details and recommendations for the meetings.
I will be happy to answer any other questions that you may have. And may God bless you in the study of His creation!
Melissa,
Thank you for taking the time to answer my question. You have given us many things to consider concerning our nature club that I never would have thought of!
Melissa, Such a thorough post! After, working with a coop this past year, my eyes were opened to the logistics of one. Ours is an Art coop that myself and a friend got started this past fall. It’s been a great experience but I was surprised to find that there are some that don’t want to work as hard as the rest. Honestly, I’ve been a bit dissappointed by the lack of commitment. When we had announced this particular coop last late-summer we had described it as one that would require participation from both the child and parent. We had hoped that by making that very clear we would be able to weed out those that would only show up now and then. We had also expressed a desire for the parents to take on at least two teaching duties. as there would be a total of twenty lessons taught. As it has turned out my friend and I have had to take on by far the majority of the teaching responsibilities and we’ve had several children drop from the coop so that we only have ten now, whereas in the beginning, we had sixteen. Honestly, I hope one day to start a nature coop but this particular experience has really made me aware of how much work a coop can be. BTW, I would so love to be a part of your coop
! Blessings and hope your week has gotten off to a great start, Julie
Julie, I defnitely think running an art co-op would be a LOT more work and more complicated logistically. It’s a shame though that it’s hard to get people to be dedicated to helping out with what they want to be a part of. For our regular homeschool co-op, it takes an army to run it! Every parent HAS to participate in some way if they want to be a part. No one is allowed to just drop their children off. Running the nature co-op has surprisingly been just a blessing to me, not a burden. I’m sure that I don’t overdo the quick lessons and I don’t spend a lot of time in preparation.
[...] you would like to know more about starting a nature club, I’ve written a post about it! In the meantime, don’t forget that our units are a fabulous tool for helping you lead your [...]
Melissa, right? Hi! I read it and was wondering something. I am hoping to start a sort of nature club at my middle school, and i was wondering if you had some specific tips on how to do it and what to do. I am new at your site, and this is probably not th best place to ask the question……