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!

We’re still enjoying our new found freedom in homeschooling!  Today, while I admit the children’s attitudes needed a LOT of adjustments, we still had a pretty good day.  Because I wasn’t feeling the pressure that I couldn’t take time to deal with those attitudes effectively.  So the biggest theme of today was what I’ve started calling “Behavioral Management Training”!  I’m sure I’m not the only one to have coined that title.  But, anyways it deserves a spot on my children’s record keepers just as much as math does!

I stated in a previous post that this new focus in homeschooling was freeing up more time to do things we’ve always wanted to spend more time on.  I say “we’ve” because funny thing is that I’ve wanted this as much as the kids.  And on top of that, my husband announced last night that our new focus is VERY exciting to him as well.

I’ve actually been taking the time again to read aloud enjoyable chapter books on a frequent basis.  No kidding,  only on a rare occasion were we finding time for that before.  Since the movie will be coming out soon, we’ve begun reading The Spiderwick Chronicles, and my daughter won’t hardly let me stop reading for the excitement, and I have to agree with her.  We’ve already finished Book 1 and will be starting Book 2 tomorrow.  It has been such pleasure to see her eyes light up  (and my son’s too) when I’m reading.  And today I made a list of unfamiliar words as we read and then had my daughter use those to look up them up in the dictionary and use them in sentences.

Of course I had to have the discussion with them that although we’re loving the way Mom is doing things now, we still have to do some things that they may find unenjoyable, life is just like that, sometimes we have to do things we don’t enjoy or like.  And of course as I said that my daughter grunted out “Math, yuck” and my son followed with “Writing, yuck”.  Oh well, definitely can’t make it all fun all the time, no matter what you do!  Although my daughter definitely likes that I’m doing more “Living Math” and not worrying about finishing all of the Saxon textbook!

Because of this new focus, I have updated my record keeper into a more “journal-like” form, calling it “Education Journal”.  It’s where I’m writing down in as much detail as time will allow, almost everything educational the kids are doing.  In case your interested I’ve posted this file in my “Files to Share” list.  The “blank” file is just that, a mostly blank place to either hand-write to type out all their doings.

I’ve also posted the education journals that I kept for my children for this week to give an idea of how I’m keeping it.  Both of their journals are in one file, but under seperate spreadsheets (tabs) within the file.  I’m choosing to keep everything typed right now because I’m near my computer during the day and keep the file on the desktop for easy access.

So far I’m loving this method of keeping track; no check boxes, no expectations, just a place for me to journal what we do.  I’m training my eyes and ears to stay open to noticing when my children are engaging in something/anything educational, such as when my daughter takes her camera out on the deck to take pictures of birds, or my son pretends to be a firefighter and installs and elaborate paper fire alarm system in the house!

The only problem with this paper fire alarm system is it’s very touchy.  Every time I cook in the kitchen, it’s goes off!   Hmm, reminds me of our old house.