Elementary

Living Math Series

Beginning next week… October 15-26… a series full of practical ideas for incorporating more living math into your school days! Join me here daily!  Better yet, add my feed to your feed reader so you’re sure not to miss a post!

Cove Springs Nature Walk

While we love simple nature walks around our home, we also love taking the time once a month (sometimes more often) to go somewhere interesting for nature study.  This post highlights our autumn walk through the wetland trails of Cove Springs in Frankfort, KY.  What a beautiful afternoon! We were blessed to have my parents…

Collage of summer nature including trees, yellow flowers, butterflies, dandelions, and more.

Early Fall Nature Studies

Early Fall Nature Studies are FUN! Early autumn is such a wonderful time of the year for nature studies!  The crispness in the air keeps walks comfortable, while the scenery abounds with exciting treasures to find. Believe it or not, the photos in all of the collages were taken during only one short woodland walk! …

KY Field Trip Frenzy

We have an unwritten tradition of starting our school year off with a field trip or two.  Sometimes the field trips are more like vacations – like when we went to Virginia.  Other times, it’s an overnight stay somewhere or a few simple day trips.  This year, we had so much fun kicking off the…

Leaves with red berries as a blog post about a late summer nature study

August Nature Study

  (This post contains links to my business website, Shining Dawn Books.) August Nature Study Anytime is the perfect time for nature study, but late summer is especially wonderful! All the photos above were taken during nature walks over the last two weeks.  So, just what topics do I recommend studying right about now? Animal…

black, red, and pink clipboards sitting on the grass.

Nature Walk Clipboards

While school supply shopping at Walmart the other day, I ran across some clipboard storage boxes in several fun colors.  I remembered Maureen from Spell Out Loud mentioning using these nature walk clipboards with her family, so I put three in my cart.  Wow – they have been a wonderful addition to our nature walks!…

Open notebook with lesson plans inside

Weekly Lesson Notebooks

(This post contains affiliate links.) Better lesson organization is one of my main goals for the upcoming school year.  Having a high school student, middle school student and a kindergartener, I have no choice but to be more organized – or feel flustered and fall behind too often like I did last year when I…

Clay Illustration

  Art and Literature Connection Have You Seen Birds? by Barbara Reid is a fantastic book from which to pull an art lesson.  Full of lovely clay collage illustrations created by Joanne Oppenheim, children can dabble in an art medium (and style) often neglected – clay collage.   The illustrations in the book are detailed,…

Patriotic Fun

Looking for a simple way to engage your children in some fun learning this summer? Why not try a few learning centers! What is a learning center? Quite simply, a few goodies based on a certain theme that you put together for your children to explore. Yep, that’s it. Easy and intriguing. Here’s the latest…

Eroded ground

Nature Study – Erosion

Welcome to my 10 Days Series on the topic of nature study! Each of the ten days brings you a creative nature walk idea and a fun follow-up activity to spark your enthusiasm for nature study today! Why study nature? The answer is more serious than you might think. Today’s nature study: Erosion This post…