Christmas Nature Study: A Red, Green and White Walk

Some people love to spend the month of December Christmas schooling. This simply means they take a break from the regular lessons of school to spend time doing lessons and activities that celebrate Jesus, the reason for the season.

Nature Study Through the Holidays: Advent can help you enjoy precious learning time that is fun and educational. At the same time, it points directly to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, to prepare hearts for understanding and worship. 

Here’s a peek into one of the many, many lesson ideas you can find in Nature Study Through the Holidays: Advent.

red berries covered in ice in winter

Christmas Nature Walk

Week One of Advent focuses on Hope. As we all know, the dreary days of late fall and winter can leave us feeling less energetic and less hopeful. Even nature feels less energetic with colorless, seemingly dead things all around.

Luckily, getting outdoors for a nature walk can rejuvenate bodies and minds, and that’s important even during a season that can be overwhelming. You see, taking a little time to move muscles while breathing fresh air and soaking in some sunshine has the uncanny ability to put overwhelm in its place. It’s surprising that even a busy day benefits from the clarity of mind and release of built-up stress that a nature walk provides.

A Christmas Nature Walk Idea from Our Journey Westward

But did you know that a nature walk can also be a powerful example of the Hope we find in Jesus? It’s true! We can easily find hints of hope from God in the seemingly lifeless December landscape. That’s exactly what this creative nature walk will help your family to do.

Christmas Symbols in Nature

Traditionally the color red reminds us of the blood Jesus shed for us on the cross. The color green reminds us of eternal life in Christ. And, the color white is a symbol of purity and how we are clothed in God’s eyes because of Christ’s sacrifice. Each of these symbolic colors represents in some way the wonderful hope we have as Christians.

During this creative nature walk, your children will have the opportunity to make a deep connection to the symbolism that each color represents. In turn, this will help them experience what HOPE really means.

A Christmas-themed nature walk from Our Journey Westward

Take a Red, Green, and White Christmas Nature Walk

Before leaving for a nature walk, ask your children what they think nature looks like right now. Likely, the discussion will be about how most things seem dead and dull.

Talk about the Biblical symbolism of the Christmas colors of red, green, and white with your children. (Mentioned above.) Ask your children to think of which traditional Christmas decorations are red, green, and white.

Ask your children if they think it will be easy to find these symbolic colors in nature during this season.

A Christmas-themed nature walk from Our Journey Westward

Grab a nature journal and colored pencils. Bundle up if it’s cold and take a walk to look for the colors of red, green, and white in nature.

As each red, green, or white specimen is found, talk about it, take a picture of it, list it in a nature journal, make a tally in a nature journal, or draw it in a nature journal.

Hopefully, your children enjoy the colorful walk and nature journaling. More importantly, this experience will help them see HOPE in creation every December for years to come!

A Christmas Nature Walk Helps Kids Experience Hope

Hope is an abstract idea. It can be hard to help children understand abstract things without giving them relatable experiences. That’s why we often use math manipulatives to teach difficult math concepts or science experiments to help teach scientific concepts.

It makes sense that nature walks serve as hands-on, relatable experiences to help children understand science. But what I love most about nature study is its ease of making connections to other things, too.

A Christmas-themed nature walk from Our Journey Westward

I often talk about how easy it is to connect nature study to geography, history, language arts, math, and art. I don’t often talk about how it seamlessly can build an understanding of abstract ideas like hope. But, oh, it can if we are willing to stretch the connection just a little.

Christmas Nature Study for the Entire Month

Joyful discussions about the hope we have in Christ don’t end with this particular nature walk. You can make plenty more memorable connections to hope and many other Biblical Christmas topics by using the creative suggestions in Nature Study Through the Holidays: Advent.

An ad for Christmas homeschool curriculum.

6 Comments

  1. This is a wonderful idea. I love the the three different colors to look for and they symbolism of them. I think this would be great for me to do with the kids. Thanks for the idea.

  2. What a lovely idea! It might be fun to do a nature study post on red, white, and green. I am quite sure I have all three colors from our last few walks.

  3. Raschelle Blankenship says:

    Thank you for the encouragement to connect education to Christ. Sometimes I get caught up in the to-do’s of school that I forget that the main goal is to point the children (and myself) to Jesus, the whole reason we have life and get to learn in the first place!

  4. I get caught up in the to-do list so often, too! I hope your December was refreshing and deeply connected to Christ. 🙂

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