John Muir Laws shares his journal from his summer travels, including adventures in Montana, Greece, Croatia, England, and more to come! (July 2023) Read More
Blog
Background as Context
Learn fast and fun ways to incorporate habitat elements into an animal sketch. How can you combine several sketches to explore the context of an observation and show relationships between individuals? Let’s move from a drawing of a deer floating in the white void to a rich story. (Nov 2022) Read More
NJEF: Inquiry Modeling and Scaffolding
How can we model asking questions as teachers and facilitators? What is a “better” question, when we refer to helping our students learn tools to ask better questions? What is a good list of curiosity prompts? The Nature Journal Educator’s Forum discusses. (March 2023) Read More
NJEF: Back to School
The Nature Journal Educator’s Forum brainstorms ways to help students start nature journaling early and consistently, by tying in with science, math, and language curricula. (Aug 2021) Read More
Rendering Different Textures
In this “Ask Jack” session, John Muir Laws demonstrates how to render different textures using tricks of light and shadow. More techniques come out to play during the group share after the main session. (August 2022) Read More
NJEF: Building Online Learning Communities
Do you want to know the origin stories of the Nature Journal Club and its online community? Forum member Lydia Reyle-Corcoran leads an interview with John Muir Laws and the Nature Journal Educator’s Forum about the origins of the online presence of the nature journaling community, what makes it work, some of the benefits and Read More
NJEF: Chemistry and Physics
The Nature Journal Educator’s Forum brainstorms chemistry and physics investigations in nature as well as the value of letting students design their own experiments. (Aug 2021) Read More
Light and Shadows
Painting shadows with lively colors or on light blue objects is challenging. Let John Muir Laws show you his tricks. (Sept 2022) Read More
NJEF: Botanical Journaling
Join Yvea Moore and the Nature Journal Educator’s Forum for some tips and techniques to help you explore the world of plants in your nature journal. (April 2023) *John Muir Laws was absent this week. His co-hosts Billie Jo Reid and Yvea Moore led this forum session. Read More
NJEF: New Activity, Sorting Cones
John Muir Laws shares the outcome of his cone-sorting activity with students (previously begun here: https://youtu.be/SMEBu7St-zE). The educator’s forum discusses how to create a classroom space where students are asking the deeper questions and examining the strength of the evidence, with a slight detour into growing peanuts. (Feb 2023) Article mentioned in discussion: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/ Read More