Oh, Marsha, you are in great luck! You live in a special ecosystem. I think you will find a PLETHORA of Texas and even South Texas-specific field guides for everything imaginable from bushes and cacti to butterflies and snakes. You will get to see species I will probably never see in the wild! A great blessing! I would start asking for those special field guides for Christmas or something–start one place, maybe. What do you want to learn about first? Birds, trees, whatever–there’s a Texas guide for it. Then, you can in the meantime use an online service like enature.com You can search on enature specifically by area. For example, doing an advanced search for Texas, brushland, and acorn-producing, I got a list of 17 trees that appear in that habitat in Texas. You may be in a grassland, shoreline, or desert environment and need to do that instead, but still, this is a good cheap place to start. If you see something that catches your interest, then draw it, pick up a leaf and an acorn, take a photo, write a description, then tell the children you all are going on a “treasure hunt” to see what its name is. Fun!
OK. That takes care of worry about your specific environment.
So now. How to start? I have done nature study every which way, including marching the children out and making them draw something, to giving specific assignments, and some of this will certainly depend on your individual children, but here is a list of things we found that did NOT work well, and things that we found DID work well.
NOT EFFECTIVE–having nature study time be our only time outside. If I am not taking care to have the children spend lots of time out of doors, then all they want to do is play when we DO go out.
NOT EFFECTIVE—being TOO specific for assignments. “Here’s a flower, everybody draw it!” does NOT work at my house–it elicits grumbling instead.
NOT EFFECTIVE–rushing the children. “Hurry up, I want to get home before dark/to start supper/because I want to vacuum” are real observation-killers.
WORKS FOR US–making nature study just one part of our outdoor time. Being consistent to get out there often, even if it is just for a short time. Taking the time to notice something and letting the children fully engage once they do find something–even if I have other things to do. Having a focus to look for, NOT a specific assignment. For example, this fall we are studying trees. We try everywhere we go to notice the trees and, for us right now, the changing leaves. That does NOT mean that we ignore the migrating birds, or neglect to crawl across the park following that nifty caterpillar, but in the absence of something else interesting, we have something to direct our attention to. Did you know that many trees’ leaf-changing patterns are different? Some begin turning color top down, some inside out, some randomly on the same branches! Cool!
The number one thing I think that affects my children is MY attitude. If I am happy on our walks, always saying “Oh, hey, look at that! Isn’t that cool? I wonder what that is? I never noticed that before. Why do you think it is doing that?” then it is kind of contagious; the kids start doing it too. If, on the other hand, I am uptight, looking at my watch every few minutes, and pre-occupied, so are they.
OK. Good starter places. Have you yet seen this terrific blog?
http://handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com/ You could choose from all her past year’s “nature challenges” and pull what will work for you, or just pick a spot and go forward, or follow the seasons from it.
Here are some other online places with good ideas:
http://www.greenhour.org
http://www.easyfunschool.com/IndexNatureStudies.html
If you end up picking a general area to focus on, let me know and I can find some more links to you. I don’t want to overwhelm you with 100 links. 🙂
You know, my kids are getting older and nature study is changing for us, and that’s mostly good, but I almost envy (if that wasn’t such a bad word!) those of you with young kids just starting out on this wonderful thing! You have SO MUCH GOOD ahead of you!