Encouraging children to take time to observe and record the natural world may spark a deep interest in nature that can last a lifetime. Not only is such an interest crucial if we are to have a world full of adults that want to take care of nature and understand our links with it, such interests can help people achieve greater levels of physical and mental health, as time spent in nature has been shown to be beneficial to both (see this report from the Mental Health Foundation* here).
Having been away from the Island over the past week, I haven’t been sketching as much as usual but was given time to reflect on my own beginnings as a nature journaller. Before I left for my trip, I found my first nature journal in my loft and took some photos so I could share them with my mum in Cornwall. I thought I’d share them here too as it shows how a simple homework exercise can have such influence.
As a child of 6 and 5 months (my mum recorded my age very carefully on the front cover), I was given a project by my schoolteacher to complete a nature scrapbook. I remember spending time with my mum collecting leaves from the bushes in our garden, items from a local woodland and cutting out pictures from magazines. I stuck and carefully labelled each item into the scrapbook and these were joined by drawings and a poem that I found in a book from the library van. The time I spent on that first nature journal has influenced me ever since to observe nature closely and inspired me to create the Isle of Man Nature Journal. I feel very lucky to have had a teacher that gave me such a project and a mum that was so able at guiding me to create such a varied scrapbook.
I hope you enjoyed the photos! I’ll return to sketches of the Isle of Man next week.
Emma
*Mental Health Foundation, 2021. Nature: How Connecting with nature benefits our mental health. Published on-line at https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/sites/default/files/2022-06/MHAW21-Nature-research-report.pdf (Accessed 17/08/23).
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