Well-Trained Mind Academy 2023 Nature Sketchbook Club Badges
Associated Subjects:
Clubs
The Nature Sketchbook Club was busy this year sketching plants, birds, and the sky! Badges were awarded in the fall for students who completed each set of requirements.
Students who completed the fall course and participated in club meetings, discussion boards, and badges earned the Fall 2023 Participation Badge.
Nature Sketchbook Club Sky Badge
To earn the Sky Badge students had to keep a moon calendar and create a cyanometer using blue watercolor, a tool used to measure the shade of blue in the sky. Students were also required to make a cloud chart and observe and record the summer or winter solstice.
Nature Sketchbook Club Bird Badge
The Bird Badge requirements included sketching seven birds from photos, completing a bird painting, and writing a poem or paragraph on the subject of birds. In our club meetings we read poems and participated in the bird sketching rodeo, an exercise by our favorite nature sketching celebrity John Muir Laws, to practice sketching birds quickly and accurately one after another. We read bird poetry and students wrote poems in their sketchbooks.
Nature Sketchbook Club Plant Badge
To earn the Plant Badge, students sketched seven different leaves, seven different flowers, seven different trees, and did a flower dissection to identify and sketch the parts of a flower.
Students challenged themselves to include words, pictures, and numbers to describe their observations and use the prompts “I notice, I wonder, It reminds me of…” to stretch their powers of observation and generate new ideas.
Keeping a nature sketchbook is an excellent way to capture your observations of the natural world and remember moments in time. When you take a photo, you might remember a little bit about that thing you saw, but when you take 10-15 minutes and sketch what you notice, you will begin to ask questions and make connections in your mind.
The best thing is that you don’t need to know how to draw to join the Nature Sketchbook Club, but when you keep a nature sketchbook for a period of time, you will get better at drawing because you make a commitment to practice.
If this sounds like something you would enjoy, I invite you to join us for these 2024 Nature Sketchbook Club sessions!
- Summer Bugs, Beetles, and Butterflies
- Fall Foliage, Owls, and Moths
- Spring Flowers, Birds and Pollinators
Kelly Houle
WTMA Nature Sketchbook Club and Mathematics Instructor