Hi Jennifer! Well, I'm another CM fan, and I also enjoy the structure HOD gives me to help me pull those great ideas together. We've done Nature Journals many different ways. We spend about 15-30 minutes on them once a week and use Miller Pad and Paper's 5 x 7 spiral bound sketchbooks. Here are a few things we've done:
1. nature walked outside and took a sketchbook along to sketch something we saw
2. nature walked outside and sketched when we got home, looking up something we saw at
http://www.enature.com (I LOVE this website; you put your zip code in and it brings up all of the animals in your area, with descriptions and pictures
3. read from nature books and sketched, labeled, wrote facts (we used the Crinkleroot books by Jim Arnosky and the Know-It-All Treasury of Animals and Nature Vol. I and Vol. II. (We discussed the dinosaur parts we don't agree with timeline-wise with our kids. It's brief and in the beginning of Vol. II.)
At first, anything was acceptable, but as the boys have gotten older, I have these few guidelines for each entry. I started with #1, and after a few weeks of requiring that, then I required #1 and #2, a few weeks more, then #1, #2, #3,etc.)
#1: draw a realistic sketch of something in nature (either that you saw or read about)
#2: color your sketch realistically
#3: give it an interesting title
#4: label something
#5: write 1-3 facts in phrases or in sentences about it
For Composer study:
Color the Classics series - We read each illustration's written part on the first day and then they colored the illustration while listening to the music. It often took them 3 different sessions or so to finish neatly coloring (with colored pencils) one illustration. We spent 15-20 minutes on this once a week. We studied about 2 composers a year this way. I also gave them a chance to listen to classical music by that composer while they did seatwork if they wanted to.
Link:
http://www.colortheclassics.com/
For Picture Study:
Smart about Art series - Study one artist for 12 weeks, once each week. We studied 2-3 artists a year. Child picks one art piece in the book to study. We both study it for a while. When he says he is ready, we turn the art piece over, and we try to tell all the details that we remember about it. Look at the art piece again, and talk about the details missed. Read any information in the book about the art piece. If interested in more information, look on the Internet.
Link:
http://www.amazon.com/Henri-Matisse-Dra ... 044842519X
The above link is the one on Henri-Matisse, just so you can see inside one of the books as an example. We loved Mary Cassatt, Pierre August Renoir, and also Claude Monet.
We usually did these spread out one each day a week, with nature journal one day, picture study the next day, composer study the next day, and poetry studied was covered through HOD's guides already. We also have done all 4 of these areas on Fridays instead. There are so many great ideas out there for how to go about doing this, but maybe something here will be helpful for you!
HTH!
In Christ,
Julie
