Nature journal for kids

My phone is full of walks, and I'm glad it is. I look at those photos often.

But they stay in the phone. Nobody prints them, there's nothing written on them, and my son can't get to them by himself — he can't open my phone, find the right day, and tell his grandmother what happened.

So we keep a page as well. A photo or a drawing, the actual leaf, and one line of what he said. It takes about a minute per walk and works from around three.

What a photo can't do

A good photo brings the whole day back. That's not the problem.

The problem is that a photo has no caption, and it isn't a thing. It lives in a phone with nine thousand others, it never gets printed, and a three-year-old can't reach it, open it, or show it to their grandmother.

A page can do what the photo can't:

• it has words on it — what your child called the thing, in the sentence they actually said
• you can touch it — the leaf is right there, taped down, dry and real
• it can be opened — by your child, on their own, whenever they feel like it

None of that replaces photographs. Put the photo on the page and you have both: the picture of the day, plus the name of the ant and the leaf that came home with it.

The one-minute habit

1. One photo or one drawing. Not both.

If it looked like something — a shadow, a stone tower, a boat in a puddle — photograph it. If your child noticed something — a snail, a texture, a shape in the clouds — let them draw it.

2. Keep what the walk was about — not everything.

Sometimes that's one thing: a leaf, a feather, a seed. Sometimes it's two or three, and that's the point — after a texture hunt you want the rough one and the smooth one next to each other, or the page doesn't say anything.

What you don't want is a bag of eleven stones that all look the same.

3. One question, answered out loud, written down.

What is it? Where did you find it? How many did you count? How did it feel?

At three or four they won't write it themselves — you write, they dictate. Put down what they actually said, not a tidied-up version of it. “It's a boat with a door” is worth keeping. “We made a boat” isn't.

Later, when they start forming letters, let them have a go at one word: their name, or the name they gave the thing.

Do it on the way home or with a snack. By the evening it's gone.

Why it needs to be a book, not a box

Everyone starts the same way: a shoebox, a drawer, a folder on a shelf. Things go in and nobody ever takes them out. A find with no page around it stops being a memory within a month — you'll look at that stone later and have no idea which day it came from.

What works is a book. One place, in order, that your child can pull off the shelf and open on a rainy afternoon. That's the difference: a box is storage, a book gets read.

Three things decide whether it survives past the second walk:

• the page is ready before you go out — printed and waiting, because nobody sets up a system at the end of a walk with a tired child
• there's a marked space for the find, so taping in a leaf isn't a decision about where
• the question is already printed on the page, so you don't have to invent one

That last one matters more than it sounds. “What did you find today?” gets you a shrug. “Who's going to live in it?” gets you a name.

You can build this yourself with a scrapbook and a lot of discipline. We made the version that doesn't need the discipline.

Start with a page about your child

Before any of the walks, fill in one page about them: name, age, a few favourites, and today's date.

It looks like admin. It's the page you'll care about most, because every one of those answers changes within a year. Write down their answers word for word, and let them add their own mark somewhere on the page — their name as they can manage it, or just a drawing of themselves.

Let them add a photo of themselves, or draw themselves, or glue on something that feels like them. All three are right.

Follow the map

The adventures already have a place in the book. There are twelve of them, shown on the map, and you follow them in order.

You don't have to decide what to do on the next walk or come up with another activity. You just open the book and see what's next.

Some adventures take five minutes. Some turn into a whole afternoon. Some days you'll do exactly what's on the page. Other days the adventure will take you somewhere you didn't expect.

And when you've finished all twelve, the book doesn't end. There are blank pages at the back for the things your child invents, finds or wants to remember — the little adventures that weren't on the map.

That's what I wanted the book to do. Give you the idea when you need one, without turning every walk into something you have to plan.

The book we made

The Explorer Passport is that book, already built.

There are twelve outdoor adventures for children 3–6, shown on a simple map and completed in order. Each adventure has its own page with the idea, what to do, and a place to keep what happened — a photo, a drawing, something you found, or their own words.

You don't need to plan the activity or think of a question. It's already there. You open the passport, see which adventure comes next, and go outside.

There's also a page about who your child is right now, filled in at the beginning, and blank pages at the back for their own discoveries and adventures after the twelve are finished.

It's a printable. You print it at home, take it outside, and build the book as you go — one adventure, one page, one memory at a time.

Try our free guide — a short printable for getting outside with a small child.

Get the whole thing: The Explorer Passport — 12 adventures.

Questions parents ask

What is a nature journal for kids?

A book where a child keeps what they find outside — a drawing or a photo, the leaf itself, and one line about it in their own words.

What age can a child start one?

Around three. Younger children can glue and tape while an adult writes down what they say.

How often should we use it?

One walk at a time. A page a week is plenty. There's no schedule to fall behind on.

Do I need to be good at crafts?

No. Tape, a crayon, and a printed page. The Explorer Passport comes with the pages ready, so there's nothing to design.

What do I write if my child doesn't say much?

Ask a narrower question. Not “what did you find” but “who's going to live in it” or “how many did you count”. Narrow questions get answers — that's why every keepsake page in our passport has its question already printed on it.

Can I just use a notebook?

You can, and some people do it beautifully. The reason we made a printed book is that a blank notebook puts three decisions on you at the worst moment of the day: which page, where to stick it, what to ask. The passport has all three answered before you leave the house.

What's the one thing from this year you'd hate to forget?

4 things to do with sticks · Nature walk ideas for kids · Screen free activities for kids