This series takes you through an entire year of our nature walks and is part of our non-profit project #Earthschooling365 at www.Earthschooling.org. The photos and posts in this series are all copyrighted. Please do not share or re-print them. Instead, share the link to this blog with your friends.
Along the way I will be sharing our favorite photo of the day, an inner work meditation for the day, photography assignment/tip for the day, nature walk theme for the day and a short verse for circle time (children) or meditation (teens/adults). We invite you to “walk along with us” this year, take some time to use the inner work meditation, be inspired by the nature walk theme of the day and perhaps even start a photo series of your own. To join the community on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram please tag your photos #Earthschooling365. To receive these inspirations in your e-mail inbox daily please subscribe to our blog alerts HERE. Don’t worry about missing days – you can join us as many days as you want this year!
Every day we will post one day. We will leave up 2 weeks of nature walks at a time. At the end of two weeks each nature walk will be transferred to the Lifetime Member’s Only Blog and will be accessible only to Lifetime Earthschooling Members. If you want to own the entire series without enrolling a an Earthschooling Lifetime Package Member you can purchase the entire series for only $35.00 (for the entire year!)
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You can start your journey any day. You do not have to follow our schedule. However, we will leave up the first week of the project all year so you can follow the steps to get started.
#Earthschooling365: Day Twenty-Three
Inner Work Meditation (Heart): When someone says “relax” we often imagine someone sitting quietly and very still. However, relaxation does not mean that one must be sitting. Do you have a hard time relaxing when you are doing “nothing”? For me, the world falls away when I am taking photos, knitting or even doing dishes. Take some time to meditate this morning on some things that make you relaxed that involve movement. Is there a child or a person you know that has trouble relaxing? What movements relax them? Perhaps they are more relaxed by movement than by still-ness. Share this wisdom with them in some way. Or, for a deeper daily movement series explore our Daily Eurythmy Lessons.
Nature Walk Idea (Head): There is a belief that our minds and thoughts are limited by our ability to express them. Today your nature walk focus will be to choose one bird, tree, flower or plant and describe it using as many adjectives as you can. Be sure not to forget to use exact names of colors. For younger children you can ask that they simply name the colors of the things they see and challenge them to describe them in a few words. For teens and adults challenge yourself to go beyond the basics. For example, a child may look at the robin and see: red, brown, gray, fluffy, cute. Taking the challenge farther a teen or adult may use adjectives like: red, crimson, wine, ruby, vermillion, orange, burnt, gray, drab, smoky, plump, inflated, rotund, etc. To take the challenge even farther you can use tools like a thesaurus (or an online one HERE) to help you.
Photography Notes (Hands): Today we will practice focus. In the photo of the robin I shared today you can see that the camera focused on the tree bark behind the robin and not on the robin. At first this is not obvious – the robin is not so out of focus one would immediately discard the picture. However, it is this small detail that can make the difference between an outstanding photo and a good photo. Today, your assignment is to practice focusing with your camera. Every camera is different. How can you get the camera to focus on what you want to focus on? I have two cameras I use most often. One will not focus on anything by itself if there are a lot of subjects at different distances. The other one is very good at spot focusing. However, the both claim to spot focus. Over time I’ve had to adapt the way I shoot photos to what my camera is capable of or learn how to change the settings on the camera to get photos that are more sharply focused. There are many other tips I will share later about focus. Today is simply about getting to know your camera, what it is capable of and what the different focus settings do.
Verse: Jelly-Bellied Guest
Copyright Kristie Burns
Pencil lead smudges across your wing
The warm sun rises in your breast
Flowers bloom each time you sing
My jelly-bellied spring garden guest
*These poems have been created for many purposes – from early childhood circle time verses to inspirational or expressive. They vary from day to day so you may find the way you use them or enjoy them also varies. If you would like to set these poems to music consider our tutorial: Creating Your Ow Waldorf Verses or Finding Your Inner Voice.
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