365 Nature Walks: Day 28

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-Eight

Inner Work Meditation (Heart): Mallard ducks are quite common around Iowa so I don’t usually pay a lot of attention to them. However, camera in hand, I started to notice the brilliant colors, the patterns on the feathers and the funny little personalities they have. Take ten minutes or more today to meditate on someone in your life that you feel you could pay more attention to. It may be a student, a child who is asking for more attention, a spouse or a friend. It could even be yourself. Use detail as a way to start a deeper relationship with the person you choose. Instead of looking at them as “just me” or “Just my kid” or “Just my spouse”, think of all the details you can recall about them.

You can even spend some time today focusing on these details when you are with them. As practice spend some time noticing the details of yourself. Look at the ridges on your palms, the shape of your fingers, the exact color of you hair. Become immersed in the details.

Nature Walk Idea (Head): Your nature walk project for today is to do a treasure hunt. Mallards always leave a lot of feathers around. So do other birds. Can you find a feather today? How many different kinds of feathers can you find? If you decide to pick them up be sure to wash your hands immediately upon getting home. Make sure toddlers on a nature walk do not put their fingers in their mouth after picking up feathers. This may be an easy or difficult challenge depending on where your walk is. But I guarantee, that in searching for the feathers you will discover many new things as well.

Photography Notes (Hands): Today your assignment is to focus on the beauty and detail of one subject by taking photos of it in different ways. Use some of the techniques we have talked about in the past weeks like the rule of thirds, focusing, movement, contrast and more. My subject was mallards. I have included some samples on this page. You can also learn some new art techniques by exploring our Teacher Tutorial Page.

Verse: Hidden Riddle
Copyright Kristie Burns

Floats and flies
Earth and skies
Arctic and tropical
Teradactical
Hidden yet displayed
Ethereal yet mundane
Transportation and baracade

What am I? 

*Acrostic Hidden Riddle Poem

*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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