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 Eight
Inner Work Meditation (Heart): I’ve been seeing a lot of robins with the coming of spring and noticed that they are often on the ground rather than in trees, nests or the sky. They seem to prefer hopping through the leaves to other activities much of the time. I was surprised by this. As a child I was shown how to draw birds in the sky, so many pictures in books showed birds in their nests and art lessons always included a branch with any drawing of a bird. So is it surprising that I never really took the time to notice that this bird spends so much time on the ground? Take ten minutes today to explore the place of something in your life. Consider that it may actually fit somewhere else as well. Do you always do your math lessons in an office? How about doing them under a tree today. Do you always chat with your spouse in the kitchen? How about taking a walk with them instead? Meditate on how many things you may be missing by thinking something or someone belongs in a certain place. Perhaps you are missing the other places it is?
Nature Walk Idea (Head): Today focus on learning something new about the wildlife around you by watching one animal for at least 15 minutes. This could be a bird, an insect, or a mammal. Before you start your observations think about everything you already know about it. What do you think it eats? How does it move? What sound does it make? After watching it for 15 minutes have you observed or learned anything new? We often learn most of what we know about animals from books and we don’t take time to notice the details about animals through observation. How does your animal, insect or bird move exactly? Can you mimic the movements? What does it seem to be doing? What exact colors do you observe? Does the robin really have a red breast or is it made up of different shades of color? Would you like to learn more about animals? Consider our Man & Animal Lesson Block.
Photography Notes (Hands): Part of getting a good photo (or drawing or poem, etc) is to observe something for a while before you try to capture it. Your photography assignment for today is to observe a bird, mammal or insect for at least 15 minutes before you take a photo. You will need to be very quiet and observe it from a comfortable distance so it does not move away from you. If it does then ask yourself why. Why did it move away? Is there something I could do differently next time? Could I be quieter? Be farther away? Hide myself?
Verse: Robin & Child
Copyright Kristie Burns
Robin, why are you hopping?
Why not in the sky soaring?
Child, why are you talking?
Why not whistling warbling?
*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.
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