Wonder Wednesday 37: Leaf Nature Journals

Happy Wonder Wednesday!

In this month’s lesson to celebrate the changing of the seasons and the upcoming fall facilitated session of the Draw Yourself Back to Nature eCourse and upcoming Blog Hop, we’re making nature journals in the shape of leaves!

You could use these as fall nature journals, as booklets for leaf shape botany work, or for anything else your imagination comes up with!

Depending on the age of the children you are making them with, these nature journals can be bound in a few different ways from a simple staple to the traditional stab binding often seen in Japanese handmade books and journals.

Wonder Wednesday #37: Leaf Nature Journals

Materials (for 1 book)

2 pieces of card stock, these are the front and back covers

3 or more pieces of recycled copy paper, these are the inner pages

Scissors or poking tools

Hole punch

Yarn

Optional:

An awl

Paper clips or binder clips

Preparation

Print out as many copies of the Leaf Nature Journal template on card stock and pages of copy paper as you need for the number of pages you want the journals to have and for the number of children with whom you are making journals.

Print out your template pdf here! Wings, Worms, and Wonder leaf journal template pdf

If you are making the journals with young children, you will probably want to have the inner pages precut and pre hole punched.

Procedure

Cut out (or poke out with young children) the leaf shape covers on the card stock.

Cut out the inner pages.

Punch out the holes with the hole punch on the circles.

If you have older students, instead of hole punching, you could use the awl and explore the more traditional and professional way of punching holes when book binding.

Nest the copy paper pages within the covers. At this point it is often helpful to paper clip or binder clip the pages together to prevent slipping when stitching the binding.

Stitch the book together using a simple overcast stitch or the stab binding stitch. If this sounds totally confusing, check out these stitch tutorial resources:

This Stitch Tutorial pdf has many stitches you could try for the binding, including the overcast stitch.

This short You Tube Stab binding tutorial is for an entire journal, but it teaches the basic stitch well.

Voila! You now have a leaf shaped nature journal!! Use it with botany work, or put it in your field bag and head out into nature and see what season change discoveries you can draw!

How could you use these journals yourself or with the children in your life?

Share pictures of your journals on Instagram #wingswormsandwonder !

Seeds to Sprout:

Want to get in on all the Draw Yourself Back to Nature nature journaling fun? Learn more about the course here!

Follow Wings, Worms, and Wonder Nature connection through art, nature journlaing, and children’s gardening’s board The Blog: Wings, Worms, and Wonder on Pinterest.