Welcome / About Nature Journaling & Drawing

When raising my three children I discovered the Montessori Method of teaching where children can learn at their own pace using their innate curiosity to explore the world around them. Many years later in 1999, I volunteered & participated in the Terwilliger Nature Guide Program in San Rafael. (which they still do & I highly recommend) It provided me with the perfect training before I went to Belize to work with the Belize Audubon Society building an educational exhibit at Crooked Tree Bird Sanuaury.  Shortly after I returned, 9-11 happened. It was devastating. I wanted to do something good & meaningful. So I went to our local WildCare center & volunteered to foster-care baby hummingbirds. Little did I realize that that would become a journey in itself.

It’s important that all of us see & think beyond what we’re familiar with. One way of accomplishing this is by being in nature & recording our experiences with words & drawings.  I wanted to learn fun & engaging ways to teach this to children. I enrolled in the Educational Workshops for Teachers at Yosemite taught by in John Laws & David Lukas. This included some incredible hikes & lots of nature journaling. They are extraordinary teachers & artists. Though I personally work more abstractly with my own images, I feel it’s imperative that children begin drawing using a method that teaches accurate observation, so I try to pass-on what they taught me about drawing & working in the field.  

Drawing is very similar to learning to play a musical instrument. With music, first you start out my playing the scales & chords. And with writing you have to learn the alphabet & to write simple words to form a sentence to begin. It's important to learn basic drawing skills to form a foundation to express the world around you.The complexity of our thinking jumps in quicker than we realize.  But if we have this down, stay grounded in ourselves & find a simplistic way of getting started, we give ourselves the best chance of taping into our creativity. From there the world opens up in surprising ways that will offer you the unfamiliar. How you respond to that is between you & your work. As you work more, your approach to "beginnings" will change but your foundation will always be there for you.   Sherburn LaBelle ©️

Please click on the names of these teachers above to visit their websites & to learn more about what they do.  

Contact Me by clicking here If you have any questions.