Nature diaries

Every year we try to keep nature diaries and every year we end up with scraps of paper and many many started but never completed books. I'm not sure why we find it so difficult to be consistent and record the animals and birds we see in one book labelled 'nature', but this year it's going to be different. We have already recorded two separate trips out in the same books! This was a rockpooling session
and all these pictures are of birds we saw when we saw the spoonbill

except we didn't see an owl

and we certainly didn't see a red grouse

that's the trouble with leaving them to follow their interests we end up with birds we couldn't have seen in the day and birds we absolutely never see down here. But we do have consistent nature books so lets see if we can keep it up!

On a similar note of inconsistent home educators Caitlin Moran (home educated herself) has written one of the most wonderful articles on home education I have ever read and definitely the most honest. I'm not sure if it will help or hinder the home ed cause but it's so worth reading. Just look up 'hey, teacher leave us kids alone' in the Times online. The truth is on the whole we all turn out ok in the end.