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If we were to ask you right now to describe your backyard what would you say? Something like… “There’s grass, trees, and other plants. I see leaves on the ground and a bird over there. There’s my playground!” This description solely relies on your sense of sight, leaving out key information from your four other amazing senses!
Today, we’re asking you to take an hour to sit outside and put your senses to work. Pick a cozy, happy place and relax. Sense journaling is a fantastic way to experience nature, focusing on one sensory system at time.
Experience Nature with All of Your Senses
By: Alex Cook
When you explore nature, your mind is sensing the environment around you, even if you aren’t aware of it! The human body relies on five sensory systems: gustatory (taste), somatosensory (touch and body position in space), auditory (sound), visual (sight), and olfactory (smell).
Sense journaling is a way to experience nature by breaking up how you perceive your surroundings, focusing on one sense at a time. It can be done anywhere - a porch, backyard, or even near an open window! While focusing on senses other than sight, close your eyes to heighten your other senses. Taste and smell are some of the most exciting senses to use, and the two systems are closely intertwined, but please be careful! Do not taste anything in nature unless you are 100% sure it is safe to eat.
Materials:
A writing instrument (pencil, pen, marker, crayon, etc.)
Paper
Timer
Procedure
Pick a location to journal your sense observations.
Write a heading at the top of your page. Note the location, date, and time.
Pick a sense to focus on first and set a timer for 10 minutes.
Write down everything you sense over the 10 minutes.
Repeat steps 3 and 4 for each sense.
Alex’s Amazing Sense Journal!
Alex created a sense journal this week. She decided to sit on her porch with her cat and a cup of coffee. She decided to focus on her sense of sight first, as that is her main sense used to observe her environment. She didn’t limit her search to only natural things. She included cars along with plants and animals.
Smell, Taste, Touch, and Sound!
After focusing on sight, Alex focused on sound. She closed her eyes and would open them to write down what she heard. You can also listen for ten minutes and then write down everything you heard; both ways work fine!At first Alex only really smelled her coffee, but after focusing for a few minutes was able to smell the fresh cut grass.Alex was drinking coffee during her sense journaling - it counts for taste!
Finished Product and A Bit of Advice
Using every sense to observe her surroundings is one of Alex’s favorite ways to enjoy nature, and she hopes you enjoy it too!
Advice from Alex: Don’t stress if at first you don’t sense anything. Especially with smell, as it may take a while for you to recognize a certain scent. Just relax and breathe - it will come to you! If you don’t notice anything, that’s fine too! If you hear a bird whose call you don’t know, you can write down the way it sounds phonetically! A lot of birds are actually named for the way their call sounds, like the Eastern Phoebe! Their call sounds like fee-bee, or Phoebe. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is a great tool for bird identification, and has recordings of bird calls.
additional cool resources
Click to explore the Cornell Lab’s resources for bird identification!
Play Bird Song Hero!
Play a cool matching game to learn more about how to identify bird calls!
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