School's out for summer, and we're already on the hunt for some fun learning activities and projects! B and I have been having a lot of fun planting flowers, and discovering all of our backyard friends from birds and dragonflies to worms and bugs! I thought it would be a fun learning experience for B if we made a miniature nature journal to bring outside with us on some of our backyard adventures.

We found this cute printable Mini Nature Journal on Tiny Rotten Peanuts.

We also found some cute printable nature cutouts to use with our project!

We printed out our pages with our fabulous HP Envy Printer, which did a great job giving us nice, clear prints!

We folded the page into a little booklet...

...and B chose different cutouts to use in the photo.

We used the cutouts, stamps, and crayons to decorate the nature book.

It was a lot of fun for B to match the cutouts to the photo squares he wanted to place them in.

We started with the sun and moved on from there.

We used the school glue by himself for the first time!

B had a blast getting creative with his nature book!

I love that this printable includes journaling areas.

The booklet folds right up, and can be placed into a pocket for safe keeping.

We added B's name, the date, location and the weather to the font cover of the nature booklet. B didn't want to wait for the booklet to dry- he was so excited to get outside and go on a nature hunt!

The little pages of the mini nature journal looked so sweet!

We're also planning on making a similar journal for our trip to the beach, so we can document the sea life we encounter!

Travel Journals can also be fun to make and use while hitting the road this summer. Check out our DIY Travel Journal Project!

We hope you'll save this project and share with your friends! It's a great way to keep the kiddos busy this summer and engage them, plus- it's a greay way to work on their writing and observation skills!

Have fun!