Nature journaling is regular practice of drawing and/or writing in response to nature. This fun, relaxing practice helps us to connect more closely with nature, and results in the creation of our own unique nature journal. Although its practice and the end product are important, nature journaling calms our mind and increases our attention to detail and appreciation of beauty. It improves our recognition of different animal and plant species, and our understanding of where and how they live. With time, it also improves our ability to observe, to draw and to write.

The effort to introduce nature journaling (NJ) by nature journal educator, Mr Chow Keng Fatt continued to expand to the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus (UNMC) with nine (9) students took part in the NJ workshop on Friday afternoon, 17 November 2023, thanks to the arrangement by Shannee Chuang and Ewan Koay (both are UNMC students) together with their team of the UNMC Sustainable Environmental Education Network (SEEN) at its campus in Semenyih.

The workshop began with the introduction of nature journaling as an extremely effective and engaging way to learn on observation, curiosity, and creative thinking about nature with a combination of words, sketches, drawings, photos, and numbers in a nature journal. According to Mr Chow, journaling deepens our observations, thinking, and memory. Journal entries that include words, pictures, and numbers lead the journaler to think in different ways and make a more complete record of what they see. Throughout the workshop, he introduced to students Pencil Miles with the nature journal language (writing, sketching, and numbers) with the prompt of INIWIRMO (I notice..., I wonder..., It reminds me of...,) to kick start students’ nature journal practice.

The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus (UNMC) is situated in a 48-hectare plot of land in the valley of the Broga Hill in Semenyih. Its picturesque location that overlook green hills that resemble University Park in the UK within a garden environment, the UNMC is a great place to practice nature journaling. Mr Chow led the students to the nearby lake area apply the nature journal language with the INIWIRMO prompts within an hour to record their observation in their journal. During the sharing session after the outdoor activity, some of the students responded they noticed rabbit’s foot fern, something they would otherwise overlooked. Others observed trees they do not know the names. It is a fun yet relaxing hands-on activity that open their senses towards their surrounding. The 3-hour workshop of nature journaling is a first time ever conducted at the Semenyih Campus as the practice is pretty new to mostly everyone. After all, no one would know if they can write or sketch, unless they do. To quote a natural journal educator from the United States, “The only bad journal entry is the one not made.”