Open World Field Guides: collections of Nature from our neighborhoods

Open World Field Guides is an online network of student and citizen created field guides that detail the plants and animals of many different regions. You can contribute to this collection of nature knowledge by creating and sharing your own field guide! Get out there and use your observation skills to learn about the unique parts of your natural landscape. Use the resources on this website to jumpstart your journey into the study of nature. You'll be amazed at how much you will discover.

Once you have completed your guide, share it online so others can learn from your work. Browse other field guides to learn about the nature in other neighborhoods!

This project is an extension of the second edition of the California Native Plant Society curriculum, Opening the World through Nature Journaling, by John Muir Laws, Emilie Lygren, and Emily Breunig. This curriculum can be used to deepen observational skills through drawing and writing in nature.

One of the activities in this curriculum is creating field guide pages (pgs 40-41) and creating a field guide (pgs 76-78). To create a field guide, one must look critically at the environment and use observational skills to identify wildlife, to find patterns, and to make connections between the natural features and creatures of a particular region. Sharing field guides gives people the opportunity to make comparisons between regions, to share inspiring discoveries, and to track species locations and distribution. Many professional scientists develop field guides, but everyone has the ability to gather information about nature through the process of scientific observation.

Groups can scan and upload field guide pages with the location information to the website and then the location will show up as a point on a map of California with other field guide locations. Visitors to the site will be able to download and print the student field guides for different areas around the state. What’s more, children will be able to see their field guides and locations on the map and compare them to field guides created by others.

We encourage children to share what they have learned and created with parents, friends, and other members of their community. Participants might choose to organize and lead natural history hikes with their field guides or hold a poetry reading at the site. If you are interested in participating in the Open World Field Guide project in any way, please contact Josie Crawford at .

Visit Open World Field Guides now!