Making a journey stick is such an easy, fun outdoor craft to do with the kids – and a great low-cost way to have some fun family time.
It’s just one of the fun nature projects in my new book, ‘A Year of Nature Craft and Play’. There’s an activity for every week of the year and it includes fun crafts, gardening, games, art and science experiments – perfect for inspiring kids to get creative with nature and explore the amazing natural world.
We learnt what a journey stick is and how to make one at our local nature reserve, which is part of the Wildlife Trusts.
What is a journey stick?
A journey stick (also known as a story stick or nature stick) is essentially a memento of a nature walk, featuring items collected whilst on the walk. These might be things like leaves, twigs, flowers, feathers, or anything else natural that you find along the way.
The history of journey sticks
I’d never heard of journey sticks before, but apparently they’ve been around for a very long time. Native Americans and Aboriginal people used them to track their journeys and tell stories about their travels.
Items collected on a journey would be tied to a large stick in the order that they were found. Symbols could also be painted or carved onto the stick. Each item on the stick would help to build up a picture of the journey, including things such as natural features, weather and adventures. The stick would then be used as a prompt for the retelling of the journey upon return, and also as a way to navigate the trip in the future.
It’s not hard to see why journey sticks make a great nature activity for kids, is it? They’re perfect for when you want to keep a walk interesting with some nature play, and you can also use them to introduce lots of discussion about nature and how to take care of it.
How to make a journey stick
To make a journey stick, you will need a few basic supplies.
Younger children can use a piece of cardboard with double sided tape attached to secure their items to the card. Older children can make a journey stick the traditional way by choosing a stick and attaching items to it using string or wool.
With all nature activities, you need to be mindful of protecting your surroundings. Make sure you spend a couple of minutes explaining this to children before you start, and only collect things that have fallen to the ground.
This activity really appeals to kids; it involves hunting, collecting, comparing with other children, as well as the opportunity to get creative with the stick design. We found lots of different items with a variety of shapes, colours, textures and sizes.
A Wildlife Trusts Ranger was on-hand to help us identify each item we found. If you were doing this on your own, it would be nice to have a nature spotters book with you to help with identification.
By the time we finished our walk we had two lovely records of the nature we’d seen along the way.
Some ideas for creating your journey stick
Here are a few ideas for questions you could explore with children while making your journey sticks.
- Do you want your journey stick to have a theme? For example, a colour, all flowers, all leaves.
- How long does your stick need to be? Think about how long your walk is!
- What senses does each item stimulate?
- What is the story that your journey stick is telling? Let your imagination run wild!
A journey stick is such a great activity to do with children during an outdoor trip. It keeps them busy, helps them learn about nature, and provides them with a memento to take home. You also need very little in the way of preparation; just some string or sticky cardboard, depending on which type you’re making.
Since we learned how to make journey sticks, we’ve repeated this fun nature craft again and again, building up a little gallery of journey sticks from our nature walks. We really like being able to compare journey sticks from each season, and each one always prompts some lovely reminders of fun family days out.
The Wildlife Trusts have a nice visual guide to making a journey stick here:
More nature crafts for kids
If you’d like to explore some more nature crafts for kids, take a look at these fun projects:
- Homemade bird feeders
- Heart nature crafts
- Mother’s Day nature crafts
- Spring nature crafts
- Winter nature crafts
- Natural noughts & crosses
- Twig-wrapped flower pots
- Leaf printing
- Painted rocks
- Miniature gardens
Do you think you’ll have a go at making journey sticks on your next nature walk?
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What a great idea. I’d never heard of a journey stick either, but I love the sound of it. A lovely way to create a memento of your day out and for children to think about the significance of the things they are collecting. #countrykids
My two loved being able to display their finds in this way – it’s also a great way to bring your finds home to look them up if you’re not sure what they are!
This sounds like a brilliant idea!! I have to try this with my girly on our next adventure walk #CountryKids
Enjoy – I bet you want to make one too!
Making journey sticks is a great way of getting kids interested in nature as they go for walks. Your two look like they’re really interested in all the bits they’re finding. I love the idea of making Journey sticks out of cardboard and double sided sticky tape, a great way for littler kids to join in the fun too! Thanks for linking up with me on country Kids.
I think it’s a great activity to have up your sleeve when energy starts to lag – it perks the adults up too!
You have reminded me how great these are to do! I shall be encouraging my son with one of these.
I’m so glad we’ve discovered these, I think Autumn will be a really good time to make them too – not sure how we’ll attach the inevitable conkers though!
Actually, taking mementos with you on a nature walk is not necessarily a good idea. If each visitor were to pick a flower, leaf and cone, then there would be less and less for the next person to see and enjoy. It would also disrupt the natural ecosystem you are walking through. We always practice observing in place and leaving things where they are.
I agree you shouldn’t pick things from plants and trees, the rangers that took us on this nature walk were happy for us to collect items that had fallen to the ground though – so we went for things like dried fallen leaves, pieces of bark and feathers.
Great idea! Shared by South Lincolnshire Walking Festival 🙂
I love this idea, will definitely be having a go at this with my grandchildren. I m sure they will enjoy it .
A lovely idea, will definitely try this with the grandchildren on our next walk. Sure the will love it .
I have never heard of journey sticks before, but what a fabulous idea! I will definitely incorporate this into future family walks (if our dog doesn’t eat the sticks first!)
https://spookymrsgreen.com/2012/06/20/spirit-sisters-and-water-dragon-crafts-event-photos/
Ah yes you’ll definitely have some competition for sticks then! I really like that it’s an activity which is different every time you do it, and doesn’t need fiddly prep too.
I love this idea! O loves anything to do with forests, mini beasts and nature – this is definitely something we’ll do on our next family walk.
Fab – have fun!
We’ve done something similar but it was just like a scavenger hunt and stuck what we found to bits of paper. I really love the idea of a journey stick though – will have to remember that one! Thanks for the great idea!
That’s a great way to do it too – I’ve also seen it done with sticky-backed paper that you then turn into a bracelet, we might try it that way this Summer.
When doing this with older children that are the Leave No Trace method of nature walks, We use the Journey Stick to collect small, interesting objects while beginning our walk. As we make the return trip back to the Car, Parking Lot, or Center, we return the items back to the same location that we found them. This is difficult for tiny tots as they want to keep their treasures. But, with older youngsters, it is a great time to discuss the environment and each items job in that particular habitat. I love using the double sided tape as bracelets or just on the cardboard. And the Journey stick and string is such fun. Thank you for posting this activity.
Ah… I heard about these a while ago and had forgotten about them. Thank you for the reminder!! These look fab!
They’re really great fun, and different every time depending on where you are – which is why we’ve ended up with quite a collection!
We did this year ago in campfire. The kids collected things on their walk then glued them onto rounds of wood when we got back to camp. Another time we put the found objects into construction paper books.
Ah I like the wood idea, that would make a lovely display!
I’ve never heard of journey sticks in my life. Great idea for our next family walk!