A few years ago, a couple of my friends online have been creating some fantastic nature studies and I was jealous of their science lessons. It all started with Phyllis over at All Things Beautiful and her wonderful drawings her kids would do of their nature study. Then Claire over at Angellicscalliwags started up a weekly pond visit with one activity to do each time she goes there with for a nature study with her kids, AND Navigating by Joy has a great series on her nature study.
I was having serious nature study jealousy, so I tried out some different nature study ideas, these are geared for elementary-age kids, but you could adapt them down to preschool by removing the writing element, or up to older kids by expecting more from them, and following up with research into what they saw (Almost Unschoolers does great with this).
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We headed over to a local park we love to go to and started observation. So far our trips have only been observation. Next, I’m going to start working on improving their drawing skills and WHAT they write (future Ticia, that didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped, but I’m still working at that).
Our Weekly nature study assignments
Our first week was in the midst of wildflower season here, and everyone was in a horrid mood, so I just had them observe a flower and draw it. This was one of Princess’ favorites.
There can be some awesome follow-up of looking at field guides or the Crinkleroot books.
This particular nature study led to a great discussion between the kids and me. What is living and what is non-living? I went through what constitutes a living being, but they had all sorts of arguments on this idea. It also led to a bit of competitiveness as they tried to have the most living things they found. That part was a little bit annoying.
Choose one animal and in 5 minutes write down as much as you can about it. I was amazed that in all that time none of my kids really wrote anything about the color of the animal. They wrote about what it did, how it moved, but nothing about the color of their animals. Also, I was highly amused by their animal choices.
My final suggestion to share, go to the park right after it’s rained and see the changes. This was one of my kids’ favorite ideas. They loved looking to see how it changed, especially because this park flooded two years ago, the bridge was closed for a year as they fixed it. Several of the concrete benches were knocked out of place, but it’s now all back to normal. We’ve had a couple of times where it’s been time to go shortly after it’s rained, and each time the kids have found new observations.
One last tip, give them time to play. If I’m honest this is the kids’ favorite time of our park study. They sit there and splash in the creek for a good 30 minutes, and then we head over to the playscape to play and dry off.
Want some more Nature Study Ideas?
I’ve got two quick suggestions for you:
- Check out my friend Marci’s Backyard Science ebook
- My nature study Pinterest board is where I stored all of those posts I referred to earlier.
- More nature study ideas for preschool
- Identifying rocks with a nature guide
I love the writing topics you used for your nature study. Thanks so much for including our underground small world this week! Just thought I would mention that the link isn’t working at the moment…it looks like both your home page and destination link are included in the link. Hope you’re having a great weekend!
Oops, that’s what happens when you write late at night when overly tired. Should be fixed now, thanks for letting me know.
It’s bound to happen from time to time. No worries! 🙂
I remember when I first began our nature studies. I would tell them to find something to observe or to write down as many things as they could see, and my James would pick out every man-made thing he could find. It took him a while to get around to the idea of nature study, but now he is one of my best observers and collectors. It is a skill that takes time.
That’s what happened with my kids when I first had them looking for living and non-living. I’m learning this is very much a skill to practice.
Oh, and I must be on the right track if I’m following in the same footsteps you took.
I really need to get my girls doing some nature studies this summer! Thanks for hosting and featuring our Thunderstorm; I feel like we should partner up on something since we always seem to be promoting each other! 🙂
Ooohhhhh, that’s a good idea. I think I’ll have to email you and we can come up with something fun.
If you’ve got an idea I would love to hear it! 🙂
Awesome ideas for the nature study. I am hoping for a bit more writing this summer, but we’ll see. I have to do the one with rain impact!
That was the most fun of our trips so far I think, you guys will really enjoy it.
I really like these suggestions, because they are so doable and are such a good way to keep nature study sustainable. Thanks for sharing your ideas. I think I’m going to use a few of your suggestions from now on. 🙂
Yeah! I’m all about simple and do-able.
Oh I like your ideas, we’ve been trying really hard to get in some more nature study too!
I’ve found for me at least making it a scheduled part of our week helps me get it in (we go after going to lunch with my best friend), she works vaguely near the park.
I love simple ideas like these!
That park looks wonderful! My kids love spashing in water (clothes irrelevant). I love the way you’ve set out your nature study ideas, you make it seem very do-able. Our pond is overrun with humans now the weather’s warm. We must visit our duckies early one morning I think.
Thanks for highlighting my science-without-curriculum post 🙂
These are so awesome! Thanks so much for linking up at #familyfriday we appreciate it! We hope you come back next week.
Great ideas here. We do occasional “natural study talks” on our walks, but never did a formal nature study. Would be an interesting thing to try, even for things in our own backyard!
I’ve discovered there are so many interesting things in our backyard. Between that and some of our local parks I could probably spend months on it.