Written by: Lauryn Baily
Nature gifts children; it creates an environment that values respect, compassion, and curiosity. These characteristics learned in nature teach children how to treat others and respect the environment around them. Nature doesn’t require structure in order to create learning opportunities; learning in nature can be done during a walk to the store, watching leaves from a window, or wherever else your child shares a curiosity with (Goldstein, Famularo & Kynn, 2018). Research has shown young children who are connected to nature, even within urban environments, have stronger emotional resilience, experience less stress, are less likely to become hyperactive, and possess stronger social skills (Flouri, Midouhas & Joshi, 2014). When these spontaneous moments occur, and time allows, asking questions is a great way to foster your child’s wonder and learning further to observe, generate questions, conduct experiments, connect science with the real world and build their understandings of everyday concepts (Goldstein et al., 2018).
The following questions can connect your child to nature as well as extend their curiosity during everyday routines:
- What are you seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling?
- How can you change this? How can you make this move?
- What animals or bugs live here?
- What can you see from here?
- Does this plant (tree, animal or bug) look similar to that plant (tree, animal or bug)?
- Is this older, younger, bigger, smaller than this?
- How does this affect us? (Dodge et al., 2008)
Questions should promote children to ask why, explore cause and effect, compare/measure/classify and learn sequences in nature (Dodge et al., 2008).
An activity that establishes time for learning and opportunity, while involving these questions, can be done through nature collection at a park, on a trail, on a neighborhood walk, in your backyard or in a forested area. Establish boundaries with your child about what items to search for and where to search. Discuss what it means for plants to be alive. Encourage thoughts about where wildflowers are growing. This may be somewhere you can simply observe, rather than picking the growing plant.
Moss is also something that while is alive on trees, can be found dried around tree stumps. Large rocks and fallen trees can be homes to small critters. Bringing varied items together such as pine cones, pine needles, dried moss, leaves, grass and rocks helps children to “explore the properties of the world around them, notice changes and make predictions” as they are learning about the earth and the environment (Dodge et al., 2008, p. 145). Have your child record their discoveries. Recording child’s discoveries, serves as a connection to literacy. Perhaps, create a graph that records how many items are a certain color, a certain property, shape or texture (Dodge et al., 2008). Following below is an outline of specific learning objectives supported in this nature collection activity.
Respect and care for environment and materials
Talking about how we take care of the world around us is important. As discussed before, plants that are alive can create an opportunity to talk with your child about respecting and caring for delicate parts of our environment and conversation about how we must leave no trace so others after us can enjoy beauty as we did. Teaching respect for our natural environment and asking how we are affected by the environment around us, leads to a deeper understanding and responsibility of nature (Dodge et al., 2008).
Explore cause and effect
Simply noticing characteristics creates curiosity, leading to questions such as “what will happen if?” and developing experiments (Dodge et al., 2008). Families can promote this objective by asking their children:
- What happens if you pick this up? Turn it over?
- What did you notice?
- How can this change?
Classify, compare, or measure
This is a great time to incorporate a recording method. You may encourage creating a graph, a narrative record of what your child has noticed, or allow your child to record their findings using their own creativity. Sorting objects will help support children as they are learning patterns and relationships (Dodge et al., 2008).
- Sort objects by one or multiple properties such as; size, shape, color or texture.
- Ask questions such as:
- What is different between these two leaves?
- Which object is bigger, smaller, smooth, rough or sharp?
- How many different colors/sizes/shapes do we have?
Overall, connection to nature is not only a learning experience for children, but a huge component to supporting their overall well-being (Flouri et al., 2014). Learning and playing in nature creates connection of your child’s personal interest and enjoyment. More playing equates to discovering new ways of engaging in nature. Relaxing and enjoying unstructured time together, can be the most valuable experience of all.
References
Dodge, D. T., Colker, L. J., & Heroman, C. (2003). The creative curriculum for preschool. Washington, DC: Teaching Strategies.
Flouri, E., Midouhas, E., & Joshi, H. (2014). The role of urban neighborhood green space in children’s emotional and behavioral resilience. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 40, 179–186. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2014.06.007
Goldstein, M., Famularo, L., & Kynn, J. (2018, November). From Puddles to Pigeons: Learning about Nature in Cities. https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/yc/nov2018/learning-about-nature-cities
