Valentine's Day Nature Activities

We pulled some nature activities together to share at our local nature center, Woodlawn Nature Center. We had a basket of pine cones, sticks, and sweet gum balls, adding pipe cleaners, pom poms, and valentine colored yarns. The pom poms and pipe cleaners are easy for little hands to coax into the pinecones. It helps with exploring seeds and seed dispersal in pine cones as well! 

 

Really, this activity could be adapted for ANY holiday--just switch out the colors of the materials to match the holiday! 

It was neat to see the older kids get into it, as they brought a different level of experimentation to the loose parts. One made a bag full of acorns from a recycled mesh bag. He's planning an experiment to see how long it takes the birds and squirrels to eat them. 

 

We had a Valentine's book collection. To be honest, there is an opportunity for nature themed Valentine's books. I'm not sure what that might look like, but it's always nice to have themed books! I have had this "Love Bugs" pop up book forever, but it's not really science based.

We also had a station of hearts in nature. I have a set of heart shaped nature pictures from Nature Explore; however, I don't see them online. You could make some of your own pictures or from images found online. We included some nature "shape" activities to go with this center.  I like that the backs of the cards have a variety of questions, activities, movements, etc. to extend the learning on the cards. These could be brought along on a hike, staged to find on a hike, and/or used to look at/experience once a week. 

I've loved this little book, Discovering Nature's Alphabet. (aft link) We looked at the simple lines in nature the form letters/shapes.

We had another table full of Valentine's stuff, such as stickers, paper, cut outs, etc. to make your own Valentine. 

On the light table there was an invitation with tissue paper, laminated heart doilies, laminated tissue hearts, etc. 

We also worked on fine motor skills, making bird feeders with cheerios on pipe cleaners. With a little adult help, it was easy to make a heart shape to put on a tree. Other years, we have cut out cardboard hearts, spread peanut butter on them, rolled in bird seed, and hung from a tree. It was fun and easy to put this together and less messy than the peanut butter!

Part of the fun is finding a good spot to leave it in the woods! 

I think what we enjoyed most was a little heart hike. There are MANY variations of how this might be done. I laminated a variety of hearts--doilies, tissue paper, etc. I just used what I had in my Valentines box. I laminated as I wanted them to be durable over several uses and wanted to use them outside where I knew it might be snowy/wet. Here are a few ideas on using them. How might you use them? 

• Find things you love in nature on your walk. Take a picture with the heart to document what you loved. If desired, make a book out of the experience. This would be good with an early childhood class, capturing the children's words to document the experience and caption the photo.
• Leave a trail of hearts for others to find! Let others find the hearts on the path (schedule with another group). Leave the hearts near interesting items that they may enjoy as well. 
• Hide the hearts before heading out to find them with your little ones. 
• Find items in nature or outside that match the colors of the hearts. 

Happy Valentine's Day! Need more ideas? Check out ideas we've pinned on Pinterest for Valentine's Day for lots of inspiration!

Under Ground: A Book Review

I've always loved Denise Fleming's books about nature for preschoolers. The pages are very engaging and have simple text that helps understand the content. In underGROUND, Fleming continues her winning style. Guess what? She just lives over in Toledo, OH--that's only about 2 hours away, so she is enjoying similar nature to what we find close. Find her at her website. She has some related activities for the book on the site. She also shows how she makes pulp paper. I've tried this before and it's a little harder than it looks! :-) I like how she uses stencils to get the pulp to go where she wants it. 

Woodpecker Wham! A Book Review

I was so excited when I saw April Pulley Sayre was coming out with a new book on woodpeckers. I have admired her other books, checking out all that she has to offer from our local library. When I realized that I was the one with Vulture View  checked out as I wondered who checked out the same books as me, I knew I had to go ahead and buy it. I like the simple, yet VERY informative writing that engages the reader. I do many nature programs for young children and adults. The words are interactive and engaging. Woodpecker Wham! delivers the same vibe. As a plus, it is set in a similar habitat to our area.

I have enjoyed getting to know the different woodpeckers in our midwest area. We put suet cakes out sometimes to attract them even more, yet also see them frequently as we live in a very wooded area. I found it curious that the jacket cover is quite different from the hardcover of the book. Both are gorgeous! I am VERY impressed with the illustrator's ability to truly show the details on these birds with cut paper and paint. Check out those feet on the pileated woodpecker! It's neat to see that flash of red in the woods behind our house.

Each page has about 4 lines of text, with three to four words each. It doesn't sound like much, yet each word is carefully chosen to teach about the birds. Rhyming words help with the message. The illustrations support the words with great detail. Action and/or sound words help bring the book to life as they are read, giving an interactive aspect to the pages. The author shows how red bellied woodpeckers communicate through tapping on trees, insect are eaten, holes are drilled for sap, bird clean, hollow cleaned out, eat berries, babies crack eggs, feeding fledglings, storing acorns, and making a hole in a tree. I am amazed at how much she packs in with so few words. 

At the end, she gives more detailed information on woodpeckers in general, sharing information on chisel shaped beaks, how they hitch and hop, send instant messages, use their tongues, how seeds pass through their digestive tract, how many survive in one forest, attracting woodpeckers to our yards, keeping secure homes, raising families, and more! There are also labeled illustrations of all the woodpeckers that are highlighted at the back of the book. 

Personally, I will use this book for my own understanding of woodpeckers and in programs with children in preschool through grade 4 or so, realizing that it is a picture book. While it's simple, it teaches so much. A simple read aloud can have a big impact on children. I read her book, Vulture View, on a hike with adults one time and a turkey vulture soared above our heads. I could see the adults gliding along with the turkey vulture as I read. Reading these books to adults can reinforce the concepts presented.

See a pileated woodpecker in action here. 

See pictures from the book here. 

Here is April Pulley Sayre's website. 

   

This post may contain affiliate links. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do! 

Nurturing Acorns: Environmental Art

What a fun session of Nurturing Acorns at Woodlawn Nature Center that we had recently. We started out with a little letter and shape work, matching letters on rocks to an alphabet chart and drawing with sidewalk chalk letters, shapes, lines, etc. Since we have 2 year old to 5 year olds, we like to give options for various abilities. We flip flopped how we normally do things, spending more time outside as the downpour was coming.

Then we made large circles and mostly made "nature" faces, using the circle as our base and filling in with wood chips, sticks, dandelions, etc. for facial features, hair, and more. The guy on the left is quite the realist, though. He was making an insect with three body parts--head, thorax, and abdomen, which ended up being a lady bug that he colored red. While hesitant at first, once he got going he was on a roll! 

On Meadowview Street: A Book Review

I first learned of On Meadowview Street in a preschool nature program at Elkhart County Parks. I loved how one girl who chose to protect a flower could influence her whole neighborhood. That theme of there being good things in this world and actually being the good has resonated with me the last several years. What we do matters.

On Meadowview Street, by Henry Cole, describes the tale of a young girl moving to a new neighborhood. Having moved probably twenty times in my forty years of life, I instantly could relate to the moving truck on the first page and the furniture on the lawn as the family moved into their new house. The girl, Caroline, soon notices a small blossom as her father is mowing. She develops a bond as she admires its beauty. Caroline decides she'll save this flower. She puts up a string fence around the flower. The father agrees, as it's less mowing for him. My husband really likes this path of least resistance too. We'll have to plant even more natives to cut down on his mowing.

Loose Parts = Imagination + Creativity

If you attended Loose Parts = Imagination + Creativity at the Indiana Early Childhood Conference in April 2015, THANK YOU! We enjoyed sharing with you! We appreciated your patience with the unexpected large crowd.

Here you will find links to the handouts and resources we used for this presentation. Chris Whitmire (Nuts and Bolts Playground and Early Learning Center) and I presented about the topic and created these materials. We hope these help you in your journey to include more loose parts in your programs.

We also started a Loose Parts Play Facebook group. We hope you will join us to explore Loose Parts Play in more depth. Watch for more articles and resources shared on Loose Parts Play soon.

Nurturing Acorns: Spring!

It's spring time at Nurturing Acorns, the nature preschool group at Woodlawn Nature Center. We started by making spring headbands, decorating them with stickers and using our fine motor skills. We also used spring stamps to make scenes on paper.

Our "loose parts" were in a huge suitcase from a presentation over the weekend, so the children and some adults helped us sort and categorize our items. For story time, we talked about changes in Spring, read a couple of books, like "What a Wonderful World", tried some songs, and talked about animals in Spring, such as beavers, deer, and rabbits. We talked about the animals more as we walked the museum and ate snack later. 

16 Ideas for Animal Play

Play is an essential part of learning! I host a regular Nature Play session, but have also been thinking more about how children learn about animals in their backyards and communities. I've done field trips with 5th graders wondering what an opossum is or not knowing other basic animals, like a raccoon. There have also been studies about how young children can identify over 200 logos yet fewer than 10 flora or fauna in their backyard. That's disturbing. However, we can give children opportunities to learn more about the natural world around them!

Stomp, Stomp, Roar, Roar! Dinosaur Nature Play

We started up Nurturing Acorns, a nature based preschool program at Woodlawn Nature Center, again this week. Our topic was dinosaurs and fossils. We started by making cute little dino hats. Simple costumes like this can be great for little ones to explore nature and engage in animal play. Watch for a post on animal play soon! See it from the back here. We used this basic tutorial from cutting tiny bites, yet just used a stapler instead of glue. Additionally, since we have so many two-year-olds in our group, we had many items precut. Older children were welcome to cut their own and change it up. Each tail ended up a little different, which is always nice! We also had some literacy activities, with letter rocks, alphabet sheets, and dinosaur words.

Nature Play! Animals in Winter

I love seeing my kids volunteer early in their lives on a "snow day"! My son grabbed a shovel and started clearing a path with me in the frigid temps! We went in to Nature Play! Animals in Winter at Woodlawn Nature Center earlier in the month. Due to the cold temps, we opted to stay inside, though would have loved to watch for tracks, deer rubbings on the trees, dreys (squirrel nests), birds, and other evidence of animals in the winter. Inside, we had lots of fun! We brought a tub of snow inside and had plenty of animals to make tracks in the snow. A bowl, water dropper and scoop were fun additions. While my youngest is in the picture, I will say that all the boys (ages 5, 8, and 10) played in the snow with the animals.

We also had some play dough to use with the animals as well. We created a winter scene little by little, adding in wooden and foam trees, snowflake pasta, and more. Cookie cutters allowed us to cut various shapes.

Oatmeal Sensory Play

My mom recently mentioned some of the activities my grandfather is doing at a rehabilitation facility after a hip replacement. Not only are they working on his hip, they are also working on his sight, sensory perception, and eating skills as a bonus. She mentioned that one activity includes mixing small items in with dried beans and then finding the items in the mix. It helps with sight, touch, and visual and tactile discrimination. I immediately thought of the sensory activities we do with young children! We do a similar activity around Halloween, mixing in Mr. Potato Head parts with beans inside of a hollowed out pumpkin (fake--I use it year after year). The children can then decorate the Pumpkin Head. They are working on those same skills, such as visual and tactile discrimination as they search through the beans to find the Mr. Potato Head parts. 

In this sensory drawer (half off at the ReStore of Elkhart County, costing $1.50 for a nice little tray) leftover from our apple studies at Nurturing Acorns, we had the fixings for apple crisp, with oatmeal, cinnamon sticks, and red, green, and clear beads and baubles. These could simulate apples, leaves, water, etc. There was even a misplaced frog, army man, and golf tee! In the past, I've also included small bits of sand paper to draw on with the cinnamon sticks. It smells great! 

As my son was playing with this I pulled out several small stainless steel little cups (Sam's Club--about $5 for 12?). These became tools for categorizing his finds, scoops for the materials, and hiding places for the frog. Small additions like this make a huge difference in how the materials might be used. I once found a bag of plastic scoops from drink containers and such for 50 cents at a garage sale--what a find! And, yes, we use them! Toddlers and preschoolers are naturally drawn to scooping, pouring, and categorizing. This "play" is learning time, building connections, and strengthening cognitive bonds. 

We left the bin accessible on the table for a few days. While it was designed for our two-year-old and his friends, I will say that I saw all the boys, ages 5, 8, and 10, scooping their hands in the mixture over the days. I wonder if we need more "sensory work" as adults. I really wanted to say sensory play as adults, but wondered if we really embrace the concept of play as adults. I'll keep thinking on it! Let me know if you have ideas! 

While we did this inside, I still consider this nature play. It uses mostly natural items, allows for inquiry and exploration, and is open-ended. I call these "invitations" or just sensory play. While some basic materials are curated for play, the child is allowed to do with it what he/she pleases. Some may see these as a "substitute" for time outside, I just see it as an addition to the great nature play we have outside. It's another trick to have up our sleeve to keep toddlers off the television. :-)

When done, I just poured the items in a plastic ziploc to use for the future, reserving our little bowls for rotation back in our dishes. After all the little boy hands in the oatmeal, it wasn't something I wanted to cook with again. However, I'm sure we'll bring this out again with different items throughout the year for more sensory play.

A Natural Holiday: Preschool Style

This morning we had our last session of Nurturing Acorns, our nature preschool group that meets once a week. We had a small group, yet enjoyed meeting with everyone throughout the fall! 

We started by writing and drawing in our nature journals, adding a picture of the child to help remember our special time together studying spiders, trees, nocturnal animals, and more! Then we made paper strip Christmas trees (Thanks Mommy Savers!), talking about the children's trees at home, shapes, and colors. It was great glueing practice! One family recently went to Eby Pines for their tree. What great memories and a fun way to get outside!

Later we went out to the larger open space for a little holiday action! I love these Christmas action cards from Oopsey Daisy. We marched like a nutcracker, melted like a snowman, twirled like a snowflake, and spread our branches like a tree! I love using action cards like this from preschool to at least 12 years old, depending on the audience! 

We have a very young group (mostly 2-year-olds) so tried playing with the play dough while we read a few stories. I love seeing what they come up with. As additions, we had letter stamps, so some spelled there names. We had a few wooden and foam trees, red wooden beads, holiday pipe cleaners and popsicle sticks, and more as loose parts add ins. 

We had more books available, yet these were some of my favorites for this time of year, such as The Snow Tree , 10 Christmas Lights , Counting to Christmas , and A Wish to Be A Christmas Tree. I also really like all of Jan Brett's books for wintertime (affiliate links). Many of these books talk about evergreens, animals in winter, and natural decorations. In The Snow Tree, I like how the various animals help decorate the white tree with something colorful that is related to them, like the Blue Jay's feather. In Counting to Christmas, there is obviously an emphasis on counting, but we also see the girl making and giving back to the animals nearby and decorating a tree outside. In A Wish to Be a Christmas Tree, the animals remind the large tree how it is a home to so many animals and they decorate it each holiday season. 

Outside, we went on a special holiday hike, taking Christmas items from my "magic" bag and trying to find them in the woods. I based it off this fun activity from Woodland Trust Nature Detectives. They have GREAT stuff. It's based out of the UK, though, so some things use different names. I also often take their great ideas and modify it a bit. This scavenger hunt was very text heavy for preschoolers, so I found objects for many of the items and put them in my magical bag. Outside we found twigs shaped like reindeer antlers, logs like yule tide log, something white like Santa's beard, and more! 

It was a fun way to get outside on a chilly morning and celebrate the holidays!

For snack inside, we had snowman string cheese and cucumber snowmen, complete with red pepper scarf and raisin eyes and buttons! They were just right! We also worked on a paper chain to help decorate the nature center. 

We also did pinecone weaving (Thanks for the inspiration Rainy Day Mum!) and holiday pattern blocks. They're always fun! I like the pattern block templates from PreKinders. 

Everyone was interested in making a holiday treat for the birds, spreading peanut butter on pinecones and rolling them in bird seed. We changed out many items in the sensory bin to make it more like the holiday time as well!

One girl even set up the puppet theater area like our books where the animals decorated the trees! I loved how she applied the story to her play! She always has a great imagination!