Animals and Plants
bluejay
dead trees
grasses
oak tree
rusty lyonia
Animal Encounters
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Podcast Show Notes
Transcripts
Animal Encounters
Animal Encounters Activity
Nature Walk Video
City Park, October 2018
Animals and Plants
bluejay
dead trees
grasses
oak tree
rusty lyonia
“Laser Groove” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Nature Walk: City Park, October 2018
Animals and Plants
saw palmetto
velvet ant
sand pine
oak tree
muscadine grapevine
How to Use Binoculars Activity
I want to give you three steps for how to use binoculars with your kids.
1. Location, Location, Location
The first step is to choose a good location where you can watch animals. You’ll need to find a place where you can see trees or bushes or water or flowers because these are the types of natural objects that are going to attract animals to come to them. If you’re in the city and don’t have trees and bushes and water nearby, then you can look for places where animals might perch because a lot of birds will perch on … Read more
How Do Binoculars Work?
This week I went outside to do some birdwatching because it’s the time of year when birds are migrating through my area. I get to see birds that I don’t normally see other times of the year.
I was outside looking for birds, and I saw one perch in the distance. It looked like it had yellow underneath and gray on top, so it had a contrasting color. I could tell it was a medium-size bird, but I couldn’t see any details on it to understand what kind of bird it could be. I didn’t have enough information to even … Read more
Teaching Children About Autumn
Going out in nature and teaching children about autumn is possible as long as you have a slight seasonal change in your area. Even where I live in the South, small changes can be observed as the seasons change. Here are some ideas for activities your child can do.
Kindergarten
Education standard*: Observe plants and animals; describe how they are alike and how they are different in the way they look and in the things they do.
Activity: Spend time outside observing plants and animals as they get ready for winter. If possible, view birds migrating south, squirrels gathering and … Read more
Benefits of Playing and Learning in a Natural Environment
Benefits
Nature-deficit disorder is the human cost of alienation from nature, according to author Richard Louv, who wrote Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Some of these costs are the diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and emotional illnesses. In contrast, some of the benefits he describes for children who play and learn in nature include
- increased creativity
- greater attention span for those with ADHD
- greater physical and emotional health.
Nature in Your Own Backyard
When I was a kid, I went outside almost every day. My parents didn’t take me to nature parks, … Read more
Book Review: The Kids’ Nature Book by Susan Milord
If you’re looking for nature activities to do with your kids, I highly recommend The Kids’ Nature Book: 365 Indoor/Outdoor Activities & Experiences by Susan Milord. I found this book at the library, and after looking through it, I had to get the book for myself.
Layout
The activities begin on January 1st. Each week has a theme, and every day has an activity to go along with that theme. This week’s theme is rocks, and the activities include two field trips, two science labs, two art projects, and a rock collection. Other themes list poems and stories to … Read more
Find Nature – and Its Benefits – Near You
Find a Park
Have you looked at your county or regional park website recently? If you go to it and find the list of parks near you, you might be surprised by how many opportunities are available to you to experience and enjoy nature.
I knew there were some parks in my county, but I didn’t realize how many there were until I began to research places where I could teach homeschool classes. The website listed a description for each park, and many of the parks had nature hiking trails. The same is true for the county where I grew … Read more
Naturalist Notebook
A few days ago, I found pictures I had taken when I worked as an environmental educator in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio. In this collection, I saw one of my favorite photos from that year. I had taken my class to one of the ponds, and the students were sitting along the bank. They had their notebooks open, and they were writing about what they had observed during our recent activity.
Out of the three boys in the picture, two heads were bent down in concentration, and the third boy looked out ahead, as if he was … Read more