Turn Learning into a Treasure Hunt

Have you ever heard, "Mama, let's play a board game?" only to discover that no one wants to play the board games that are stacked up in the closet?  This is a great opportunity to create your own game!  All you need is a piece of paper, pencil, something interesting to hide and your imagination.

The best thing about this game, called Treasure Hunt, is that you can incorporate learning, fun, adventure and nature exploration simultaneously!  See the above picture?  I quickly drew a map of our back yard, gave mundane outdoor features exciting names, incorporated physical activity, math, reading, geography and following directions in a single FUN activity.

From the map (shown above):

Step 1  From the back door, take 42 steps
Step 2  Go South and spin 8 times
Step 3 Skip to the Magic Tree House
Step 4  Climb the Magic Tree House and read one Chapter of Stuart Little
Step 5  Run to the deck
Step 6  Walk past the grapevines
Step 7  Look under flowers

Suggested Book for Inspiration:

Habitat Destruction Experiment

We wanted to find out how water becomes polluted, the methods that can be used to clean polluted water, the scale of difficulty of cleaning water after it has been polluted and if water can be cleaned completely after it has been polluted.  We started with a couple of gallons of clean, filtered water.  We added twigs, dirt, dead leaves, pebbles, olive oil, dish soap, plastic wrappers, tin foil, broken glass to simulate pollution from various sources.

Then we stirred it all up with a stick to mix it up and make it mucky like currents, waves, boats, wind do to rivers, streams, ponds and the ocean.

 

Then we attempted to clean the water.  We used a slotted spoon and a strainer and was able to get out some of the larger items, but not all of them.  We were able to get some of the suds out from the dish soap, but not all.  We were also not able to get the olive oil out and we noticed how it created a film on the surface of the water that felt heavy and well...oily.  We ended up dumping everything out and filling the tub up with fresh, clean, filtered water.  Guess what? The fresh clean water became polluted from what was left over previously.  We concluded that it is very difficult to clean up pollution and even when it rains and the Earth tries to clean its rivers, streams, oceans and when humans try to clean it up, it still isn't ever going to be as clean as before.

 

Many types of animals, marine life and other species depend upon water as a part of their habitat.  This is why it is important to keep trash and other pollutants out of the water!  We, as humans, also depend on fresh, clean water.  Even though we have sophisticated water filtration systems, our experiment proved how difficult it is to make the water clean and how impossible it is to make it completely clean.

This experiment was inspired by an experiment called "Habitat Happiness"on page 81 of  "The Kids' Wildlife Book" (shown below).  It is a wonderful experiment that gives guidelines and fosters critical thinking skills, as well as hands on learning as a way of teaching important concepts and meaningful outcomes.  It also leaves a lot of room for creativity and open ended exploration.
 

Look Who Came to Visit Our Garden

Hula Hoop Geography

 Using a hula hoop as the shape of the Earth and fallen leaves for the continents...
 

and then shaping them with scissors to make the continents geographically correct.

Naure is Our Classroom

Sweet white corn, tomatoes and carrots

Strawberries and Sugar Baby Watermelon

Roses intertwined with Jasmine

Strawberries almost ready to pick...

Doing nature-based school :)

A baby ear of corn...see the corn silks???

A beautiful Daylilly.

A green pepper getting bigger each day.

Daisy Mae

The birds love this space.

Back Yard Noun Hunt

For reading and language arts, we went on a back yard noun hunt, played the POP for Sight Words Game and made up stories about the animals that live in our yard who love our vegetable garden, bird bath and fruit trees.

First Day of Fall Activity

Today was the first day of Fall. California had been learning all about himself last week, so we pulled that theme over to this week and added another concept. "I am a part of Nature and Nature is a part of me". To illustrate this concept, we outlined California's body as shown below (this made him giggle a lot).



Then we filled his outlined body with the colors of Fall...orange, red and yellow.



We talked about how we are all a part of Nature and it is a part of us as he blended these colors happily singing "Mary had a Little Lamb".



Then we added the shapes of Fall leaves within the painting and traced them with Fall colors. California labeled his work of art at the bottom and commented that it looked like leaves blowing in the wind.




Here are links to books that would go great with this activity:

All I See is Part of Me

Mouse's First Fall

Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf

Leaf Man

Autumn is for Apples