Project Wild offers a great resource for educators and parents with children aged 3 – 7. The Growing Up Wild book (order it here) covers 27 themes, including “Oh Deer (a habitat theme)”, “The Deep Blue Sea”, “Who Lives in a Tree”, and “Wildlife is Everywhere.” Each theme includes: several ideas for group activities, and for self-guided exploration stations, recommended books (fiction and non-fiction), songs and movement activities, outdoor exploration ideas, math activities, art projects, snack ideas, links to videos (listed here) and “take home” sheets with ideas for parents to try at home. (See sample theme here.)  Each theme also includes a list of numerical codes for which Head Start Domains and which NAEYC Accreditation Criteria are met by the activities, and warm up and wrap up activities to assess children’s prior knowledge and learning outcomes. (Learn more about the contents of the book here.)

I attended a training where we had the opportunity to try out several of these activities. Some samples:

• Looking at Leaves. The instructor had collected 25 leaves, and given us each one. She asked us to look at our leaves and memorize them. You could ask children to think about how to describe their leaf: shape, color, texture, and so on. Then we put them all in a pile and mixed them up, then had to find our own. Simple, free, and great for teaching attention to detail, visual discrimination, and short-term memory. Easy to customize to age group, or to start a year with leaves that are very easy to tell apart, and over the course of time, have collections with more subtle differences. After the leaf match, you could take them outdoors to find the plant their leaf came from. You could also do leaf rubbings or leaf prints, then add the leaves to a collage.
• Spider Web Wonders. Draw a spider, discussing its anatomy (head, abdomen, 8 eyes, 8 legs that attach to the “head”). Children create spiders with a variety of craft or snack materials. The math game is “how many legs”. The teacher holds up a sign saying 0, and asking what creatures have zero legs. After children guesses, turn over the card to show a picture of the answers. (Snake, worm, etc.) Then do 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 14, 30+. A take home at Halloween time could be to check out Halloween decorations, and see how many of them get the spider anatomy wrong.
• Hiding in Plain Sight. Gather a collection of toy animals (stuffed or plastic). Begin with a matched pair, and hide one in plain sight before the children arrive. Then show them the matching animal animal and see if they can spot the hidden one in the room. Talk about how it was hiding  in plain sight – for example, placed in front of a similar colored item it could blend into, or placed somewhere that’s visually very busy so it could “hide” in the clutter. Explain the basics of camouflage. Next, the teacher or some children “hide” more animals, either in the classroom or outdoors. BUT… they should be told to hide them in plain sight. Then take the other children out to search. Then, build camouflage collages: cut out photos of animals, have the child paste one onto paper, then surround it with tissue paper squares in the colors that would camouflage it. Play “freeze birds”, explaining that even when animals are camouflaged, they give themselves away if they move. The “hawk” closes his eyes while the “bluebirds” play. When you call out freeze, they freeze, and the hawk opens his eyes. If he sees anyone move, they become the hawk.

That’s just a small sampling of ideas. For educators this book could provide a full ready-made nature curriculum for  your class, or could provide lots of ideas you might sample as you build your own curriculum. For parents, there’s plenty of fun and easy ideas in here – you can try out any that seem fun to you.

To learn more about nature play, click on these links “Recommended Daily Allowance of Outdoor Time“, Benefits of Outdoor Play, and Overcoming the Barriers to Outside Play.