Giving students opportunities to explore and observe plants, birds, or bugs on the school grounds or in nearby gardens and parks can bring multiple benefits. The Children & Nature Network highlights research findings that support the positive benefits of environment-based studies on school achievement, citing standardized measures in basic subject areas and other indications that environment-based programs foster cooperative learning and civic responsibility. NSTA Press has a rich collection of resources on easy ways to incorporate outdoor science activities in any green area in your schoolyard or nearby park. Read April’s issue of NSTA’s Book Beat for free lessons about seeds, plants, schoolyard surveys, and “Diary of a seed” writing prompts for students preK through high school.

Early spring flowers on a red bud tree.

Red bud tree leaves in fall.

Give your students practice making observations by doing a seasonal scavenger hunt that will require closer looks at the familiar landscape to see what has changed. (Thanks to the University of British Columbia Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research for the idea.)

Does the tree (with branches low enough to see) have tightly furled flower or leaf buds, leaves the size of a squirrel’s ear, or leaves that are fully grown and changing color? Checklists can use both words and pictures to list items.

Use a new checklist for each season and include some of the following items to look for if they apply to your school yard:

Plants

• Leaf size on deciduous plants (choose any or a particular plant)
• Flower buds forming, blooming, forming seeds(choose any or a particular plant)
• Flower bulb leaves growing above ground, dying back

Animals

• Baby animals in the fields
• Tracks in mud, sand, or snow

Birds

• In groups or alone
• What are they eating?
• Birds building nests

Insects and other small animals

• Bees or other pollinators on flowers
• Small animals (roly-polies, caterpillars) visible in the garden

Weather

• Temperature
• Precipitation
• Windy or calm
• Snow on the ground
• Ice on water bodies
• People dressed in boots, coats, sandals, shorts, carrying umbrellas.

"Honesty" plant in bloom in spring.

"Honesty" plant seed pods in fall.

The scavenger hunt observations can be posted each month to make it easier to see how the observations have changed over the year. Some months no student will see a bee and other months every student will see some.

What other items should be added to an outdoor scavenger hunt list for your schoolyard?

Peggy

I’m hoping that secondary teachers will take a look at the articles that describe authentic investigations conducted by young scientists in their communities: Creative Soil Conservation and Boulder Creek Study. The latter has examples of student work as they studied the water quality in their communities, using various indicators, including the presence of aquatic invertebrates. The authors noted that their students did not have much background in the topic of a “watershed.” If your students need this information also, use the keyword watershed in SciLinks. SciLinks also has websites with information and activities on topics related to soil for grades K-4 and 5-8 (e.g. types of soil, soil erosion, microorganisms in soil).

From hurricanes to earthquakes, forest fires mudslides, and record-setting snowstorms and rainfall, children often ask “Can it happen here?” Three articles are related to this topic. Along with Can We Protect Our Communities From Natural Disasters?,  check out the SciLinks keyword disasters for grades 5-8. Even if you’re not in an earthquake zone, activities such as those in Shake It Up and The Built Environment tap into the creativity of future engineers. SciLinks has lists of related websites on the topic of earthquake resistant structures and the science of bridges. One of my favorites is Building Big: All About Bridges from PBS.

If you like the ideas in the article How It’s Made, SciLinks has more information on pencils (5–8).  Action Figures describes how to hook students into a study of the skeletal system. Even though my curriculum did not include human anatomy, I learned that a brief review of the human skeleton helped students to connect to the skeletons of other vertebrates. In SciLinks, search for bones (5–8) or skeletal system (5–8), which includes other systems of the body. Three examples include Bird Skull Collection, the Mr. Bones interactive puzzle, and Virtual Body, which is also available in Spanish

To extend your activities on growing seeds, check out From Mystery Seed to Mangrove Island (I wonder what other variations on the mystery materials teachers who do not live in Florida can come up with!) and The Farmer in the Lab, which makes the investigation more complex and challenging for older students.

Many teachers are looking for ideas to integrate science with other content areas. It’s challenging to keep the project focused on a theme or essential question, rather than merely putting together a collection of “activities.” Living Off the Land dispels some of the misconceptions children have about Native American cultures as they focus on the relationships between people and natural resources. Outdoor Classrooms has suggestions and resources to use a corner of the schoolyard, a window box, or an outdoor center. And check with a local rescue or rehabilitation center if you have students similar to the Turtle Girls and want to give them ownership of their project.

I’m going to reread Using Learning Progressions to Monitor Progress Across Grades. I wonder how this way of assessing students in science processes is interpreted in schools where science takes a back seat to test prep in reading and math? I’m also curious as to how students beyond grade 4 would “score” on this. This article has related resources in the Connections for this issue, along with ideas for handouts, background information sheets, data sheets, rubrics, for several of the other articles.

So it’s not just me, or you…An elementary school science specialist wrote to National Science Teacher Association colleagues asking middle and high school teachers which science skills and knowledge are typically seen lacking in students as they transition from the elementary level to the middle school level and then to high school level classes. The response has been positively worded (not pointing any fingers) suggesting that:
students lack “having made more observations of the world- having noticed that the days are longer in the summer and that the moon is sometimes out in the day time and having noticed that there is more than one type of plant or bird or cloud or rock.” and “more experiences making things- baking bread, building with popsicle sticks and glue, or trying to fix something that’s broken…a greater awareness of the world around them.”

Another teacher observed that students are unfamiliar “with the great diversity of life in the world (both living and extinct)…it would be so helpful to MS and HS teachers if their students had been exposed to a fair sampling of plant, animal and even microbial life during their elementary years…if teachers could focus on the major categories of life (how they’re classified).”

These insights into what middle and high schoolers are missing have been discussed on the  NSTA email list server (for NSTA members) before and are in line with what education researchers and early childhood teachers say about science in the early years—it’s important to introduce scientific study early so children get the experience they need to understand concepts taught in the upper grades. Read about some efforts to bring more science into early childhood classrooms in Researchers Testing Programs to Teach Science in Preschool in Education Week, in print and online .

Peggy

Is the arrival of gardening catalogs inspiring you to dream about planting with your students, and plan a garden of any size? You know that people of all ages benefit from spending time outdoors and that your children were interested in seeds, perhaps in October if you carved a pumpkin, opened a milkweed pod, or cut vegetables to make “Stone Soup.” But how to be sure you don’t bite off more than you can chew, that the garden will be a success and the children will learn concepts that are part of the National Science Education Standards, or your state’s standards?

Let the National Gardening Association do it for you by following the comprehensive gardening curriculum in their new book, Garden Adventures: Exploring Plants with Young Children, by Sarah Pounders. She urges us to start small so initial enthusiasm is not exhausted before the plants mature. I had the pleasure of reviewing an early draft of sections of the book, and I look forward to using the lessons, beginning with the first: “What is a plant?”. The Plant Parts reproducible page of a pea plant will prepare my students for planting peas in February . To attract butterflies, we’ll plant flowers (for nectar), and dill, parsley, milkweed, and cabbage plants (for caterpillar food) in April, or maybe May, depending on the weather!

Garden Adventures has an easy-to-follow layout with basic lessons expanded in the “Digging Deeper” sections, teacher background information, reproducible, and newsletters to send home. Photos of children gardening will show your students that even young children can be gardeners. The list of children’s books includes old favorites—The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter—and some new to me—Whose Garden Is It? by Mary Ann Hoberman. The National Gardening Association’s Kids Gardening website has additional activities and information.

I’ll pair this book with the book Early Sprouts: Cultivating Healthy Food Choices in Young Children by Karrie Kalich, Dottie Bauer, Deirdre McPartlin, from Red Leaf Press, and have the students do some tasting in spring, in anticipation of harvest in the fall.

Peggy

When I shared my copy of the book Early Sprouts: Cultivating Healthy Food Choices in Young Children with a nutritionist friend, she got very excited about the possibilities, but then her job changed and she no longer works directly with children. Did that stop her? Read on…

I am doing Early Sprouts with my neighbor Sydney (4 years old) every Saturday afternoon. We did the initial taste tests and we’ve done five or six of the sessions, with the activity and then the cooking back to back. It takes about an hour. We’ve made couscous castles with green peppers, Chinese green beans, butternut squash pancakes (too wet but yummy), yogurt dip, and pasta with sauce made from cherry tomatoes. I love it. I took photos of the plants in the garden in different stages and made cards out of them and at the beginning of each class, she sorts them into piles by vegetable and then puts the cards for each vegetable in order from sprout to plant to flower to small fruit to large unripe fruit to ripe fruit, or whatever applies to the vegetable. I also took photos of the compost pile.

Wish I could send you some of our raspberries.

What she’s begun with one child she can use to inform her teaching with more, in future years. The materials can be used every year too—each following year will need less set-up time.

Read more about the Early Sprouts program at www.earlysprouts.org.

Thanks for the inspiration, Bonnie!

I love the way two-year-olds inexpertly sniff, to sense an odor. They crinkle up their nose and snort, or gasp, and blink their eyes, not quite putting it all together to inhale through their nose. Yet they have an expert sense of smell—nothing comforts them like their favorite “lovey,” a much worn toy or blanket that has achieved a certain smell.

What did your grandmother’s house smell like—boxwood bushes along the sidewalk and old feather pillows on the window seat like mine? I loved the smell of those bushes but my father thought they smelled like cat urine! My great aunt used to light her late husband’s cigars because the smell brought his presence closer. Smelling muddy ooze left by a flooding creek brought the memories of my childhood closer, reminding me of watching the pattern of water-flow past overfull creek banks. The scent of lilac flowers reminds me of my childhood home too.

Scientists study the way smells affect people and our perceptions of smells. In the October Early Years column in Science and Children, I write about a smelling activity using lemons, cinnamon, onions, and coffee beans. In my ten+ years of using this activity, I have never had a student who was allergic to any of those foods. There is always a first time so I check every class.

Here are a few more ideas for engaging students’ sense of smell as they explore the world. Please teach the Safe Smelling method of wafting (waving) an odor towards your nose with your hand instead of sniffing directly from a container.

Cinnamon Shapes, a smell recipe

Click the image for more Early Years photos.

½ cup of cinnamon
½ cup of applesauce
2 Tablespoons of white school glue

Ground cinnamon lifts into the air very easily so monitor students closely as they slowly add the powder to the other two ingredients. Have the children touch each ingredient and talk about how it feels. Is it dry? Wet? Mix all three ingredients together and roll out onto wax or parchment paper to about 5 mm thick. Have children use a cookie cutter to cut out shapes. Roll out the scraps again and cut more shapes. Poke a hole near the edge of each shape so when they are dry, you can put a loop of ribbon through the hole to hang the shape. Youngest children can just make a pancake shape from a ball of dough. Even after completely dry (air dry for several days) the cinnamon smell is strong. This recipe makes about six small shapes.

Smelling, then planting herbs

What if you had to live in a small space for a long time with no windows to let in fresh air? Astronauts living in space breathe the same air over and over. A machine cleans the air and tries to keep the right balance of gases. NASA has many ideas for science activities, including one about using our sense of smell to identify herbs and spices. We can not be sure what’s in a container so it’s best to always smell substances the “scientific way”. Hold the open container about six inches away from your face, and with your free hand fan the air over the container toward you. The smell from the substance in the container will be mixed in the air and you will get a gentle sample of the substance—not enough to sting your nose or make your eyes water.

Some herbs are winter hardy in many regions and can be planted in the fall: oregano, thyme, sage, rosemary, and garlic bulbs. The children can rub the plants’ leaves to release the smell, and plant them outside to make a “smelling” garden. After the last frost date in spring (also see the USDA plant hardiness map), plant tender herbs such as basil, fennel, and dill. Much more can be learned from The Herb Society of America’s Essential Guide to Growing and Cooking with Herbs, edited by Katherine K. Schlosser (Louisiana State University Press 2007). See the society’s website.

Read these books aloud to open up discussion and introduce vocabulary to your class:

• Dog Breath: Horrible Trouble With Hally Tosis by Dav Pilkey (Blue Sky Press 1994). Young children may not understand the title’s play on words but they will get the humor of a dog with smelly breath saving the day. Ask your class, “When is our sense of smell useful?”
• The Happy Day by Ruth Krauss, Marc Simont (Illustrator) (HarperCollins 1949). Children can guess what the animals are smelling but they will be surprised!
• Smelling Things (Rookie Read-About Science) by Allan Fowler (Childrens Press 1991). An easy reader introduction to the sense of smell. Fowler’s books pair simple, pertinent details about the topic with informative photographs.
• Two Eyes a Nose and a Mouth by Roberta Intrater (Cartwheel Books 1995). In a book full of photographs and rhyming text celebrating the variety in human faces, one page with repeated photos of just one face catches our attention, asks us to “imagine how dull the world would be, if everyone looked like you or me” and reminds us “…the variety is just fine.” Young children will enjoy pointing to the part of our body that we sense smells with, or see/hear/taste with.
• What Can I Smell? by Sue Barraclough (Raintree 2005). Opening with the question, “What is your favorite breakfast smell?”, this book invites discussion of familiar smells.

Your class might want to write and illustrate a book about odors they have smelled—their favorites and the ones they do not appreciate.  Share your experiences with sense of smell activities….make a comment!

Peggy

Do deciduous tree leaves in your area change color before they fall? On the occasion of the autumn equinox, here are a few books about trees and fall leaf colors that I have enjoyed reading to my students when we discussed the season’s change from summer to fall:

• Fresh Fall Leaves by Betsy Franco, Shari Halpern (Illustrator) (Scholastic 1994). A pair of children plays in fallen leaves in this simple early reader. Children love to share their own stories of playing in fallen leaves.
• I Am a Leaf by Jean Marzollo, Judith Moffatt (Illustrator) (Scholastic 1998). An early reader introducing the function of tree leaves.
• Red Leaf Yellow Leaf by Lois Ehlert (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1991). Colors! Maple tree lifecycle information! And an appendix with background knowledge for adults to read and share.
• A Tree Is Growing by Arthur Dorros, S. D. Schindler (Illustrator) (Scholastic 1997). Read in sections so young children are not overwhelmed with new information—perhaps a few pages each month as you follow the changes in a tree in your schoolyard. Many details of tree growth and life cycle are explained in sidebars, including photosynthesis.

And here is a new one, published this fall, which I look forward to sharing with my classes:

• Count Down to Fall by Fran Hawk, Sherry Neidigh (Illustrator) (Sylvan Dell Publishing 2009).

Tree leaf shape matching, counting from 10 to 1 (you will have to invent your own page for zero), and information about plant parts and animals that eat (parts of) trees—there’s a lot of natural science in this beautifully illustrated book. On the pages for numbers 3 and 2, the counting switches from the number of leaves to the number of points on the leaves, and to the number of leaves in the group that fall together—a fun change in pattern for fours and older who are listening closely but possibly confusing for others. The Sylvan Dell website has teaching activities to go with the book, including a list of the animals pictured in the book: bear, beaver, beetle, bird, butterfly, cat, chipmunks, deer, dog, elk, frog, grasshopper, lizard, moose, owl, possum, rabbit, raccoon, squirrel, and turtle. Perhaps the children can count how many animals they see in the illustrations as we read.

Tell us about a book on fall leaves that you use in your program by clicking on the word “Comments” below. The anti-spammer “capcha” box may not register your comment the first time you click “Submit Comment”—please type in the new capcha code that appears and submit again.

Happy Fall!

Peggy

I’m planning a fall gardening activity now, before school starts, and the first step is to mark my calendar to buy spring flowering bulbs before the end of September. Seasonal changes vary across the many climates in the United States. If you get temperatures below 40°F for extended periods of time, you can plant these bulbs too. If not, go to the Tag Cloud menu on the left and click on “Growing Plants” to see the September 15, 2008, post with a link to growing other types of bulbs.

Read the activity about planting spring-flowering bulbs in the Early Years column in the September issue of Science and Children, the National Science Teachers Association’s elementary school journal.

If all your students are years beyond the exploring-with-their-mouth stage then they can plant my favorite flower, daffodils or jonquils. If there is any chance that a student might bite into a bulb, buy Camassia spp. (also called Camas, Quamash, and Wild Hyacinth) bulbs which are a safe plant to eat (although I never have). Check out plant toxicity online using the lists for unsafe and safe plants at the California Poison Control System before making garden choices. And most importantly, know your students and be watchful.

Sing a song before and after planting bulbs, and all winter long while wondering if the bulbs really will sprout.

Act out the following song while you sing it, to the tune of the traditional song “Jack in the Box”.

Spring flowering bulb, (children curl face down on floor, hiding face)
So safe in the ground,
Way down inside, your little dirt mound, (hands curve over head)
Spring flowering bulb so quiet and still,
Won’t you sprout up? (heads up and jump up, stretch arms up high)
Of course I will!

Do you have a favorite book about planting flowering bulbs? Both non-fiction and fiction that ties into the science topic are useful. Here are some that have been successful in my classes:

• A Flower Grows by Ken Robbins. 1990. Dial Books.

The book follows the growth of an amaryllis bulb through photos.

• From Bulb to Daffodil by Ellen Weiss. 2007. Children’s Press (CT).

This excellent book includes plant structure details through photography and introduces some vocabulary so it can be useful for English language learners as well as early readers. I wish the book did not use the word “sleeping” instead of “leaf senescence” to describe the leaf and flower die-back because young children can learn, and like to use, big words that are more precise. “Senescence.” I clap and say it to help myself remember: sen-nes-ence, (sənes′-əns).

• The Life Cycle of a Flower by Molly Aloian and Bobbie Kalman. 2004. Crabtree Publishing Company.

Photographs reveal the details of flower structures and plant parts and the text describes seed production and other ways plants reproduce.

• Investigate Plants by Sue Barraclough. 2009. Heinemann Library.

With a question and answer format, this book asks readers to answer before turning the page.

• Planting a Rainbow by Lois Elhert. 1988. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

This classic shows bulbs in the ground before sprouting and when blooming.

What seasons do you experience? Do your students remember the way it rained and rained last spring or the big snow that happened as long as 1/4 their lifetime ago? Here are some books for discussing the cycle of seasons and the passage of time with young children:

• Boxes for Katje by Candace Fleming Candace Fleming and Stacey Dressen-McQueen. 2003. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

This story about tough times in post World War II Holland is based on the experiences of the author’s mother who sent boxes to a family in Holland.

• Spring: An Alphabet Acrostic by Steven Schnur, illustrated by Leslie Evans. 1999. Clarion Books.

Spring from A to Z, each page an acrostic poem beginning with the letters of the alphabet. Your class may want to write their own acrostic poem about a word related to the season. The series includes Winter, Summer, and Autumn.

• What Comes in Spring by Barbara Horton, illustrated by Ed Young. 1992. Knopf.

In this story a mother relates the family’s milestones to the seasons.

• When This Box is Full by Patricia Lillie, illustrated by Donald Crews. 1993. Greenwillow Books.

Children love to guess what the girl will put in the box next to represent the month (one object per month). It reminds me of The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown in that it says what is important to a child about a time of year. For me it would be ice, a heart, seeds, a kite, sunscreen, swimming pool, a novel, tomatoes, school supplies, birthday cake, pumpkins, and a candle. What would you and your class choose?

• A Year in the City by Kathy Henderson, illustrated by Paul Howard. 1996. McGraw-Hill.

Some seasonal changes are specific to urban environments: snow grey with car exhaust, Chinese New Year parades, and city park garden blooms.

Share the seasonal books you find useful by posting a comment below. Hope you get to plant with your class!

Peggy