Spring is right around the corner and since Pine Road has a fabulous Nature Trail to use many teachers wanted to know if there was anything on outdoor learning that I could round-up. Below  are some of the best resources that I could find:

Natural Resources

• Virginia Tech has a delightful elementary unit on Natural Resources that includes hands on activities, worksheets, puzzles, coloring pages and standards of learning.
• The Soil Science Society of America has a great resource page with lessons and hands on activities broken down by subject and grade level.
• California Academy of Science’s Natural Resources Bingo lesson plan is a fun way for students grades 2-8 to categorize common things we throw in the trash according to the resource from which they are made.
• The Natural Resources Defense Council has a great resource page for elementary lesson plans, activities, websites and videos related to Natural Resources.

 

Living Things

• The Living Things vs. Non-Living Things Lesson plan on PDESAS has K-2 students identify characteristics of living and nonliving things. The lesson is tied to the PA state standards,  includes an interactive smartboard set and suggested  instructional strategies for differentiation. It also links to a fun lesson from the Utah Education Network where students participate in a Living vs. Non Living Murder Mystery. Note: the links to the Utah Education Network lesson are inactive, use this link instead http://www.uen.org/Lessonplan/preview.cgi?LPid=28279.
• The free Leaf Peepr App helps students to find and report on leaves in their area and
  share that information with the world. Students can also make foliage reports by posting photos, writing comments, and rating foliage status for their location which will be
• PBS Learning’s K-5  Living vs. Non Living lesson  helps students  explore the characteristics that distinguish living from nonliving things.The lesson includes videos, photos and handouts.
• The National Wildlife Foundation’s grades 2-5 Explore the Backyard Scavenger Hunt is an interesting lesson that includes a printable Scavenger Hunt List and challenges students to put qualifications on the objects that they found as well as look for signs of wildlife.
• How to Nest For Less has a terrific K-2  Nature Scavenger printable for students to use as they explore nature
• Garden Answers app is a free app that allows students to take pictures of flowers & plants and then the app identifies & provides information about the plants

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Weather

• Scholastic’s Teach Now Weather Watchers website has K-3 weather related lessons & activties. Highlights include a internet field trip, weather related experiments and student created plays.
• Discovery Education’s Connect With Weather website was created with the help of The Weather Channel. Highlights include a virtual behind the scenes field trip to The Weather Channel headquarters, videos, hands on activities and a family preparedness take home activity
• The University of Oklahoma’s Storm Evader App is a free interactive way for kids to learn about weather. The app encourages students to see meteorology as a problem-solving tool by putting them in the pilot seat to navigate a plane during weather events.
• PBS Learning’s K-2  What’s the Weather? Lesson helps students learn about meteorology and weather changes, and discuss how weather affects daily life.The lesson includes worksheets, interactives and videos.

 

Composting

• Life Lab, a national leader in the garden-based learning movement, is a great resource for K-12 composting activities, lesson plans & videos. Highlights from this page are the worm guide, a vermicomposting activity for pre-K and how to build a soda bottle bioreactor.
• My Kids’ Adventures Getting Dirty: Five Fun Composting Projects for Kids has great activities for creating not only a compost bin but also allows explains how composting helps students’ to reduce their carbon footprint. It also has a link to The Nature Conservancy’s interactive calculator for determining their or their families carbon footprint.
• PBS Learning’s K-3 Recycling and Composting lesson helps students learn about the value renewable resources hold for our society and the broader community of living things. The lesson includes worksheets and videos for teachers to use.

Watersheds

• Learning to Give’s What is a Watershed? lesson plan helps students understand the importance of watersheds and ways in which water pollution occurs through hands on activities, research and experiments.
• NJDEP Water Wash lesson illustrates watershed function, ground water contributions, flooding, and nonpoint source pollution.
• PBS and its Watershed Quest is a  website explaining the concept of a quest and a one-hour lesson plan that enables students to explore their watershed and water movement using topographic maps.
• Project Wet has a website that contains fun Interactive activities and video about watershed parts (tributaries, source or headwaters, mainstem) and human impacts on watersheds (dams, pollution, runoff).