teaching

Guest Post by Rebecca Bielawski, for Kellee of Unleashing Readers

If you are having trouble getting your class out and into nature, there are a hundred ways you can get nature into your class. If you want your kids to run wild with nature-based crafts and projects, but your imagination feels as dried up as an autumn leaf, don’t despair – On the wonderful world wide web you can discover all the inspiration you need. I especially recommend Pinterest boards and Google+ communities to look for specific ideas suited to your group’s age and other circumstances.

Here are a few tips for adapting nature projects and nature crafts that you might find, to your own classroom or home school environment.

Adapt ideas to your local area e.g., seeds to germinate that are readily and cheaply available, plants that are easy to sprout and suited to the climate and of course child friendly. Your local garden centre can help out. Local plant species will always be more relevant to the kids. (Planting sunflowers was my favourite as a kid.)

Adapt ideas to your available resources Most projects will not represent an elevated cost. Here you can use recycled materials such as plastic bottles and yoghurt pots, eg. hand trowels can be made from plastic milk or juice bottles with handles. You can also reinforce the Reuse, Reduce Recycle mantra. If you have more of a budget you could, for example, buy plants for the classroom that represent your nature goals.