SAFETY FIRST: Outdoor Education is as safe as necessary. Please read the Canadian Paediatric Society's post here: Position Statement on Outdoor Risky Play
PATTERNING PLANTS
A tree falls the way it leans.
- Bulgarian proverb
Career Connections
Enthnobotonist
Gardener
Outside is where real life connections to science happen organically! Here are tips to assist you teaching a lesson(s) for the units below. If you would like a full lesson plan please email me and we will design one together.
Science outcomes mirror and lead into the next grade level so this is convenient for those teaching combined classes. If you participate in learning buddies these lessons could be taught with older grade students leading younger grade students. Please adapt these unit plans to your students grade level and knowledge. Plans are based on Nova Scotia science outcomes.
These units showcase if you have a combined class (teaching more than one grade) you can still participate in Education: Outdoors. I write my unit plans in Parts. You will know the timing of your lesson and your students’ knowledge. Sometimes you will only teach Part I and Part II will wait for the next time this subject is taught etc. This unit is not complete, it is to give you an idea of lessons you could do outside with your students. As always with Outdoors the same lesson could be taught inside, but by taking the lesson outside the students (and you!) benefit by an increase in physical, social, mental, and academic health. Outcomes for the units are listed afterwards.
Garden websites: I have turned to Kids Gardening for seminars, lessons, and ideas for science units on plants. The other sites I have not used, but come recommended from Take Me Outside, a site and an organization I have used consistently in my outdoor education journey.
The Classroom Gardener
Nutrients for Life
Patterns in Nature
Tip, this unit includes a cross curriculum to Math outcomes of patterns.
Grade 1 Living Things
Part I
Read the book Wings, Waves, & Webs aloud to students. Discuss the patterns found in these living things. If possible have some examples
you can hold show the students. I bring sea shells to show the students because I teach in a forest and not near a beach. Do you teach on a
beach? How cool! Please share your lesson ideas.
Activity: Give pairs of students a magnifying glass to find patterns in the nature you are near. If you are on concrete can you see any bugs or a near by spider who created a web full of patterns! If not you could place pre the class pictures of patterns in nature throughout your concrete area so that students need to move their body to find these pictures.
Part II
Have students create a pattern using items found in nature!
Plants' Habitats' Weather please click on Clever Critters for a link to this unit
Hairy Harry This unit is so awesome it earned its own page!
