K-12 Environmental Education Activities
Geometric Shapes in Nature Geometric shapes can be found in twigs,
rocks, leaves, insects, and feathers. Look for cubes, cylinders, pyramids, cones, ovals, spheres, spirals, etc. have students put specimens in like piles. Variation: Human-made shapes. Triangles, squares, dcircles, rectangles, etc., can be found at school in sidewalks, buildings, clothing.
Language Arts
Appropriate Stories About Nature Storytelling about nature, the outdoors,
and the environment is fun. School and public libraries can be of great help in selecting books. Build a story repertoire as you would with songs.
Finding Adjectives Give each child a small piece of paper with
one or more adjectives that describe something in nature (e.g., smooth, slimy, triangular, expanded, cool, soft and green, round and gooey). Have students explore a natural area to find items that meet these descriptions. Let students take turns sharing what they found. —JOD
Fine Arts Be a Tree
Here are some ideas, separated into grade levels and subject areas, that you can use to instill environmental learning when you are looking for something to fill a gap in your activity plan.
GRADES K-2 Science Animal Ingenuity Explore how animal use materials from the
environment in building homes. Start by looking at a bird’s nest. Examine the nest carefully. Use a hand lens. List all the materials you find in the nest. How is it held together?
Social Studies Careers Notebook Make a “Careers Notebook” of
environmentally-related careers. You can start with a fisherperson, mechanic, newpaper
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reporter, and a fish and game officer. Keep going from there.
Seafood Survey Many cultures depend heavily on food from
the sea for their sustenance. Have students sur- vey family members and friends about the types of seafood they like to eat. This can be graphed on the chalkboard as well. Follow up survey with a visit to a local fish market or grocery to look at varieties of fish and shell fish up close.
Mathematics How Many Legs? Post pictures of an octopus, a seastar, a crab,
and a gull. Review as a class the number of legs each animal has, and discuss the ways each animal’s legs help it to survive. Next challenge students with addition problems, such as: How many legs would there be if we had added the legs of the octopus and the gull? The seastar and the crab?
www.clearingmagazine.org Have students identify characteristics of
trees. Visit trees in a back yard, in an orchard, in a park, or in the school year. Have the students do tree dramatizations, using their arms as the branches and their legs as the trunk. How does the tree look during a storm? How does a fruit tree look in the spring? How does a young tree look in comparison with an old tree? What would happen to change the tree in different kinds of weather or during the different seasons? After feeling what it might be like to be a
tree, have the students paint pictures of them. — EGO
Make a Refracting Telescope Use two small convext lenses, a toilet paper
tube, cardboard, rubber cember, and paper. 1. Find the focal length of one of the lenses. 2. Cut a lens-size hole in the cardboard 3. Glue the lens over the hole. 4. Trace around the toilet paper tube with a
pencil over the spot in the cardboard where the lens is located. 5. Cut on this line, and glue the cardboard-
mounted lens in the end of the tube. 6. Wrap a sheet of paper around the tube. 7. Tape it in place. 8. Mount the other lens in the end of the
paper tube. 9. Slide the tubes back and forth.
CLEARING Fall 2017
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