Incorporating Nature into Outdoor Play

Incorporate nature in your students’ outdoor play times this spring. Try these simple ideas from Project Learning Tree’s Environmental Experiences for Early Childhood.

• Plant a vegetable or flower garden. Mark “keepers’ with popsicle sticks or flags so your students know what not to weed. Plant fast-growing plants or transplants. Provide child-size hoes and watering cans.
• Supply magnifying lenses and clear containers to encourage your students to look for small animals in mulch, grass and soil.
• Encourage your students to play in the dirt – supply trowels, disposable pie plates, watering cans, pie servers and miniature farm equipment such as tractors, plows, farm animals and fence-building materials.
• Supply branches for your students to build forts and shelters.
• Stockpile various sizes and colors of rocks.
• Construct an outdoor sandbox.
• Fill a shallow wading pool (“pond”) and equip it with fishing poles.
• Lay a flat board (approximately 2 feet by 2 feet) on the ground. After a week of two, your students will begin finding insects, spiders, mice and other animals under the board. You may need to water the area around the board occasionally.
• Hang bird feeders near classroom windows.
• Plant native wildflowers to attract butterflies.
• Plant native shrubs. Nuts, berries, and other fruit will attract wildlife all year long.