Nature isn’t just at nature preserves and deep wilderness areas—it’s all around us! Engage your students in STEAM activities to discover nature right in your schoolyard. Select a theme depending on the season and features of your schoolyard or neighborhood:

Nature Journaling | year-round

• NGSS Standards: 3-LS4-3, 4-LS1-1

Math in Nature | year-round

• NGSS Standards: 3-LS4-3, 4-LS1-1

Bug-ology | May – September

• NGSS Standards: 2-LS4-1, 3-LS4-2

Outdoor Survival Skills | April – November

• NGSS Standards: 4-ESS3-2, HS-ESS3-1

Investigate real animal shelters such as songbird nests, honeybee comb, beaver-chewed branches, and more. Students work in teams to engineer a small shelter on the classroom floor from natural materials, while also discussing the importance of shelters in various habitats, and the adaptations needed to build them. (For PreK groups, a hands-on story time will be substituted in).

NGSS Standards: K-LS1-1, 1-LS1-1, 2-LS4-1

Where does the water go when it rains or snows? Discover the dynamic water cycle of our Great Lakes region, water quality issues, aquatic habitats, and the wildlife within them during a presentation of a 3D tabletop watershed model and students’ creation of their own.

NGSS Standards: 3-LS4-3, MS-LS2-5, HS-LS4-6

Use measurement, observations and inquiry to explore real furs, skulls and mammalian characteristic of local species. Through this hands-on process, students will compare features and adaptations of carnivores, omnivores and herbivores.

NGSS Standards: 3-LS3-1, 4-LS1-1, MS-LS4-4

Understand why energy is vital to the world and all the people who live in it. Students will investigate what energy is and how we all use energy, plus explore renewable and non-renewable resources and the impacts of energy-related choices.

NGSS Standards: 4-PS3-2, 4-PS3-4, 4-ESS3-1, 5-ESS3-1