The following nature education books and resources are a great source of ideas if you’re looking for inspiration and direction for adding learning with nature to your classroom.
The Outdoor Classroom in Practice, Ages 3 – 7 by Karen Constable
The above book “offers guidance on how the outdoors can be used to teach and challenge children across a range of settings by drawing on forest school practice. Following a month-by-month format, it explores theme-related play experiences, planning, evaluations of how the ideas described were carried out and what impact they had on children’s learning and development.”
Nature Play at Home: Creating Outdoor Spaces that Connect Children with the Natural Worldby Nancy Striniste
The book above provides wonderful pictures and great suggestions to create wonderful natural environments for children to explore. It’s a great resource for for creating a nature play space. It contains loads of photos, examples, as well as detailed instructions for building play shelters and sand pits.
The Nature Connection – An Outdoor Workbook by ClaireWalker Leslie
The book above is for one student. It’s full of fun ideas for what to look for and do every month of the year with plenty of room for a student to record what you find.
For a classroom, I’d recommend using the ideas but having the students record their observations in separate notebooks.
Clare Walker Leslie shows kids how to experience nature with all five senses, whether they live in the countryside, a major city, or somewhere in between. This book encourages kids to engage with the world outside and promotes a lifelong love of nature.
Activities are simple enough for young children to understand but also something that an older child could delve into more deeply. Website provides link to print more consumable pages. Check images and video on Amazon.
Creepy Crawlies and the Scientific Method by Sally Kneidel
The above book, “Creepy Crawlies and the Scientific Method: More Than 100 Hands-On Science Experiments for Children”, by Sally Kneidel has everything you need to have and know to keep and explore a variety of small animals.
Nature-Based Learning for Every Preschool Setting by Julie Powers and Sheila Williams Ridge
The book above “is designed to provide ideas for all early childhood educators ranging from novice to highly experienced in a wide range of ecosystems, including forests, cities, prairies, coastal, urban, and deserts. It includes background information on a range of nature topics, reproducible parent newsletters, sample play-based lesson plans, guidance and health and safety issues related to nature activities, ideas for free/inexpensive equipment and materials and for big-ticket items, ideas for family involvement, and connections to early childhood learning standards. Chapters are divided by nature topic, so readers can dip in right away where they want to start exploring.”