by Ron King, Natural Playgrounds Company
Head Start uses 40 thematic units to teach kids about a number of topics, and over half of them are about nature. Below are the units having to do with the outdoors and nature:
- Animal Studies
- Apples
- Bears
- Birds
- Clocks/Telling Time (SunTime)
- Dinosaur
- Endangered Species
- Explorers
- Farm
- Map Skills
- Measurement
- Native American
- Oceans
- Penguins
- Rocks & Minerals
- Snow
- Spiders
- Water
- Weather
- Wild Animals
- Whales
I couldn’t figure out how teachers get children inside a classroom to really understand about snow, or farming, or map skills, or weather, or water, or about birds and bears, and apples, and spiders.
Wouldn't it be a lot easier for children to understand how apples grow by actually going to an orchard and seeing the bees pollinating the blossoms, or in the fall picking an apple off a tree? Or even better, by planting an apple tree in the schoolyard, watching it grow, blossom, get pollinated, and make an apple?
Wouldn't it be a whole lot easier to understand spiders by discovering a web spun between two stalks of weeds and watching a spider catching insects? Or understand the weather by actually being outside witnessing the wind, sun, clouds, temperature variations, and watching the clouds roll by?
