Exploring Nature

Allow students to make sense of the world through hands-on activities and play. This movement-centered lesson will let your students explore parts of nature that make up our great Earth.

Get outside and start exploring nature! This creative lesson plan incorporates classroom teaching and outdoor adventure in order to analyze the difference between living and non-living things. Perfect for first graders and second graders, this extended activity challenges kids to use their physical senses to describe living things in their community. It’s a unique lesson that combines reading and writing concepts, including the idea of a writing process, with science topics that are close to home.

Learning Objectives

Students will describe what they saw, touched, smelled, and heard in the garden. Students will begin to explore the differences between living and non-living things.

Introduction

(15 minutes)

Call your students over to a common area where they are comfortable.
With a marker, split a large piece of paper into two columns. On the top of one column, write living, and on the top of the other column, write non-living.
Ask your students what they think of when they hear the word living. Prompt students by asking, "What do living things need? What do living things do? What are some examples of living things?"
Write down student ideas under the column titled living. Make sure students know that living describes anything that has ever been or is alive.
Ask your students what they think of when they hear the word non-living. Prompt students by asking, "Where do we find non-living things? What are some examples of non-living things?"
Write down their ideas. Explain that the word non-living describes anything that has never been and is not alive.

Lesson Plan

Exploring Nature

Grade

Subject

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Learning Objectives

Introduction