Welcome Nature Coaches!

Let's Get Started!

Welcome to the STEM Nature Clubs with Nature Matters Academy. I'm so excited that you've decided to help kids get outside and learn about nature!

The first and most important thing to know about these clubs is that you don't have to be an expert. As you teach, you'll be learning right along side your students and modeling to them that learning is a life-long process. AND that learning is FUN!

How to Identify Plants & Animals

Many of you may be great at identifying plants and animals, while other may have little experience doing so. Either way, I have a GREAT tool that will help you!

On your phone, download the app iNaturalist and create a profile.

Once you've set up your profile, go outside and take a few pictures of a plant then upload them to iNaturalist. Use the video below if you need help. The pictures MUST be clear and it's better to take 2 or 3 photos from different angles/perspectives.

See if you can identify the organism! If you can't, can you narrow it down to a group of organisms? For example, oak trees or mustard plants.

Some of you may be able to identify organisms down to the species level - that's great! Teach these species to your students! For those who are new at identification and are unsure about specific species, stick with group names instead. Helping a child understand what the leaves on an oak tree look like and how to differentiate them from a cottonwood is a very important skill! Group names and classifications are just as important as specific species!

Be sure to practice using the app so you're comfortable with it BEFORE the clubs start. This will be one of the essentials tools you'll use this semester.

Introductions and Weather

Weather is an important factor in all ecosystems because it helps determine what types of plants and animals can live in a specific area.  In this activity, we are going to measure weather characteristics and document them over time to determine weather patterns in our region. The goal for this activity is to help the kids understand why we take measurements in a specific way and the importance of collecting data over time.

Bees

Lately, we’ve been hearing a lot about bees in the news. Unfortunately, we hear about them because they are declining worldwide due to climate change, habitat loss, pesticides, and monocrop agriculture.  Bees are essential to many plants’ reproduction and without them, we could loose many of our food crops. So let’s learn about the different types of bees: honey, bumble, and solitary bees.

Flower Dissection

A flower, also know as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure in angiosperms, or flowering plants. Flowers have adapted to be attractive to pollinators which help spread pollen and fertilize the plant. Flowers are also used by humans as a source of beauty, romance, ritual, and even medicine. This week's nature mystery is to find the ovary of a flower, which you can do by dissecting it!

Pollination

When we talk about pollination, we tend to assign anthropomorphic, or human-like expectations on pollinators. We talk about how they have an important job to pollinate plants so we have delicious fruits and vegetables to eat. But what are pollinators actually doing when they pollinate and do they know that they are doing it? They are simply moving pollen from the stamen of one flower to the pistil of another. They have no idea that they play a critical role in producing food for us and wildlife. Pollinators are just collecting food so they can survive.

Exploring Plant Leaves

Think of a particular landscape. Perhaps a forest comes to mind, or the desert. What’s the first thing you see when you think of these places? The landscape and the plants! Try to picture a prairie without grass or a forest without trees. We can’t! Plants live almost everywhere on earth (excluding the poles, the deep ocean, and perhaps a really dry desert wasteland), can produce their own food, and are responsible for feeding the world.  In this lesson we’ll learn how to differentiate leaves from different plants and kids will understand that leaves make food for the plant.

Plant Growth Habits

The purpose of this activity is to teach your children how to differentiate basic plant types and to practice collecting data like a scientist. Knowing plant types (or habits) allows us to identify plants in a general sense without needing to know the individual species. We can get a good idea about the ecology of a specific environment based on the types of plant habits present. In this activity, your child will record scientific data by counting the number of plants along a line transect—a tool commonly used by ecologists!

 

Habitats

This lesson we’ll learn how a habitat is different from an ecosystem and then we’ll go outside and map the habitat of an animal or plant we choose.

Share Knowledge, Earn Buttons, & Make Journals!

This is the last day of clubs! We'll be asking students to share their knowledge with us, they'll be earning prizes, and we'll bind their journals for them to take home.