Teaching elementary-aged children is a rewarding experience, but as educators and parents, finding the time and resources to create engaging lessons can be a challenge. That's where this podcast comes in. Welcome to Naturally Teaching Elementary.

I'm Victoria Zablocki, a certified elementary teacher turned outdoor educator. With over a decade of experience coaching teachers on effective teaching methods, I'm passionate about teaching the whole child with authentic and place-based experiences in school and home settings. Join me as we explore our strategies for teaching with practical teaching tips, insightful interviews, picture book reviews, and more.

So let's grow together. All right, everybody, welcome back to the Naturally Teaching Elementary podcast. My name is Victoria Zablocki, and I'm your host.

So spring is a time of growth, birth, and rejuvenation. The plants and animals feel energized, and so do we. We all missed that sun and the warmer temperatures.

So let's take advantage of your learner's energy and desire to be outside and make it work in your favor. So what does that look like? Getting them outside to learn.

There's so much that your learners can get out of just being in the fresh air, let alone all the amazing scientific experiences you can have outside. But before we get into today's spring activities, I wanted to share with you that I've put together an activity index organizing all of the activities from the podcast with the next generation science standards that they're aligned to.

This will help you easily find the activity that you're looking for, as well as the episode that it's described in, and it's all available for you for free. So you can find a link to get that activity index in the episode description as well as the show notes on my web page.

[1:40]

Now I want to kick this episode off with a nature note about what you can find outside in spring before we get into the activity side of the episode. So if you listened to episode 26: Celebrating the Winter Solstice with An Outdoor Party for Your Elementary Students, then you heard the science snippet about how the vernal equinox comes to be.

If you haven't, you can pop back over and check it out. But put simply, when your hemisphere experiences the spring or vernal equinox, the earth is tilted on its axis and your hemisphere is neither tilted toward or away from the sun, meaning you're receiving relatively equal amounts of daylight and nighttime. This results in mild temperatures.

Because of the shift towards more hours of daylight, many plants and animals come out of their winter sleep. So what can you find outside in the spring? As far as weather, you'll see almost everything.

You'll likely get random days of snow at the beginning, rain, fog, sun, clouds, thunderstorms. Spring is a very weather-filled season. As far as plants, now is a great time to look for buds opening and sprouts popping out of the ground.

There are specialized flowers called ephemeral flowers that emerge on the forest floor before the leaves open up. They get to soak up the sunlight before the trees block it, and they're an invaluable resource for early pollinators. Trees are moving their stored sap back up their trunks and opening their buds to start making this year's batch of food.

And early spring is maple syrup season thanks to the movement of the sap from the roots to the branches. As far as animals, you're going to see animals everywhere. Migration will happen, with many birds returning to their nesting grounds to start having families.

Reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates, and mammals that were dormant are coming out of their long winter sleep, and a lot of shelters will start to be made in order to protect young that will be produced this season.

So, in this episode, I'm going to describe spring activities for grades K through 5, and for each activity I'll share the Next Generation Science Standard that inspired that activity, as well as the spring seasonal phenomenon that the activity helps explain. And make sure that you listen through to the end of the episode, because even though I've paired these activities to particular standards, you may find yourself inspired to use a similar concept for your curriculum, or even use the same activity for a different grade.

Also, if you're new to taking your students outside for learning, check out Episode 6: 5 Outdoor Education Safety Tips for Teaching Outside for suggestions to make teaching outside easier. All right, now let's get into these spring activities.

[4:07]

So for kindergarten, the Next Generation Science Standard that I pulled was K-ESS3-1: Use a model to represent the relationship between the needs of different plants and animals (including humans) and the place that they live.

So how does this relate to spring? Spring is another time for migration, something we chatted briefly about in Episode 17: Six Fun Fall Activities Aligned with K-5 Next Generation Science Standards, and more extensively in Episode 20: Six Animal Migration Activities for the Elementary Classroom. This standard speaks directly to the reason behind migration.

Animals return to their breeding grounds in the spring because these areas have what those animals need to be able to support a family. So for this activity, I suggest reading a picture book about a migrating animal like A Hummingbird's Life by John Himmelman. This book shares about the different parts of a hummingbird's life, including their life cycle, what they need to survive, how they migrate, and more.

I'm focusing on a hummingbird this time because I haven't used hummingbirds as examples on this podcast yet, but you could use another migratory bird or monarch butterflies if you'd like. Whichever book you read, have your learners look and listen for evidence of what that animal needs to survive. In A Hummingbird's Life, Himmelman shows the use of a nest, how the hummingbird eats insects and nectar from flowers, and how he goes south in the fall when he doesn't have the things he needs to survive.

On his return flight in the spring, Himmelman makes mention of the hummingbird stopping at a bird feeder on his way north again. All of these pieces are reinforced both in words and in pictures and will be easy enough for your kindergartners to identify, especially in the second half of the year. Now that your learners are more familiar with what a hummingbird needs to survive, you're going to conduct a survey of hummingbird needs in your green space, and then your learners would determine if a hummingbird would be able to survive in your space based on what they find.

So start by dedicating a day each week where you can go outside looking for the things that hummingbirds would need to survive, and plan to go outside for several weeks to collect data. You could make this into a scavenger hunt that they can do individually while exploring, or you could work together during a guided hike to see if you can find evidence that the hummingbird needs could be met. You could also put out a hummingbird feeder to help your learners provide one of the needs of hummingbirds in case there are any early arrivals that don't have what they need to make it to their breeding grounds.

Go outside for several weeks and end each outside time with a discussion on what they found and if they think spring has sprung enough that hummingbirds could live in their space or are they missing anything. If you wanted, you could extend this even further by joining the Citizen Science Project, the Hummingbird Migration Project from Journey North. For this project, you could keep an eye out for the first hummingbirds to visit your school's green space and report your sightings to the project website.

This will not only have your learners looking for the hummingbirds' needs, but also the hummingbirds themselves, which is the ultimate evidence that your space has what it needs to support the bird species. And I'll make sure to put a link in the show notes for this opportunity. If you're not familiar with Journey North, they have a variety of teacher resources on their project pages to help you get involved. So they're really a great intro for citizen science projects for your kindergartners.

[7:17]

For first grade, the Next Generation Science Standard that I pulled was 1-LS1-1: Use materials to design a solution to a human problem by mimicking how plants and or animals use their external parts to help them survive, grow, and meet their needs.

So how does this relate to spring? So animals have a variety of different ways for dealing with adversities throughout the year, and one of those adversities in spring is rain. There are different techniques that animals use to stay out of the rain, including birds that go into cavities in trees, woodchucks, and other burrowing animals going underground, beavers and ducks having oils that help their fur and feathers be water-resistant, insects hide under flowers and leaves, and squirrels use their tails to cover their heads.

So, taking the problem of rain in the spring, work with your learners to investigate different ways that animals keep themselves dry in the springtime. Give them the challenge of engineering a way to keep dry that is inspired by a springtime animal’s adaptation. You could do this in pairs or small groups to get scientific discussions going amongst your kiddos and have them work together to design a solution on paper.

If you wanted to give them the chance to build their design, you could provide them with craft materials for miniature versions or clean recyclables for life size versions. Then you could take those models out on a rainy day and see if their solutions work.

If they don't, you could encourage them to make a tweak and try again, or if they do work, is there anything they could do to make it better? This will be a fun and engaging way to incorporate both this unique standard and solving a problem that each of them faces during the springtime.

[8:49]

For second grade, the Next Generation Science Standard that I pulled was 2-LS2-1: Plan and conduct an investigation to determine if plants need sunlight and water to grow. So how does this relate to spring?

So there's a unique group of flowers that I mentioned in the nature note of this episode, ephemeral flowers. Ephemeral flowers are woodland flowers that bloom on the forest floor before the leaves come out in spring. This gives these flowers the opportunity to get all the sunlight they need to photosynthesize, bloom, seed, and go dormant until the next spring.

So for this activity, you're going to do a phenology study of a portion of forest floor near your school. This one may be hard to set up and do this year, but you could lay the groundwork to do this study next spring if you're not familiar with where wildflowers grow on your forest floor. If you do know where wildflowers grow in a forest nearby, start going outside with your learners when the snow starts to melt and take pictures of that section of forest floor in the trees above.

Have your learners look really closely at the forest floor to see if they can find any sprouts hiding in the leaves. Similar to the kindergarten activity in this episode, you're going to want to pick a day that you can commit to visiting your section of forest each week so that you can witness the popping up of the ephemeral flowers and eventually the leafing out of the trees. Each week you'll want to stand in a similar position when you take your picture so that you can compare how the flowers and leaves are progressing.

When the flowers do bloom, take pictures of each one or draw pictures in your science notebooks so that you can identify which ephemeral flowers you're experiencing since they will fade quickly. Continue taking pictures until the leaves come out on the trees. Once the sun is absent from the forest floor, the flowers will have already been pollinated, they'll have already seeded, and will start to fade or at least be done flowering for the season.

Once this happens, show your learners all of the pictures you've taken of the forest floor and the trees and ask what happened to the flowers. What did they have before the leaves opened and what's missing? How did they get what they needed?

What do they think they'll do the rest of the year? Ephemeral flowers are the perfect study to determine that plants need sunlight for energy and growth.

[10:56]

Not everyone has a forest nearby, so if you don't happen to have a forest with flowers close by, you could put together an experiment to see if plants need sunlight or not.

One of my favorite experiments to do with learners is to give partners a bean seed and have them decide if they want to give their plant water and sunlight, give their plant just water, give their plant just sun, or give their plants nothing. As the teacher or parent, you're going to set up a control that provides the plant both water and sunlight, and then the partners will have the experimental plants. To make sure that you're only testing whether or not the plant needs sun, water, or both, make sure all plants are planted in the same type of container with the same type and amount of soil and buried at the same depth.

You'll also want to agree upon how much water each plant that gets water will receive, as well as making sure all of the plants that get sun are in the same window. This will help to control all other variables other than the experimental variables of just water, just sun, or nothing. Any plant that gets no sunlight should also remain in the same cabinet so that you know they're all getting the same amount of darkness all day.

You'll also want to make sure that the water is given at the same time of day for each plant that receives water. Bean plants sprout really quickly, so this experiment should be able to be completed within a month and should show you pretty good results. Make sure to check in on your plants every few days to measure their growth.

And then once you've decided to wrap up the experiment, make sure to discuss what the learners determined to be success for the plant. Is it the color of green? Is it a certain height? Is it flowering?

Once you've determined what success for the plant means, have them take a look at all of the different plants, those that got water and sunlight, those that got just water, those that got just sunlight, and those that got nothing, and decide which plants were successful. Then have a conversation about what they think plants need to survive based on their observations of the growth of the different plants in the experiment. And I know that was a lot of information, so please rewind and listen again if you need to.

Or you could check out my Miss Maple’s Seeds Book Companion for 2nd grade, which includes this experiment. The companion has a lesson plan, an experiment setup page and a notebook page for observations. And I'll make sure to link that in the show notes in case you want to check it out as a reminder or as an easy way to make this thing happen.

[13:14]

For 3rd grade, the Next Generation Science Standard that I pulled was 3-LS4-2: Use evidence to construct an explanation for how the variations and characteristics among individuals of the same species may provide advantages in surviving, finding mates, and reproducing. That was a long one.

So how does this relate to spring? Some animals have sexually dimorphic coloration, meaning that the male and female of the species look different from each other. Red-winged blackbirds are a pretty common example.

The males of the species are black with a red stripe on the wing, with some of the males having very bright red stripes, while others are more orange or sometimes even verging on white. The benefit to the brighter males is they attract more females and have more babies, but they also can be easier for predators to find. Females, on the other hand, are brown and striped, which make them camouflage into the cattails where they build their nests.

So for this activity, you're going to prepare for a flag tag game by putting together some belts with three flags, some with two flags, and some with one flag. Then you can play this one of two ways, or both if you're feeling up to it. So the first way to play is to have a couple of people volunteer to be beltless predators trying to take the flags of the red-winged blackbirds, all of your learners with flagged belts.

Once a child's flags are all gone, that means they died and they meet on the sidelines of your game space. Once they've played for a certain amount of time, or the predators have taken all the flags from your birds, have a discussion about which birds died first.

A lot of time the predators will realize it's easiest to take out the birds with only one flag and target those, moving on to the birds with two flags and lastly the ones with three flags. After you've discussed it, reveal that the birds with one flag are like the males that have very bright colors. They stand out in their environment and are easy to spot and eat.

The birds with two flags were the males that were not quite as bright. They are relatively easy to spot but not as easy as the bright males. Lastly, the birds with three flags were the females that camouflage into their surroundings.

Personally, I wait to reveal this sort of information since your learners could end up being offended that they were a male bird or a female bird. But, by handing out the belts randomly, you'll avoid labeling and singling out anyone based on assumed gender. And then you can remind them, “well, it was random, I didn't pick, you guys just got what you got.”

This first way of playing demonstrates how natural colors are a benefit to individuals of a species as far as predators. The second way of playing involves having half of the class without belts and the other half of the class with belts. You'll prepare half of the belts with two flags of one color and the other half of the belts with one flag of a different color.

That was a lot of information. So as an example, if you have 28 learners, 14 children will have no belts. Seven children will have belts with two red flags and seven children will have belts with one green flag.

Then have your learners with belts run away from everyone and the learners without belts try to grab a flag. Once they have a flag, they'll meet on the sideline of the playing area. When the learners with belts lose all of their flags, then they'll also meet on the sidelines.

So again, anybody who doesn't have a belt, once they grab a flag, they meet at the sideline. Or if a child has a belt and they lose all their flags, then they meet at the sideline. Once all the learners without belts get a flag from somebody with a belt, they meet on the sideline and you stop play and have a discussion.

Share with your learners that the children without belts were female red-winged blackbirds and they were trying to find a male to have young with. The children with two flags were the really brightly colored males and the children with one flag were dull colored males. Take a look at the color flags that the majority of the non-belted players have.

They're likely more of the flags from the players representing the brightly colored males. This is because their two flags drew the attention of the non-belted players and they targeted them. Again, your students may be offended that they were assigned to be a male or a female, but remind them that you handed the belts out randomly, and this is an experiment about birds, not them as people.

They didn't know it, but it was beneficial for their flags to be stolen this time because that meant they achieved their biological job of having young. This second way of playing shows how bright colors attract mates and how beneficial it can be to be showy. Third graders should be young enough to role play this tag game, but you'll have to gauge it for yourself based on the personality of your class. Some are more mature than others.

[17:55]

For fourth grade, the Next Generation Science Standard that I pulled was 4-ESS3-2: generate and compare multiple solutions to reduce the impacts of natural earth processes on humans. So how does this relate to spring?

Flooding is a natural process that ends up being a human problem in the spring season. Between the seasonal rain, the warmer temperatures that cause snow to melt, and the destruction of wetlands, there's a lot of extra water making its way to streams, creeks, and rivers. So for this activity, you're going to give your learners an opportunity to try to engineer a solution for reducing the impact of floods on a miniature settlement.

So to do this, you're going to need a large bucket or two filled with water, a container to dip into the bucket to use as flood water, and space outside that has loose parts like rocks, sticks, sand, and more to build with. Share with your learners that they'll get a chance to build a miniature city out of nature that they're going to have to protect from the incoming flood, aka you dumping water at an angle towards their settlement. Encourage them to only use natural materials that are dead and on the ground to build their settlement and their solution.

This will keep them safe and nature safe. Remind them that this is a miniature settlement, something toads could live in. This disclaimer will help prevent them from creating large structures, which will help with time management as well as effectiveness of the demonstration.

Make sure to give them a time limit for the creation of their settlement. Trust me, if left to their own devices, they would build their little settlement for hours. Once their city construction time is over, give them a certain amount of time to work on creating a solution for preventing flooding in their settlement.

If it's helpful, you, as the adult, could create a small settlement during their construction time so that you can demonstrate how you plan to send in flood waters. Knowing what angle you'll splash water at their settlement may inform their engineering. After they've had their time to engineer a solution, have everyone come together and visit each settlement with the bucket of water and the container.

If you want to give your learners a chance to explain their thoughts on their solution, you could do that. Otherwise, you could go straight into testing their solutions. Fill your container and try to flood each settlement.

Have a wrap-up discussion about what they noticed was effective and what wasn't. It's important, though, not to spend the time talking about who's worked and who's didn't. The discussion should be about what elements were effective and what didn't seem to work as well.

Engineers run tests to make note of what sorts of designs work and what designs don't. That's what you're doing with your students. As a next step, engineers would take that information from their test, redesign, and try again. If you have the time, give that a try so that your learners know that it's not a right or wrong solution, it's an ever-evolving process.

[20:41]

For fifth grade, the Next Generation Science Standard that I pulled was 5-LS2-1: Develop a model to describe the movement of matter among plants, animals, decomposers, and the environment. How does this relate to spring?

When the weather changes from winter to spring and the days are above freezing and the nights are below freezing, the pressure in trees begins to build, moving the sap from the roots up the trunk. The sap was left over sugar from the previous year that the tree stored in the roots over winter. And once that sap reaches the buds, it provides the energy needed to open up the new leaves for this year's food production.

This is when maple sap is collected by people to be made into maple syrup. Sugar maple sap is one of the sweetest sap with about 5% sugar and 95% water. To make maple syrup, evaporators put the sap into evaporating pans and boil the extra water away until they're left with about 67% sugar and 33% water.

Other sap can also be used to make syrup, but it just takes more time and energy to reach the right viscosity. Once the sap is turned into maple syrup, people eat it in their oatmeal and on their pancakes, waffles and French toast, providing them a burst of quick energy thanks to the sugar and the sap. So for this activity, I suggest having a maple sap to maple syrup relay race.

A lot of people don't realize that pure maple syrup is just maple sap boiled down to a higher sugar concentration, and so we're going to demonstrate that today with this relay race. If you played the photosynthesis relay that I talked about in episode 17: Six Fun Fall Activities Aligned with K-5 Next Generation Science Standards, then your learners are already familiar with the photosynthesis equation and how trees make their own sugar from the energy of the sun, water and carbon dioxide. That sugar can then be consumed by other organisms and provide them energy.

You can remind them of that concept either by playing the relay race again or by looking at the photosynthesis equation. Then, gather reusable bags and your poker chips from the photosynthesis relay or purchase some cheap ones from a dollar store near you and prep them to represent sugar maple sap. What that looks like is putting 95 chips of one color, say blue, in each team's bag to represent water and then five chips, say brown or white of another color to represent sugar.

Make sure each bag has the same colors used for water and for sugar, and then take your learners outside and group them into teams of five or six. Give each team a bag of poker chips and then spread a bunch of poker chips of the water color out into an open field. Create a starting line for each of your groups to line up at, either with a rope or with cones, and then let them know that their job is to run one at a time, taking water chips into the field and depositing them into the cloud.

The energy that they're putting into running into the field is the energy that the water from the sap takes to evaporate into the atmosphere. Once they return to their team, they give a high five to the next person and they run a water poker chip out to the cloud and deposit it there. Your role as the adult is to walk back and forth behind the teams and provide them one sugar poker chip for each of the water poker chips they deposit into the cloud.

This represents the sugar that remains in the evaporating pan. Once they've gotten rid of 62 of their water poker chips and gained 62 sugar poker chips, they've made maple syrup and are passing energy from the tree on to people.

[24:04]

So in a nutshell, we talked about six fun spring activities you could do with your students this upcoming season. For kindergarten, we talked about looking for hummingbird or a migratory animal's needs in your schoolyard. For first grade, we talked about engineering how to stay dry in the rain using animal adaptations as inspiration. For second grade, we talked about conducting a phenology study in an area with ephemeral flowers or conducting a plant experiment inside.

For third grade, we talked about playing dimorphism flag tag. For fourth grade, we talked about creating and testing flooding solution models. And for fifth grade, we talked about doing a maple sap to maple syrup relay race.

And don't forget, if you're enjoying hearing about these activities, make sure to check the show notes to get signed up for the free activity index to help you easily find what you need when you need it. So thanks for taking time to listen today. I know you're busy and I truly appreciate the time you take to tune in.

If you have any questions, wonderings, or fun spring activities that you use, get ahold of me on Instagram at naturally.teaching, or you can email me at victoria@naturallyteaching.com. And don't forget to check out the show notes for this episode at naturallyteaching.com/episode42. So thanks again for joining me today.

And until next time, keep exploring, keep learning, and keep naturally teaching. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode of the Naturally Teaching Elementary Podcast. I hope you found it informative, inspiring, and full of actionable insights to enhance your teaching journey.

Connect with me on social media for more updates, science tidbits, and additional resources. You can find me on Instagram and Facebook at naturally.teaching. Let's continue the conversation and share our passion for teaching elementary-age children together.

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Thank you again for listening, and until next time, keep exploring, keep learning, and keep naturally teaching.