How do you get young learners to think about the changing seasons and Earth’s movement in relation to the sun? Take a step outside!
Four Winds nature educators joined first graders at Barrington Elementary School to visit the same tree through the school year. Recording their observations in their tree journals allowed them to look back month after month to see how the tree changed through the seasons, and how they have changed, too.
First grade teacher Lori Benincasa says, “Visiting the same tree each month and noticing, among other things, where the sun was in the sky, was such a concrete way for young learners to experience our planet’s movement relative to the sun. Students were able to look at the pictures of themselves, the tree, and the sun’s position in the sky month-after-month and use their firsthand observations to draw, write, and talk about patterns in the natural world.”
