Hi, it's Lauren from the Mohonk Preserve.
I am one of the Education Coordinators
and I am here to give you a little
activity that you can do with your kids
while you are social distancing in your
homes. This is a great math and nature
activity that you can do, it is great for
preschool age, kindergarten age kids.
It is simple basic sorting so on this
lovely March day after March snow I went
outside for a little vitamin D in my
yard and I went on a scavenger hunt
looking for all kinds of fun nature
items, and I found them. So I found a
bunch of awesome nature materials and I
will show them to you
all right here are my nature materials I
just wandered around the yard and I
picked up some things that were already
on the ground so I didn't pick anything
off of any of the trees or any of the
plants this is all stuff I just found on
the ground in my yard, lots of different
things, so let's see if I can sort them
according to how they are alike how they
are similar.
I sorted them I sorted them according to
how I see that they are similar so I put
all of the cones together put all the
rocks together tried to get as many of
the needles together as I could, I only
found a few sumac berries, just one right
there and some wet leaves then I put all
of the sticks together in a pile. How
else can I sort them? Okay, this time I
sorted them differently. I did them by
color so I put everything that had green
on it right there all of my red, oh a
couple berries over there.
and some gray rocks, and brown - the
cones, the stick, the needles, the leaves
all brown.
How else can I sort them? Okay, this time
I sorted them by size so all of these
sticks are about the same size, this rock
and leaf and sumac berry, about the same
size, the cones and wonderful "needle
branch" that that is the same size, these
are the same size,
these leaves not same size, our needles
and one random leaf same size, and this
one kind of all by itself in its own
category. All right ,so I've done lots of
different sorting with my natural
objects that I found in my backyard.
Remember I did not pick anything living
it was all found on the ground
there's so many different options of
sorting with your preschooler and your
kindergartener. Have them come up with
the different categories.
Once they've spent some time in the
backyard gathering as much things as
they can find out there gather them all
in one place and then ask them to sort
them, don't give them any ideas you might
want to if you get you couldn't say oh
maybe sort them by size or color but
they might come up with that on their
own so ask them to sort and then have
them explain their categories. Why did
they put all of the cones together, or
why did they put the leaves and the
needles together, and ask them why and
have them come up with different methods of sorting different categories, and you
can also add in some counting so have
them count how many things are brown or
green or gray have them count how many
things have the same shape or there's
the same size so there's lots of
different ways you can add in some math
using nature out in your backyard. So
that's it for this time we'll see you
again later on with more fun things you
can do with your kids. Thanks!
