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| I took this photo on campus where I work. I love how the yellow and purple petals resemble butterflies. |
One school year, I came up with a fun activity we could do that would incorporate some of the photos I had taken around campus. I had twelve to fourteen printed out and put them in a little 4 x 6 plastic photo album.
I divided the kids into two groups and led them each on a nature hunt. I'd show them a photo I had recently taken of plants on campus either indoors or outside. All of the photos I used I shot or cropped so that there wasn't too much space around them. I wanted to see if the kids recognized the plants and remembered where on campus they could be found. Both groups did really well. It only took them a moment or two of looking at the photo before they knew what area of the school it was in, and they were off and running.
Since the only time I have a green thumb is when I've been working with a green marker or green paint, I didn't know the names of all of the flowers we were seeking. The kids didn't seem to mind, and when I saw one of my friends who is a master gardener I asked her, so I'll include names when I do the activity, again.
Another cool variation of this activity is to take photos of the same plants at different times of the year, then have kids see if they can identify the plant as well as what season the photo was taken. You could do a nature hunt using photos of a familiar spot taken in the spring and see if you can pick out those same plants come winter.
To check out another fun outdoor project we've done that the kids thoroughly enjoyed, see this post I wrote Nature Fun for Kids: Create the Box, then Think Outside of It.
