One of our favorite summer activities for kids is go on nature walks. It’s a great way to spend time outdoors and explore the world around us. My children love to take their binoculars on our walks and search for living things. We often make crafts based on the animals and insects that find in nature such as our Watercolor Butterfly and Handprint Dragonfly Craft. We also like to count the things that we find in nature and record the information on a graph. Creating a Nature Walk Counting Graph is a fun way for children to use math and learn about the things in their environment.
When creating a Nature Graph, children can search for, count, and record the number of a variety of things including:
- Birds
- Insects
- Flowers
- Leaves
- Rocks
- Trees
- Pine Cones
You can customize the graph and look for things based on the area where you live. You can also look for specific types of things in one category.
This year, we have noticed a lot of birds in our backyard that we don’t normally find in our region, so we went on a nature walk and looked for specific types of birds. We searched for:
- Blue Jays
- Woodpeckers
- Cardinals
- Cranes
- Hummingbirds
- Geese
My children found 4 Blue Jays, 1 Woodpecker, 6 Cardinals, 4 Cranes, 2 Hummingbirds, and 20 Geese.
You can extend the learning activity and ask your children questions about the graph such as:
- What column had the most?
- What column had the least?
- Were there any that had the same amount?
Click on the link to print your own Nature Graph.
Creating a Nature Walk Counting Graph is a great way for children to observe and explore nature. It makes learning fun too!
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