Chatboards
Classifieds
Lessons
Jobs
Karen’s Pre-K Page – Make a Nature Box!
By Karen Cox
Nature Box
This nature box is an activity that integrates science and math, can be made with inexpensively, and the children love it! It’s also easy to fit into a busy schedule, because you can take this box out onto the playground, and the children are eager to fill it with nature collections as they play. The box is an empty crayon class pack box that I recycled for this project. I painted each section a different color. (After I had painted it, I realized I should have let the children paint it.)
The children collect pebbles, leaves, wild flowers, twigs, and any small pieces of natural materials they find outside, and sort them by color into the sections of the box. Several of the children found items that had two colors, or a color that was questionable. An example was a white rock the children found that appeared a pale orange color due to being stained by red clay. When the children weren’t sure which color section to put the item in, I instructed them to make their best choice.
