This program aims to inspire you to use the natural materials in your schoolyard for authentic learning and exploration. By integrating natural materials, collected by students, into lessons, educators promote STEAM concepts. These materials provide countless opportunities for children to inquire, design, build, and problem solve. Hand-on observations also help students connect with the natural world. This program meets Virginia’s Science Foundation Blocks for Early Learning: Comprehensive Standards for Four-Year-Olds, 2013: Block 1-Scientific Investigation, Reasoning, and Logic, Block 3-Matter/Physical Properties, Block 6-Life Processes, Block 7-Earth Patterns, Cycles and Change.

This program provides ideas for implementing project-based learning science themes in the classroom. Demonstrations of how to make a watershed model, a mini composter, and a terrarium are highlighted. By building and working with these models, students can understand nature’s cycles and the effects of human activity on natural systems.

This program explains how to introduce students to pollinators that play important roles in nature’s ecosystems by using the Great Sunflower Project. This project is a community science platform that educators can use to help students gain first-hand insight into the intricate relationship between plants and pollinators.