Ms. Pat's Nature Club

Ms. Pat's Nature Club is a blog for anyone who is a nature nut and loves nature, no matter what age you are. I hope you will let me know what you think and give me feedback. I love to hear from my friends!



"Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better."
-Albert Einstein

"Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you."
-Frank Lloyd Wright


"Treat the earth well. It was not given to you by your parents, It was loaned to you by your children"

-Native American proverb


"Teaching children about the natural world should be treated as one of the most important events in their lives."

-Thomas Berry, Dream of the Earth


"If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, the excitement and mystery of the world we live in."
-Rachel Carson, A Sense of Wonder

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Nature Club, May 15 and 16

This week was our very last Nature Club! We got outside and into the gorgeous weather to look for cool and interesting natural items. We discovered rocks, sticks, pine cones,maple seeds (helicopter seeds), weeds, buttercups, dandelions, clovers and clover flowers. Everyone had a lot of fun finding treasures to fit in their bag and take home.
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Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Nature Club, May 1 and 2

Happy May Day! We were very lucky with the weather for our Nature Club meetings this week. We met in-between the rainstorms that came at night. I read Nature Spy by Shelley Rotner and Ken Kreisler, which tells children how they can see such interesting patterns by looking closely at natural things. After I read the book, we all went outside to be nature spies and find cool patterns in nature. We found lots of leaves, branches, flowers and rocks. I showed the kids the new, soft needles growing on the pine tree. We also enjoyed rolling down the hill! A fun, fun day!

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Nature Club, April 17th and 18th






This past week in Nature Club, I read one of my favorite books, In the Trees, Honeybees, by Lori Mortensen. The book explains how honeybees live and work: finding pollen and nectar, bringing it home, taking care of the queen bee and larvae, protecting the hive and storing honey. We talked about being kind to bees and not swatting at them since they are only looking for flowers. We learned that much of our food is grown with the help of bees pollinating the flowers. We sampled some honey and most of us thought it was delicious!

Monday, April 9, 2012

Nature Club, April 3rd and 4th








This past week in Nature Club, I showed the children my favorite nature video, Bugs Don't Bug Us. With soft music playing, it simply shows young children interacting with a number of invertebrates. These included worms, ladybugs, grasshoppers, snails,butterflies,daddy longlegs, and beetles. Kids watched, but did not touch bumblebees and honeybees (but they tasted honey!) My purpose in showing this was to get the preschoolers and kindergarteners ready for a warm season in Minnesota with plenty of creepy crawlies. I wanted them to see how interesting those animals were, and understand that they didn't need to scream and run away, or stomp on them. They could look at them and learn about them! The kids really enjoyed this little DVD,so I think they learned the lesson and look forward to checking out some bugs.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Nature Club, March 20,21








This week in Nature Club the lesson was Animal Colors. We talked about every color in the rainbow and what animals were those colors. I proved to them that animals come in every color. How many people have ever seen a blue frog? A pink starfish? We looked at all my Animal Rainbow pictures and then I had everyone draw an animal in their favorite color (or they could pick another color). We had lots of fun and knew a lot about animal colors. I reminded the kids to watch for nature AND to notice what colors they saw!

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Critter Watch

It's been a long time since I posted a Critter Watch, but I had to note that TODAY I saw my first robin of the year!

Nature Club, Feb. 29 and March 5 (due to snow day)








Beetles or Stones? In this session of Nature Club, we talked about all the different parts of nature that we could think of: animals, plants, rocks, the sky and universe. Then I asked everyone to think of their favorite nature topic- what part of nature they liked to learn about. We drew pictures of our favorites. Some will appear in this blog and some will appear in PCLC on and around the Nature Club bulletin board.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Nature Club, Feb. 15 & 16







This week our Nature Club theme was Nature Rocks. We talked about where rocks come from and how we use rock and stone in our daily lives. I showed the kids some items from my house made of stone (lava stone grinder, pumice stone, paperweights) and some other interesting rocks, like geodes. I brought my rock collection to school and gave them magnifying glasses so they could examine some of the pretty and interesting rocks more closely. We picked out our favorites and some kids expressed an interest in having their own rock collections! We also built things from smooth river rocks and made patterns with pebbles.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Nature Club - January 31, February 1






Since I just got back from scuba diving in Mexico, I was inspired to bring my collection of sea creatures for the kids to look at. Some of them had already learned about animals of the ocean and had thoughtful questions. It was very new to others. Everyone was extremely interested in the shells, sponges,corals, starfish and sand dollars they looked at. I think they really appreciated how interesting and beautiful ocean creatures are.