Teachers and care givers may feel overwhelmed with lesson-planning and creating new activities for children. They might not know where to start or how to engage their children with nature, especially if they do not know much about nature or wildlife themselves!
We want to gather environmental educational material from non-profit organizations to share with my school and other children. We will donate to causes we care about and purchase their prepared material. We will then implement the material in local teaching environments, including my own school or with my group of friends.
We have successfully grown our Nature Knowledge library collection! Through trainings, workshops and webinars, we have collected curriculums and project books from various nonprofits. We have gone into one classroom so far and have set plans to host events and additional project days! In addition to our school plans, we also arranged for some of the workshops to be presented to Florida librarians through a webinar series before the next conference! We will continue to work with teachers, homeschoolers and educators to share our Nature Knowledge.
We learned many nonprofits give their resources for free! Through attending workshops we received curriculum booklets about recycling, wildflowers, native wildlife and more! We learned our thoughts were right in thinking teachers would welcome outside assistance in bringing Nature Knowledge into the classroom.
As we continue to develop our Nature Knowledge project, we will go to the teachers with dates in mind as opposed to asking them to let us know. We have found it takes a bit of time to hear back, but when we go with a set date we get a “yes please!” straight away! We will also try to have a few practice rounds in a small group setting of the topics we want to teach before working with a large class.
Noah’s favorite part about this project was going to Busch Wildlife, our local wildlife hospital, and learning about the animals there and what they do at the hospital and sanctuary. Mom’s favorite part has been attending the webinars and workshops! Courses are fun to take. It’s exciting to continue learning in new ways!
If you are local to Florida, Project WILD is a free program for educators offered by Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC). You attend workshops and fun activity days where you play games and learn about teaching others about nature. In return for your fun day, you receive a full curriculum book to take home!
