Daily Activity for Kids – Day 13 – Alphabet Nature Hunt
During this COVID-19 pandemic, many parents are home with their children and looking for things to do. This is a daily post to give you ideas of fun things to do. It comes from activities that we implement at our daycare centre using our Four Pillars of Learning curriculum. Since we are closed during this time, we are sharing the activity for you to implement in your own home. Enjoy!
Daily Activity for Kids – Day 13 – Alphabet Nature Hunt
Language and Literacy go hand in hand, especially with young children. A toddler’s brain is at peak ability for learning, meaning a solid groundwork for language and literacy can be established at this time. For young children presenting language and literacy together is easy and natural, because they are not differentiating written language from spoken language the way adults do. It is all just learning how to communicate. We have a fun language and literacy activity to do outside with your children. We call it the Alphabet Nature Hunt.
Step 1: Sit down with your child and talk to them about some of the things they see when they are outside.
Step 2: Help them to create a list from A to Z of items they think they could see on their walk. Let them use their imagination. It will help to keep them busy and excited while outside.
Step 3: As you go through each letter, have them tell you what they could see. Ex. A is for Ant, B is for bike, C is for cat, D is for dog, E is for elephant. Not likely to be seen in nature but how exciting to add an elephant to your hunt.
Step 4: As you are out, put a check mark beside everything that you saw from your list and an “x” beside everything you didn’t.
Step 5: When you get home you can discuss everything you saw. For the items you did not come across, it is a great time to discuss with the children where they could find those items. You could then read a book about one of them to see where they really can be found. Or even better, you could google the item and allow the children to explore it.
This is a great way to use language and literacy to tie in to technology and build and expand on the ideas. It’s also a great opportunity for physical activity and exploring nature. If you are not comfortable going for a walk in the neighbourhood at this time, you can simply explore nature in your own backyard.
This daily kids activity incorporates many learning areas based on our Four Pillars of Learning curriculum including: STEAM (science/nature), physical activity and language and literacy.