Winter Nature Study: Activities and Resources

Nature study often gets looked over in the winter time. It's cold, many animals are tucked away hibernating, and the trees have lost their leaves, but there are still so many amazing things to be learned from the natural world, even this time of year. Below are some of my favorite winter nature study activities and resources:

Winter Nature Study Activities

Look at snowflakes under a microscope- This activity works best if you chill your microscope and slide for a few minutes before you try to view snowflakes, otherwise your equipment will just melt the flakes.

Birdwatching- Bird watching is a fun activity any time of year!

Here are my favorite resources for bird identification:

-The Merlin Bird ID app: This app is amazing and allows you to ID birds by physical description, song, or photo.

-The Audubon Online Bird Guide

-The Golden Field Guide's Birds of North America

Learn about animal tracks- Winter snow and mud provides the perfect medium for animal tracks. This online guide is really helpful: Greenbelly: Animal Tracks Identification Guide.

Storm tracking- Track winter storms as they come through your area. Download a good weather app and watch storms form and progress on the radar. Record things like temperature, rainfall total, wind direction, and barometric pressure.

And check out this post for instructions for putting together a simple backyard weather station: Make a Simple Home Weather Station

Learn about evergreens- Grab a guide book or download a good identification app and take a nature walk or hike near your home. Try to ID the evergreen species you see. Take notice of things like tree size, pinecone shape and size, and needle type. Take pictures or sketch the different trees you see.

You can learn more about evergreens with the following videos:

SciShow Kids: Excellent Evergreens

SciShow Kids: Evergreen Detective

Learn about types of precipitation- Observe different types of precipitation this winter and then research about how they each form. Here are a few resources to get you started:

National Geographic: Types of Precipitation

Freezing Rain, Sleet, Snow, and Graupel- What's the Difference?

Take a winter hike- Hikes can be enjoyable any time of year as long as you are dressed appropriately and properly prepared.

Night sky viewing- The only good thing, at least in my opinion, about it getting dark so early in the winter, is that it provides plenty of dark hours before bedtime to get outside and enjoy the night sky.

Encourage your kids to get outside to look at the moon every night for a full moon cycle. Have them draw or photograph it nightly and discuss the changes they see.

Go on a Mushroom or Lichen Hunt- Take a nature walk and challenge your kids to spot as many mushrooms or lichens as they can. Photograph the ones you see and try to ID them later with an app or guidebook.

Observe icicles as they form and melt- Choose an icicle to observe, and sketch or photograph it as it grows and shrinks over time. Use a tape measure to measure its length and circumference as it changes.

Winter Nature Study Resources

Here are some additional nature study resources to check out:

Apps and Websites

The iNaturalist app: is a fantastic resource that allows you to upload photos of wildlife and plant life and helps you identify them.

The Audubon Online Bird Guide

Greenbelly: Animal Tracks Identification Guide

Books

Secrets of Winter

The Story of Snow: the Science of Winter's Wonder

Videos

SciShow Kids: Where do Snowflakes Come From?

FreeSchool: What Makes it Snow

National Geographic: Types of Precipitation

Freezing Rain, Sleet, Snow, and Graupel- What's the Difference?

SciShow Kids: How Do Icicles Form?

SciShow Kids: Excellent Evergreens

SciShow Kids: Evergreen Detective

SciShow: Secrets of Snow

If you enjoyed this post, check out:

Fall Nature Study Activities

Make a Simple Home Weather Station

Follow me on:

Facebook

Instagram

Comments

Water Relay Races For Kids

I don't know about your kids, but mine absolutely love games involving water and getting wet in the summer time. In this post I share 5 of our favorite water relay races to play with friends. These are perfect for birthday parties, homeschool get togethers, and other group events. Sponge Relay: For this relay you will need: - 2 teams of several kids each -2 large sponges -4 small buckets or containers of some sort Divide your participants into 2 teams and have each team line up single file at a predetermined starting place. Hand out a sponge to the first participant in each line. Set a bucket of water by each team. Set an empty bucket about 20 ft away from each team. The two empty buckets should be the same size and should have a "fill line" marked half way up. On a count of 3 (or ready set go) the first participant in each line should dip their sponge in the bucket of water, run to the empty bucket, squeeze the water from their spo...

STEM Art: 21 STEAM Project Ideas

My kids love STEM projects and we're always looking for ways to add more art to our homeschool days, so I decided I am going to try to dedicate one morning a week this year to STEM art activities. In this post I share some of the ideas we're planning to try, plus a few favorites we've done in the past. What is STEM Education? STEM education is a blended and often hands on approach to teaching science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, which are some of today's fastest growing industries. STEM education offers students the opportunity to problem solve and work on real world problems and questions. Sometimes the acronym STEAM is used, to include the arts. Adding art to STEM education encourages creative thinking and problem solving skills. It can also help make the other included subjects more appealing to some students. STEM Art Projects Penny Spinners- Learn about centrifugal force and make your own spinning tops with this fun post from Teach Beside Me. Explo...

Make Your Own Mineral Identification Kit

One of my family's favorite hobbies is rock hounding. We love collecting and trying to identify neat rock and mineral specimens that we come across. You can put together your own simple kit for identifying rocks and minerals with materials you likely already have around your home. In this post I will explain how to put together your own mineral identification kit and how to use it to identify rocks and minerals you find on your adventures. Making a Rock and Mineral ID Kit Grab yourself a printable Rock and Mineral Journal for recording your observations here: Printable Rock and Mineral Journal , and then gather the following supplies: -A pencil -A coin -An iron nail -A piece of glass (an old pocket mirror works well) -A ceramic tile -A small watertight bottle or container -Some vinegar -A magnet -A magnifying glass -A dropper (optional) -Rock and mineral guide (optional) -A small container or bag to keep it all in Fill ...

Learning About Thailand: Activities and Resources

Thailand ended up being a really fun country to study. There are so many amazing Thai recipes to try and lots of neat buildings and monuments to learn about. My family's favorite part of this unit study was learning about Asian elephants, they are such interesting and intelligent animals! Basic Information Thailand is a country in southern Asia. It is boarderd by Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and the Andaman Sea. The northern region is mountainous while the southern region is hilly and forested. Capital- Bangkok Population- 69.6 million Size- 198,115 square miles Currency- Baht Type of Government- Constitutional Monarchy National Anthem- Phleng Chat Thai National Animal- elephant Flag Famous Places The Grand Palace- The Grand Palace in Bangkok was used as the official royal residence of Thailand from 1782 to 1925. It is still used today for ceremonies and state functions. The palace sits on the banks of the Chao Phraya River. It consists of many buildings and pavilio...

Learning About The Human Body Part 1: The Skeletal And Muscular Systems

At the end of each school year, I sit down with my daughter to discuss what topics she wants to learn about the next year. One of her science topics she picked to study this year was the human body. Instead of ordering a boxed curriculum set, I decided to put together my own human body unit. In this post I share some of the resources we used for learning about the human skeletal and muscular systems, plus instructions for a couple hands on learning activities. You can find my post about the human respiratory and circulatory systems here , and my post about the human digestive and nervous systems here . The Human Skeletal System Our skeletons are the frame of our body. They give us structure, without them our bodies would be limp like noodles. They also provide places for muscles to attach so our bodies can move. Why Does Your Body Need Calcium? Experiment: This is a simple experiment you can do to explore why calcium is important for our bones. You will need: -sever...

Search This Blog