My family and I live on an acre property in the middle of Jacksonville, FL. Actually, all of the homes on our 2 parallel blocks have an acre to their names. I guess we all must enjoy the outdoors somewhat as it’s quite a bit of upkeep to maintain that large of a property, at least for us city dwellers. We spend a fair amount of time outside whether it’s steaming hot or somewhat cold (it is Florida after all). And I am always trying to find things for my 2, almost 3, year old to do while I sit with my 4 month old underneath the grove in the middle of our yard. As a teacher, I love structure, especially when it comes to reading and writing. I typically go through lessons very methodically. But lately, I am trying to find more things to do that integrate traditional instruction into our daily lives. I also love the idea of my daughter exploring the outdoors in the safety and beauty of our own backyard. As a part of our journey into the very start of homeschooling, I created My Backyard Scavenger Hunt Printables, so we can make the outdoors into our classroom, one bug-bite at a time.
3 Vocabulary Enrichment Activities for Kids using My Backyard Scavenger Hunt Printables
1. My Backyard Scavenger Hunt: With this activity, my daughter and I can work on our adjectives while discovering new sights in the forms of animals, plants, and other random inanimate objects in our backyard. My nephew, who comes over to hangout several times a week, is the king of exploring quite normal things, but making these things seem extraordinary. He is going to love this time of exploration with my daughter next week as they scavenge the yard for the miraculous. You can use any adjectives from green to rough to bumpy to light, whatever you want! With this activity, kids don’t realize they are really learning anything, but they will be delving deeply into language that connects to the real world.
2. My Backyard I Spy Activity: For this activity, my daughter and I will be choosing 3 objects to describe with 3 adjectives. They can relate to touch, sight, sound, smell, or taste, but I wouldn’t recommend tasting too many things in my backyard. Then, we will work to draw a visual of each object. By looking at each object closely, my goal is for my daughter to truly take the time to see what is out there in our world. Plus, we get to work on describing those things with creative adjectives. She gets to learn and play at the same time!
3. My Backyard Object Activity: This activity kind of puts all of it together with adjectives, antonyms, visualization, and writing. Together, we can work to discover how an object changes with a simple change of the description. Can you imagine if a green, thin, smooth leaf becomes a dark brown, thick, bumpy leaf? I couldn’t really think of an antonym for green, although green is lively and brown leaves are usually dying 🙂 Then, she will get to draw the new object, seeing how it changes by merely changing the words. As we all know, words matter! When words change, meaning changes.
Beyond discovering our backyard again through My Backyard Scavenger Hunt Printables, I am so excited to begin the journey of homeschooling our daughters. We are at the very beginning, but I can’t wait to see how much we learn together both inside and outside of our home!
Written by Kristin Menke, The Integrated Teacher
