Kids love exploring the outdoors, and nature provides a variety of opportunities for hands-on education. Whether you have kids who are already outdoorsy or kids who need a little encouragement to get outside, we’ve compiled a list of 30 homeschool nature activities and resources for your family.
**Disclaimer: Some product links in this post are affiliate links. You don’t pay any extra if you decide to purchase, but we receive a small portion of the profits**
1. Nature Journaling
Nature journaling is a classic way to get kids interacting with and observing the world outdoors.
2. Start a Garden
Gardening is a great way for kids of all ages to get involved with an outdoors project. You can talk about the science of how plants grow, get kids active by helping care for the garden, and let them see the rewards of their hard work with tasty produce! If you’re in an urban area or don’t have space for a full garden, try a windowsill herb garden like this one from Amazon. You get the benefits of a garden with much less time and space!
3. Geocaching
If you haven’t heard of geocaching before, it’s a worldwide scavenger hunt of sorts where you can travel to locations around your town and find small “caches.” You can use an app to log which caches you’ve found and try to find as many as you can. Some may be easy to spot while others are tiny and require hiking and exploring to find. For more information on Geocaching, listen to this podcast episode by FundaFunda’s founder, Meryl van der Merwe.
4. Nature Book Clubs
Literary Adventure’s for Kids offers a series of online nature book clubs for pre-k through elementary. These online clubs provide nature-related activities to go along with classic children’s books. “The Giving Tree,” “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,” and “Yertle the Turtle” are just a few popular titles with book clubs for sale.
5. Hiking
Hiking is a great way to get kids out of the house and active in nature. Depending on the distance from the trail and the length of the hike, you could make it a full day trip or just an afternoon break for a couple of hours. You can add education by having children practice reading maps to navigate, looking up history behind the trails, or exploring wildlife plants an animals on the way. It’s one of my favorite homeschool nature activities!
6. Practice Math with Seed Sprouts
With a package of seeds, some soil, and some small cups, you can create a fun math and science activity for your students! Plant the seeds in small cups of soil, and as they grow, have your children make a graph showing the height each day. For older children, you could have them calculate the average rate of growth and predict the time it will take to reach a certain height. To make this a science experiment also, you could easily introduce variables. Put some plants outside and some indoors and track and compare growth on both. You could come up with other variables too!
7. Study Foraging
There are a variety of plants in the wild that are safe and delicious to eat, but it’s important to know how to do so safely. This book is an intro to foraging with kids and talks about safety, plant identification, where to forage and recipes to make with what you find!
8. Start a Butterfly Garden
Butterfly gardens are a collection of flowers and plants that butterflies are fond of and are meant to attract various species for you to observe. This article from the North America Butterfly Association gives the basics on how to set up a butterfly garden at your home.
9. Birdwatching
Birdwatching might sound like a boring way to spend an afternoon, but you can make it fun for you and your kids! Watch this YouTube video to see a young girl’s tips for birdwatching for kids and parents.
10. Leaf Journals
If you have trees around your yard, your kids can collect and label them to make a leaf journal! This serves as their own homemade field guide / identification guide. You can also have your children collect the leaves from the same tree in different seasons to see how they change!
11. Local Nature Centers
If you haven’t already, check to see if you have a nature center or wildlife center in your area! Many are free to go to and have walking trails and workers who can answer questions and talk about local wildlife. Some also have day programs for homeschoolers to get together and do nature exploration and experiments. Definitely worth looking for in your area!
12. Endangered Animal Project
Techie Homeschool Mom offers a FREE guide to making a digital project about an endangered animal of your student’s choice. This allows them to research an animal they’re interested in while also practicing computer skills. In the end, they have a cool project to share with friends and family! Be sure to click around to see what other unit studies are offered.
13. Make a Birdfeeder
Birdwatching is a few items up on the list as a suggestion, but if you need some help attracting birds to your yard, then try making a birdfeeder! This video has a tutorial on how to make a simple bird feeder for your yard, but feel free to allow your children to exercise their critical thinking and engineering skills to come up with their own design.
14. Pondwater Experiments
If you have access to a pond, lake, or river nearby, there are lots of experiments to do with that! One of my favorites is collecting pond water from different levels in the pond (surface, middle, bottom, etc) and comparing what you can see in the samples. If you own a microscopes, then you can also put drops of the water under that to see the microorganisms living in it!
15. Weather Tracking
Weather is a fascinating topic to cover, and while weather radars and apps are everywhere, it’s even more fun when kids can observe for themselves. Basic weather stations kits run around $25 on Amazon (like this one!) and allow children to use the same tools as actual meteorologists!
16. Weather Log
Going off of the idea above, kids can also start recording weather in the area and studying patterns they see. Even if you don’t purchase tools to measure weather, you can have kids use a weather app to look up the temperature, humidity, rainfall, and more. You can also encourage your students to make their own predictions on the weather to practice forming and testing hypotheses.
17. Season Photos
Have your child take a picture (or pictures!) of a nature scene around your house. Take photos in the same spot(s) every month for a year and talk about how the scenery changes from month to month. Ask your students to think about why those changes occur and make predictions for what they think the next month’s picture will look like.
18. Almanacs
You might think of almanacs as a thing of the past, but there’s still plenty of ways you can use them today! National Geographic Kids has a fantastic, fully-illustrated almanac for your students. With pictures, activities, and plenty of fun facts, this almanac will have no trouble holding your children’s interest.
19. Astronomy Unit Study
FundaFunda offers two web-based unit studies related to astronomy. One focuses on stars while the other focuses on the solar system. You can also buy these two together in a bundle for a discounted price! These contain a variety of activities to engage your children in studying astronomy.
20. Starwalk App
Starwalk is an astronomy app that allows you to point your phone’s camera at the sky and see what planets, stars, and constellations are in view. It also shows the location of the International Space Station, provides articles about recent space and astronomy news and talks about the planets’ orbits throughout the year. This is a fun and engaging way to level up your stargazing!
21. Identify Plants with a Field Guide
Identifying plants is a fun activity for kids, and it also can help them avoid potentially dangerous plants such as poison ivy. To start, you can purchase a field guide for plants of your region, such as this one. The one I linked is for Tennessee as that is where I live, but Amazon has ones for every state and region of the country!
22. Explore Nature with Technology
You might not think of technology and nature working together, but there’s plenty of amazing ways they can work hand-in-hand! This episode of the Homeschooling with Technology podcast by Meryl van der Merwe suggests ways to get you homeschooling with nature and tech combined.
23. Scavenger Hunts
Scavenger hunts are a fun and competitive way to get kids interacting with nature! You can make one for flowers, animals, types of trees, or anything else you see fit. You could also put them in a bingo board format and see who can find items in a row first.
Grab free Nature Bingo boards here when you sign up for FundaFunda’s monthly newsletter.
24. Collect Rocks
Many kids naturally gravitate towards picking up rocks they see lying around outside. You can easily turn this interest into an educational activity! Encourage your kids to identify and label the rocks they collect, using a rock identification field guide like this one. You can do experiments to test the hardness of the rocks using Moh’s scale, polish them in a rock tumbler, or just display them as a neat collection.
25. Start an Insect Collection
If your kids find insects interesting, encourage them to start an insect collection! This article from Homeschool Hub gives step-by-step instruction on how to easily start a collection. This gives children a cool collection they can show to friends and allows them to learn more about insects in your area.
26. Cloud Watching
Cloud watching has been a leisurely pastime for centuries, but you can incorporate new ways to make it educational. It’s a great opportunity for children to learn to identify different types of clouds, and if they started a weather log as a previous idea mentioned then they can record this in their log. If your child hasn’t yet learned the types of clouds or needs a refresher, this video can get them on track.
27. Visit a Beekeeper
Bees play a vital role in our ecosystem and hearing about their importance is fascinating! If you know of any beekeepers in your area, ask if they’d be willing to let you come visit. Your children can hear about what beekeepers do as well as what bees do for the ecosystem. This gives you a unique field trip opportunity, and you might even get to taste some delicious honey!
28. Try Making a Bird Nest
Birds’ nest might just look like blobs of grass and sticks, but they are actually very intricately designed. To show this to your children, ask them to try and make a nest using only what they can find outside. Chances are, they’ll have some difficulty! After they try this, have them read this article to see different types of bird nests and how carefully they are designed for each species’ needs.
29. Draw a Backyard Food Web
To start this activity, first have your children look around your backyard for any living creatures they can find. Insects, birds, rabbits, maybe even deer! After they have a list, have them arrange the species into a food web. If they aren’t yet familiar with food webs, then have them watch this video to get an idea of where to start.
30. Learn the Science of Skipping Rocks
Skipping rocks is a fun activity at lakes and ponds, but do you know the science behind why rocks skip? If not, then you and your students can learn together! This article talks about the science behind this well-known activity.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this blog post and found some new homeschool nature activities to try with your kids. If you have more ideas, drop them in the comments below!
Natalie Vaughn
Latest posts by Natalie Vaughn (see all)
- World War II Resources For Homeschoolers - August 9, 2022
- How to Stand out as a Homeschooled College Applicant - June 17, 2022
- Homeschoolers and Scholarships - June 16, 2022
