Nature - SORTING ACTIVITY in a GARDEN
Nature inspires me , it inspires you and I bet it inspires children more than anything, even an I-Pad.
So that day we thought of Collecting natural stuff in our garden .
One of the girl collected medium - sized Rocks ,and she loved them.
This child hardly speaks but when it comes to nature, he is just an amazing explorer, a real scientist by nature.(I'll be writing about this mute boy ,how he started talking and communicating only by interacting with nature)
So that day we thought of Collecting natural stuff in our garden .
One of them was excited at the cemented piece and he clearly told me ,"Miss Erum, its not a Rock, I know,whats that?"..I was simply amazed, how kids learn everything similarities, differences, textures, qualities by interacting with nature ; paper work is just a nonsense Burden at this stage.
I told them to get some small leafs with straight ends and they got the right stuff, thanks to the Montessori system , where children learn about the BOTANY Cabinet when they are just 3 and can easily relate it to real leaves around them.
She was so immersed in her collection ,that she forgot that she had to return to her class, sometimes I feel CLASSROOMS are useless.
This is the leaf they have already observed in their BOTANY CABINET in the Culture area of our Montessori class.
Collecting dry grass was as exciting as it can be for a child.
He asked me , "Miss Erum , can I go for the tiniest rock hunting ? "I said , "Why not" , and then he came up with all the Uniform size rocks....amazing ! ( using scientific method of measurement),,,,they don't need teaching but a nourishing environment to polish these skills ...
After each group of children collected things from the garden ,they themselves put their buckets in a line and told me that they have collected six different items ,one of them was pebbles.
Another group collected dry grass and few dried flowers.
Middle sized rocks was collected by a group of three children. Every time a group came to me with their buckets,I was amazed to witness the uniformity of Size and Structure. Amazing scientific methods used by children !
A group of girls collected green leaves from the ground.
Twigs collected .
After the collection of all the Garden materials, we gathered around and then I asked each group about what they brought.
Happy and excited even after an hour of continuous Nature-hunting .
Here's the rest of my class.
I was explaining them how they can carry their plastic bags and select each item from the row to take away home...
He was putting the stuff in his plastic bag.
Getting his share of nature sorting.
I was really surprised to witness that not a single child grab more than one stuff from each bucket, as against the adult's wrong perception that children are greedy when they are given free choice .
Concentration can never be so deep as can be seen in a Natural environment where children learn by Discovery without any INSTRUCTION .
And finally its time to take their packs of Garden Collection home .
We could see that how simple Garden sorting activity develop fine-motor skills, Mathematical mind, reasoning, critical thinking, and new vocabulary.
What I have learned from these simple Nature - based activities that we as an Educationists doesn't need to do much , we just need to prepare the environment, and the learning will take place on it's own..
Nature is the best teacher.
