Naturally Teaching Elementary: A Podcast for Teachers and Homeschool Families
Aug 3, 2026 · 9 min · 10 segments
It's back-to-school time and some of us are stepping back into the classroom as early as today! To help you feel more prepared and excited for this year, I put together this episode to give you…
Victoria ZablockiHostSo this is an opportunity for your students to be able to go out and explore nature, either with their families in their space or at school, and to bring things into your classroom and have a space designated to share.
This is gonna be almost like a show and tell, but without the presentation part of it.
It's more of an opportunity, like a sensory table sort of thing, where they can come over and check it out during breaks between different studies.
Something cool that you can do with this is actually provide the opportunity to your students to catalog what they've found.
So it kinda puts them in an ownership position over the pieces that they bring into the classroom.
If you leave field guides or easy ID sheets, they can go through, and they can try to figure out what they've brought in.
And you can have a little book that's developmentally appropriate where they can actually log what they've brought in.
So they could be practicing data collection while celebrating the things that they've found.
So for kindergarten, you could have a place for the date, and then you could also have a hierarchy.
So you could have them circle whether it's an animal or a plant, or you can even go as far as living and non-living and have them circle different things using pictures at the beginning of the year, and then as the year progresses, you could start to use more words where they have to use their reading skills, or going up into fifth grade, everything could be fill in the blank.
That piece gives another data collection opportunity, and it also brings nature in, which is a stress-relieving practice.
So this is an opportunity for your students to be able to go out and explore nature, either with their families in their space or at school, and to bring things into your classroom and have a space designated to share.
This is gonna be almost like a show and tell, but without the presentation part of it.
It's more of an opportunity, like a sensory table sort of thing, where they can come over and check it out during breaks between different studies.
Something cool that you can do with this is actually provide the opportunity to your students to catalog what they've found.
So it kinda puts them in an ownership position over the pieces that they bring into the classroom.
If you leave field guides or easy ID sheets, they can go through, and they can try to figure out what they've brought in.
And you can have a little book that's developmentally appropriate where they can actually log what they've brought in.
So they could be practicing data collection while celebrating the things that they've found.
So for kindergarten, you could have a place for the date, and then you could also have a hierarchy.
So you could have them circle whether it's an animal or a plant, or you can even go as far as living and non-living and have them circle different things using pictures at the beginning of the year, and then as the year progresses, you could start to use more words where they have to use their reading skills, or going up into fifth grade, everything could be fill in the blank.
That piece gives another data collection opportunity, and it also brings nature in, which is a stress-relieving practice.
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