Exploring Nature with Children in November Resources

30th October 2024 Leave a comment

We’ve been using the Exploring Nature with Children curriculum from Raising Little Shoots for around 5 years now. Each year we explore familiar things and new things. What I’ve found this year is that Floss’s (daughter age 8) interests are very firmly nature, books and arts & crafts. Therefore this year a lot of our nature study has been explored from the perspective of the arts.

This blog post gives you some resources that we’ve made or purchased and enjoyed that you may find helpful for each week in November.

You can find out more information about the curriculum here but you don’t need to follow the curriculum to utilise these resources. Here are some of the basic bits of equipment and resources we use for the curriculum as a starting point.

This post will get added to through the month of November 2024. Latest update 4th November 2024. A new audio mushroom quiz has been added.

Exploring Nature with Children November Blog Post Contents

Exploring Nature with Children Fungus Week

Nothing compares to spotting fungi out in the wild. A wonderful shared moment for our family that’s often reminisced about is spotting a fly agaric. It was a first for all of us and totally magical.

We’ve thoroughly enjoyed exploring fungi through the four books below. Of course we’ve also explored ‘real’ images of mushrooms. However, these books really appeal to Floss’s artistic nature.

Four books on mushrooms lay on a gold scarf and surrounded by handmade mushroom stickers

Fungus & Mushroom Books to Love

I always like to have a peep inside books before I purchase and this can be a little tricky when healthwise you’re stuck in the house much of the time. Below I’ve given you a little peep inside these four wonderful books so you can see which your might prefer to explore.

Shroom Art

We’re always looking for ways to link nature and creative projects. We thoroughly enjoyed making the mushroom art below. We drew our own mushrooms and then scanned them in ad changed the colours using Canva. After we printed them out on vinyl sticker paper.

Using some of the books above as inspiration we also made our own drawings of some of our favourites. Sitting together and being creative is one of our favourite pastimes.

We used acrylic paint pens to make the mushroom images below.

Woodland Trust Fungi Identification Download

The Woodland Trust have some great fungi identification sheets to download including one specifically for Autumn.

Mushroom Learning Resources Free Download

Mushroom Audio Quiz

Important Mushroom Foraging Warning

Foraging for wild mushrooms can be exciting, but it’s crucial to exercise extreme caution. Many wild mushrooms in the UK are highly toxic and can be easily mistaken for safe varieties. Consuming unknown or misidentified mushrooms can lead to severe illness, irreversible organ damage, or even death. It is essential that you:

  • Do not pick or eat any wild mushrooms unless you are absolutely certain of their identity.
  • Seek expert guidance if you are interested in mushroom foraging.
  • Remember: even experienced foragers and mycologists can make mistakes.

Stay safe, respect nature, and when in doubt, leave it out!

Exploring Mushrooms Through the Senses

Exploring a selection of different mushrooms through the senses is a great activity for this week. We purchased these mushrooms from our local shop to make sure they were all safe to eat. My daughter loved dissecting the mushrooms and wrote her own little book exploring her findings for each mushroom. You’ll find a little template to use if you’d like in the fungi free download above.

Grow Your Own Mushrooms

We’ve also grown our own mushrooms. You can find growing kits on line. We’ve only used the Merryhill Mushrooms ones. They were brilliant fun to watch growing and I’d highly recommend having a go. We had great success with button mushrooms, shiitake and pink and yellow oyster (these are all the ones we’ve tried so far).

Exploring Nature with Children Moss Week

Moss Download

Plantlife have a good download for learning more about mosses and liverworts that you can find here.

Exploring Nature with Children Lichen Week

Lichen – What is it?

Lichen’s are a type of fungus, a special type of fungus. This resources if great for learning the basic facts about lichen. If you’re looking for more detailed information then Devon Wildlife Trust has a comprehensive powerpoint presentation that can be found here.

lichen on a tree

Lichen Spotter Download

Plantlife have a brilliant lichen spotter pdf that you can download here.

Exploring Nature with Children Weather Week

This blog post although for Spring has lots of ideas for exploring weather with children.

More Nature Resources for November

Exploring Nature with Children through the Year

You can find more resources for different weeks in the ENWC curriculum by clicking on the links below:

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