Bring STEM to Life with Engaging Digital Enrichment Resources for Grades 3–6! Inspire your students and/or children with STEM history and current events, skill-building activities, and daily science highlights that make learning fun and meaningful.
Share
Outdoor STEM Activities for your Child This Summer
Published 21 days ago • 7 min read
Outdoor STEM Activities for your Child This Summer
Cherie Levent DeVille
(Did we end up in your Spam folder? Please mark lbedpub@gmail.com as NOT SPAM to receive our newsletters in your Inbox. You won't want to miss anything! You can send us a message at that address as well.)
Summer is here (at least in the northern hemisphere), and it's time for your children to enjoy their time away from a restricted classroom environment if they attend an in-person school. If your children are homeschooled or world-schooled, the following exercises will be great for your children (and you) to engage in.
Get Back To Nature
It's long been time for all of us to engage with nature. Understanding the natural environment around us, whether you live in a city or not, is an important first step in becoming eco-conscious. City residents need especially to develop their "nature eyes," an ability to notice all the plants, trees, and animals around us. Additionally, we need to recognize also that weeds are plants that may be able to feed, medicate, or provide for us in several ways. Plants and trees are not just nuisances or blights in the urban landscape.
These activities will help you and your children appreciate nature in a new way. Allow your child to lead the way as much as you possibly can.
Photo by Sharath G.: https://www.pexels.com/photo/tranquil-urban-park-with-benches-and-pathway-32543167/
Create a Nature Journal
Human beings are multifaceted, and the use of the humanities and art helps us engage in STEM disciplines. Studies show that combining the arts practice with STEM helps students stay engaged and retain more knowledge.
Having students create their journals will allow them a fun and creative way to develop their knowledge of the natural world, as well as a place to contain their observations. It's empowering for them to create their book. It can be as inexpensive as taking some scrap sheets of paper and making a notebook, creating a book from scrap cardboard and creating the cover, or buying a journal and drawing on the front.
Ask your children how they would like to create their journals.
Play and Draw
Being outside in a predominantly green or blue space is good for your health. Think of any of the several parks, woods, and forests near or accessible to you. If you don't have these different spaces around you, Go to a botanical garden (keep it inexpensive by going on a free day or purchasing a family membership for the year) or a large open college campus (there are several that have extensive open green spaces). If you are in a park, please allow your child to play! Run, jump, skip, whatever it is! Children should have joy during these activities.
Photo by Mizuno K: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-boy-drawing-in-a-notebook-12886944/
Ask them to notice what is around them. Take some supplies–their journal (or paper), colored pencils, markers, or, depending on where you are, paints. Ask your child to draw what they see around them and let them choose what they wish to focus on. While your child may not draw a hyperrealistic depiction of the scene or specimen they choose, it should be schematic enough so that they can recall what they saw later on.
If you are in the park, collect some things that may seem interesting–acorns, a leaf, seeds, feathers, or even a small plant (note: do not do this in a botanical garden, as the plants are there like a museum. Additionally, some parks have areas that they plant, like a revolving seasonal planting of flowers, and you do not want them to pick that). While selecting plants, make sure that you are not taking along any insects. These little travelers can hide in the needles of trees or seeds. Allow your child to select what fascinates them!
Use a Portable Microscope
Find a dragonfly wing? Let your child observe its structure in the scope. Find a leaf? The scope will help students look at its sometimes intricate venation. Again, let your child choose what they will look at. They can even draw what they see in the scope!
I have found cheap, portable field microscopes in thrift stores. Another option is to ask a school (or the maintenance people at a school). I have witnessed schools toss perfectly good but "outdated" equipment. See if a school in your neighborhood is doing this. Lastly, you can find some scopes here (these are not affiliate links, and we do not support Amazon).
See any plants that you don't know? While Google Lens is often used for plant identification, why not help add to the collection of observations of plants in your area or be the first to identify a specific plant in your city?
Seek is a great app created primarily for young learners of nature, but adults will love it, too. Download it to your phone and instantly start making observations and identifications. The iNaturalist group created both the iNaturalist app, which aggregates the observations of flora and fauna worldwide, as well as Seek, which uses those observations to help identify plants and animals. Seek is suitable for your child's portable connected device (if they have one).
From the website:
“
No registration is involved, and no user data is collected.
Seek will ask permission to turn on location services, but your location is obscured to respect your privacy while still allowing species suggestions from your general area. Your precise location is never stored in the app or sent to iNaturalist.
Another great app to use is Merlin Bird ID, developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Identify birds by taking their photo or recording their calls. Adults and children alike can have fun listening to the birds in your area. You may be surprised by what you find.
The iNaturalist website. You can find out more information about the iNaturalist organization here as well as Seek.
While you should absolutely insist on going outside and halting their video game playing (temporarily), you must allow your children's curiosity to be the guide. They need to engage all of their senses. They need to awaken their connection to the outside world. Developing their observation skills and allowing their curiosity to flourish will only deepen their STEM skills...and yours! Late spring through early fall is the perfect time to go outside and learn from curiosity and wonder. Note how many questions may arise from your outings and encourage them. Find out the answers together.
Photo by Monstera Production: https://www.pexels.com/photo/smiling-black-father-reading-book-to-adorable-daughter-5997042/
AI, Alexa, and Siri may give you an immediate answer, but why not extend your detective skills by using plant books? While AIs will provide answers immediately, they may not encourage serendipity or further paths of discovery. We suggest while searching for answers to any questions that arise during these activities, to disregard Alexa, Siri, and ChatGPT (and other AIs). They have their place but leave them for later.
The first time I consciously connected with the power of the natural world I was a young child. It was a warm autumn afternoon on our Lake County, [California,] ranch at the end of a full weekend of visiting family and friends, so typical at our summer home. I had spent the entire day in the pool until the skin on the tips of my fingers and toes pruned. I was walking around the entire length of the pool, passing the forbidden deep end, when a form at my feet caught my eye: glistening brown leaves moistened by water lay pressed flat into the wet concrete. Peach tree leaves that had already come loose in the fall warmth.
I stopped and asked out loud to those leaves, “What do you know?”
I don’t recall their answer, but that was my first memory of consciously connecting with, and asking something from, the natural world, guided by an intuition there might be an answer. A problem that could be solved.
The upcoming 2025-2026 calendar products will be a digital download package of the following items:
Monthly calendar posters of events,
Presentations (in PDF) of the events from our calendars.
STEM-related activities that complement the events on the calendar.
Posters of selected events for each month
Blank month posters so you can fill them in the way that you wish
The products are for students ages 8 to 13.
Enrich your classroom or learning space with STEM posters of Black professionals, important science events, and other fascinating STEM facts. They are fun, colorful, and informative.
We hope you enjoyed our newsletter! Need a last-minute activity book for Juneteenth. Download one of our first books, The Path to Juneteenth, FREE! We would love for anyone interested in the book to sign up for the mailing list.
Bring STEM to Life with Engaging Digital Enrichment Resources for Grades 3–6! Inspire your students and/or children with STEM history and current events, skill-building activities, and daily science highlights that make learning fun and meaningful.
by Cherie Levent DeVille (Did we end up in your Spam folder? Please mark lbedpub@gmail.com as NOT SPAM to receive our newsletters in your Inbox. You won't want to miss anything! You can send us a message at that address as well.) One of the more child-friendly definitions for science I have come across is from NASA on its Space Place website. Science consists of observing the world by watching, listening, observing, and recording. Science is curiosity in thoughtful action about the world and...
Why Focus on Black History in a STEM Setting? Cherie Levent DeVille (Did we end up in your Spam folder? Please mark lbedpub@gmail.com as NOT SPAM to receive our newsletters in your Inbox. You won't want to miss anything! You can send us a message at that address as well.) In the past couple of newsletters, we have not discussed STEM or STEAM topics; Instead, we have written about history and archiving, especially as related to Black history. Why is that? Why not focus only on STE(A)M...
Carla Hayden, Unknown author - https://www.loc.gov/about/about-the-librarian/, Public Domain, Black Librarians Matter May 18, 2025 Cherie Levent DeVille (Did we end up in your Spam folder? Please mark lbedpub@gmail.com as NOT SPAM to receive our newsletters in your Inbox. You won't want to miss anything! You can send us a message at that address as well. In the last newsletter, I wrote about the importance of the Internet Archive and the need to allow access to information for everyone. I had...