Exploring Fields with Preschoolers
Outdoor Discovery Activities with Young Children
Visit the home of rabbits, groundhogs, crickets and grasshoppers with young children and use these activities to discover how animals move around and hide in a sea of waving grass and wildflowers.
What Animals Live in a Field?
Stand in the field and ask the children what they notice about this ecosystem. What plants do they see? What colors do they notice? How do they think animals hide in a meadow? What would the animals eat? What would be the easiest way to move through the grass (walk, crawl, hop, fly, etc.)?
Name some of the animals that can live in the fields around you. If possible, show pictures, plastic animals, or stuffed animals of the critters you mention. Ask the children to imagine being a rabbit, butterfly, or other meadow animal and move through the grass as that animal.
Color Scavenger Hunt
Go to the paint store and gather a collection of paint chips in a variety of colors. Give each child a strip of colors and have the child try to find something in the field that matches the color as closely as possible. Even young children can notice the various shades of green and try to make a match.
Grass Matching Game
If you are in a meadow with a mix of grasses in bloom, snap off a seed head and show it to the group. Have the children look at the plants around them and return with an exact match.
Insect Search
Collect insects using bug boxes and sweep nets. What color insects do the children find? Where did they find the insects – near the ground or at the top of a plant?
Camouflaged Animals Game
Go to an online coloring book and look for a simple drawing of a mouse or a rabbit. Shrink the image so two copies fit on one sheet of paper. Give each child one of these pages. Tell the preschoolers to color one animal realistically and the other fantastically (rainbow rabbit). Cut out the shapes and carry them to the field.
Half of the group hides their animals within a designated spot of tall plants. The other half of the group then goes in search of the paper animals. Which animals do the children find first – the camouflaged animals or the brightly colored critters? Switch groups.
Small brown animals like mice and rabbits camouflage, or blend in, with the soil and dead plants.
Fox and Mouse Game
Ask the children to imagine being an animal trying to move around and find food when all they can see is a lot of grass. How else might they find food? They could listen for it – particularly if they are a fox that wants a mouse for dinner.
Blindfold the fox who sits in the center of a circle of children. The leader points to one of the people sitting in the circle, who must stand, then walk around the outside of the circle before returning to her original seat. Still blindfolded, the fox then points to the person he thought was moving. If correct, the fox hold his place. If incorrect, the mouse becomes the new fox.
Listening Activity
Children sit or stand in a circle with their eyes closed. Each child raises a fist in the air. Every time a child hears a new sound, she raises one finger. When she has raised all of her fingers, she can open her eyes.
The activities here encourage young children to explore a field using their senses of sight, hearing, and touch as well as use their imaginations as they pretend to be animals moving within a meadow.
What Will You Find in a Field?
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