Forums

Hello, All!

This post is connected to the NSTA Daily Do How can we tell what season it is? Although this task was designed for young children and their families, we are encouraging families and teachers of young students to create and share a Seasons Board using Wakelet or similar digital tool. The hope is that we'll get Season Boards representing a wide variety of locations across the country (and hopefully, globe!) that teachers, families and students can use to notice spatial and temporal patterns of seasons. Please consider contributing to our data set in your role of teacher or family member.

If you're new to Wakelet, you can watch this short Introduction to Wakelet video to help you get started.

Whether you create a seasons board for your family, local or global community, consider including the following information:

• Season represented (you can add seasons over time)
• The months of the year this season represents
• Where on Earth you live
• Artifacts of the season

Allow students/families to choose the artifacts of the season. Artifacts chosen will depend on the age and interest of the students in the class or family, but may include:

• pictures of the area (plants, animals, sky, clothes worn during the season, etc.)
• drawings or paintings (Younger children might represent the season using colors while older children might create scientific drawings of plants and/or animals they observe. How do we know what isopods do? [Part 1] provides guidance on how to support students in creating scientific drawings.)
• tree bark and leaf rubbings
• written descriptions of the sights, sounds, smells and feels of the season
• weather data represented in tables or graphs

Share the link to your Seasons Board by clicking the big blue Post Reply button in the upper left-hand corner of this page (NOT Reply To This Post in lower right-hand corner of this text box). This creates a way for people to respond to you in the forum. Please include your location in the post.

Thank you for your participation in this project! Please reach out to me through the forum or email ([email protected]) if you have suggestions for improving the project or have questions.

Kate

Hi! I think the seasons board is a very fun, exciting and interactive way to get students excited about engaging in their changing world around them! Finding artifacts to represent the seasons is almost like a scavenger hunt, it will get the kids thinking while also allowing them to practically play a game! Great work.

I think this is such a great idea, especially for younger elementary grades! Very creative, and will be so helpful. I think it is essential that parents/families of students are informed and get involved in their child's education.

I love how you included artifacts from the seasons! This sounds like such a great way to illustrate seasons. As an aspiring kindergarten teacher, I will definitely incorporate this into my classroom. 

Hello Kate, thank you for sharing about creating a seasons board! My name is Lori, and I am a Senior at Henderson State University and will be interning in January 2022. I am trying to find ideas to incorporate into my classroom; and I saw this idea about creating a seasons board and allowing students and families to contribute.  What a fantastic idea. I am going to read through this discussion to gather ideas to incorporate season boards into my classroom. Thank you so much for this, and I have enjoyed reading what you wrote.

This is a great lesson. I am a senior at Merrimack College and I will be incorporating this lesson into my unit. I particularly liked that families can get involved and being outside to really observe the effects of the seasons changing on things. Thank you for this.

This was such a fun lesson idea. I would love to try this right now in winter. Students can see the changes that have happened. This could also be an all-year project for kindergarten when students start to learn seasons. I will steal this idea for my own classroom!

This was a great way to do a seasons board. Create and a way for kids to add some flare to their own.

Hello Lindsey, I love the idea of the Seasons board, it not only shows the students what is around them in this world but what resources they could use in different weather climates. I truly love this idea. 

We just finished our weather unit but I will return to this board for ideas next year. Thanks!

Hey kate, thank you so much for this resource! I am a first year teachers starting my earth and space unit very soon. Any resources for this unit is a great help!

Hi Kate! I am currently in my last year in the teaching program. Since I am fairly new, I think these ideas will serve me when trying to find new activities and topics to incorporate into my future classroom! Through this board, I believe I can not only have the students and their peers add to this board but their family members as well. I will continue to read and look for new ideas to add to my lessons on this particular topic. 

i think these ideas are great, the new imporved ways to get students attention was awsome and i can really use this in my future classroom, with my students. 

Is there another way to get students more involved into the lesson and if so what questions can i ask the students about space to get them involved?

I love the idea of a season's board. I know the ideal is for elementary students, but I'm sure early childhood students would love it too. 

Hi Kate,

I can't wait to incorporate this into my classroom. Thank you for sharing.

Hi, I enjoyed this lesson idea. I like the way it incorporated different senses and required students to make connections with the space around them. This is the type of activity that I think would have students excited, engaged, and participating. 

As a soon to be teacher, these things are incredibly useful, this project will be for building a collection of engaging and meaningful resources to add to my teaching toolbelt. This project is also a great opportunity to foster collaboration among teachers, families, and students across different locations, which provides such a rich perspective for young learners. I’m looking forward to contributing and learning from the shared boards, and I appreciate the focus on tools like Wakelet to make this accessible and interactive. Thank you for organizing this!