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Nature Detectives

Action Challenge

20+ minutes / Inside and Outside

Become a true nature explorer and uncover the hidden beauty of local nature. 

Learning outcome: Pupils to use focused observation skills (scientific) and descriptive language (artistic) to explore, select, and present a natural object, highlighting its textures, patterns, and intrinsic beauty.  

 

Instructions

  • Pupils are now explorers! Inspired by the stimulus photos their mission is to find the hidden beauty in nature – either outdoors or in a collection of objects you provide. You can make this as contained or wide-ranging as needed to fit your context.  
     
  • Take pupils out to explore nature locally (e.g., playground, street trees, park, or collected materials if indoors) and examine items around them closely (but be careful about touching!). 
     
  • Ask pupils to choose their favourite natural object and prompt them to reflect on: ‘The texture and patterns they see. Where they think this object came from. What drew them to this object?’ 
     
  • Depending on your setting, pupils can either bring the items to the class or become photographers to capture the details on camera.    
     
  • Back in the classroom, encourage them to present their object and observations to the class. 

Adaptations

  • Instead of presenting their observations, pupils can compare and discuss textures and materials with other pupils in pairs or small groups. 
     
  • Strengthen the scientific observation skills by continuing to research what they discovered or even identify and classify their item. 

Extensions

  • Pupils can create art inspired by their object or use it as a tool for prints or patterns. They can use chalk or pencils to transfer the texture to paper, then have other pupils guess where it came from. 
     
  • Make the activity a game – for example, challenging pupils with prompts like ‘Who can find the brightest natural object?’ or ‘What is the funniest shaped object you discovered?” 

From Another World

Creative Challenge

10+ minutes / Inside 

Explore the hidden wonders of the natural world with this simple observational activity. 

Learning outcome: Pupils will use observational skills and curiosity to interpret the hidden beauty and forms of natural objects and express their creative interpretations through drawing or writing. 

HBN FAQ Slice

Instructions

  • Show pupils the zoomed-in photos, one natural flora/fauna at a time. Begin with the most zoomed-in image. 
     
  • Invite imaginative guesses about what the object could be: A giant’s skin? A feather from a mythical creature? A landscape on a distant planet? Encourage them to make reference to the features and form of the items to shape their guesses. 
     
  • Then, ask pupils to unleash their creativity by writing a short story or a couple of paragraphs, about an imagined world, based off the zoomed-in photo. Encourage them to think about the scale, texture and story of their imagined item (Does the 'giant’s skin' feel rough or smooth? What planet is this creature found?)  
     
  • After they have finished their short stories, invite guesses about what each of the photos is really of, one-by-one, before revealing the real identity of the object. Repeat this for all the images. 
     
  • Prompt additional scientific discussion here: ‘Why does it look like that? What features does it have? What might that tell us about it?’ 

Adaptations

  • To make the activity simpler, you can reduce the number of images or ask pupils to draw their imaginative guesses instead of writing – but still thinking about texture and scale. 
     
  • To strengthen scientific discussion, pupils could individually create a two-column table – one column with the real object and the other for what they thought it was. They can use this to compare properties of real and imagined objects – how close were they?   

Extensions

  • This is a great way to get outside - encourage pupils to observe objects in their garden or local areas (supervised) and take zoomed in pictures of nature to share with the class. 
     
  • Hide real examples of the objects in a feely bag – are pupils brave enough to feel what the object is without seeing it?   

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