Play doesn’t always need to be about learning and not every toy or game needs to teach kids something. But play is also how kids learn, and science is fascinating for children because it helps them to understand the world around them. We’ve made some games that are fun and sneak science into play.
Teaching science through play
Nature Fun Card Games can be pure fun: running, exploring, creating, connecting, competing and collaborating in the outdoors. But they also have features that promote science learning, and train kids in some of the skills needed for science. Here are six ways Nature Fun Card Games sneak science into play!
1. Practice observation
Have you heard of ‘plant blindness’? This is when people don’t see plants as individual species but just as a background mass of green. It’s the inability to see or notice plants in your environment. Some of this is part of how our brains work. Because plants don’t move, are similar in colour and are all close together, the brain tends to lump them all together. Plants are basically non-threatening, so your brain isn’t on high alert for them to jump out at you.
It’s also cultural - we like species that are most like us - primates, big fluffy mammals, animals showing traits that we recognise as ‘human’. We develop emotional connections to animals because they are more like us.
Plant blindness isn’t inevitable, there are plenty of cultures that notice and revere plants, cultures where plants are gods and goddesses; where they’re used for medicine or navigation. In the west we’re so cut off from nature that a lot of the time we don’t want it anywhere near us. I mean if the strip of grass on the berm outside our houses is called a ‘nature strip’ we’re really in trouble.
Plant blindness is a tragedy for conservation. If people can’t tell the difference between trees why should they care that a giant pohutukawa blocking their view of the ocean is more precious than a wilding pine? And just saying - the pohutukawa IS the view.
Noticing that plants are different from each other is a key skill in science and Nature Fun Card Games incorporates this through activities that encourage kids to look at plants. Activities like finding the tallest tree or creating sculptures from leaves and branches of different shapes; finding plants that grow in clumps and getting close up with moss and fungi.
2. Spark creativity
Creativity is essential in science to spark ideas, try new ways of doing things, figure out effective ways to communicate, solve problems and think in long term time frames. Creativity doesn’t happen in ordered and planned spaces. When kids days are spent inside, on a timetable, where all the blocks are the same shapes and paints have to be kept tidy their brains know what to expect and creativity isn’t needed.
Nature is not in our control, it’s not tidy and organised. This forces us to be curious and deal with situations we weren’t expecting. For kids this can be not knowing whether the rocks they’re clambering over will be wobbly or not; if they’re climbing a tree where will the hand and foot holds be? They won’t be evenly spaced like on a climbing frame. If they’re making sculptures out of natural materials, what will they do if they can’t find the right shaped stick? Or the leaf colours don’t match?
As well as providing problems to solve being in nature gives us the tools to do so. When we are outside in nature our mind rests and relaxes which leaves space to be creative and use our imaginations. Even short periods in nature gives a variety of health benefits including lower blood pressure, decreased heart rate, higher immune function and overall physiological relaxation. In short, being in nature makes us relaxed and feeling good! Which helps us to be more creative.
Kiwi Garden has challenges like inventing a dawn chorus for humans, making up fun names for fungi and making sculptures out of sticks.
3. Multi-sensory experiences
Being in nature is a multi-sensory experience that stimulates our brains through movement, sight, hearing, touch and smell. When children engage multiple senses, more pathways are formed in the brain that connect them with each other, nature and their place in the world. It helps kids to notice the world around them, which helps them to love it and grow up wanting to protect it.
Nature Fun Card Games include multi-sensory activities like feeling the sand with your toes, listening to the wind and looking closely at the bark on trees.
4. Taking risks
Did you know that before Edward Jenner ‘invented’ the vaccine for smallpox Lady Mary Wortley Montagu inoculated her son and daughter with a tiny dose of smallpox taken from the pus of a smallpox sore? She had learned the practice from women in Turkey for who it was a common practice. But this was 1721 so she was dismissed as an ‘ignorant woman’. Of course when Edward Jenner did the same in 1796 he was taken seriously.
Both of them took huge risks, using their children as guinea pigs against a deadly disease. Now obviously I’m not advocating for that level of risk - we do have ethics committees for a reason. But kids need to learn about risk: how to take them safely, what their individual capacity for risk is, and how it feels to push themselves to try new things.
This doesn’t mean putting themselves in danger, but climbing trees, running fast, jumping off logs or balancing all teach kids about risk safely.
At the Beach helps children take risks in a safe environment through activities like exploring sand dunes, running on sand and investigating rock pools.
5. Collaborate and communicate
We are still told the story of the lone scientific genius working alone on experiments. Think of Marie Curie working away in a shed to discover radioactivity. But this type of scientist doesn’t exist anymore. Modern scientific problems are too complex for one person, in one discipline to solve. Climate science includes environmental science, ecology, biology, atmospheric science, geography, political science, psychology, hydrology, chemistry, computer science, ethics, communication and many more disciplines. If scientists working in these areas can’t collaborate and communicate we won’t be able to solve the world’s big challenges.
Nature Fun Card Games are designed to be played together with communication and collaboration occurring as part of the game - even when it gets competitive! Question and answer formats, challenges and 'Did you knows?' all create opportunities for families to connect and have fun together.
Try out Nature Fun Card Games today!