Keep kids excited about hikes: Nature Cards

You and your preschooler can create nature cards to teach colors,
numbers, and dexterity skills.

Once you’ve completed your first hike, pat yourself on the back. You’ve done a lot of work but have taken the first step into a larger world for both you and your children.

To keep kid’s enthusiasm charged, “review” the hike in kid-friendly ways. While you really can’t do this with infants, most toddlers and older kids will enjoy it. One post-hike game/activity you might consider is Nature Cards.

Preschoolers can develop a lot of skills with this activity – observation, using a scissors, gluing, colors, and more.

Take a scissors and a re-sealable bag on your hike. Help your child look for different colors in plants, especially the primary colors of yellow, orange, red, purple, blue, green, brown, black and white. When a plant is found, snip a leaf or petal from it and place it in the re-sealable bag.

Once home, draw nine 4-inch-high by 2.5-inch-wide cards on construction page. Have your child cut out the cards and then glue a single leaf or petal onto each one. You now have flash cards to practice learning the colors.

The activity easily can be modified to teach other lessons. For example, numbers could be taught by having one leaf/petal glue to a card, two leaves/blossoms glued to another card, and so on.

Materials: construction paper, scissors, glue, re-sealable bag

Ages: 3-4 years old

Learn about more than a hundred other hiking diversions for kids in Hikes with Tykes: Games and Activities.