I used to do extension type teaching at an aquarium. At five years some students know a little more than you expect, but others will understand little. It is usually best to emphasize very very basic stuff.
For example, collecting leaves off the ground, then placing the leaves behind a piece of paper and coloring with a crayon on the paper. This will create an impression of the leaf as the crayon will be darker where the leaf veins are. The kids will be pretty impressed with this. YOu can teach them some basic things about leaves. Some are round, some are jagged, some are smooth. And I mean basic. Touching leaves with their fingers to notice some are rough and soe are smooth. Emphasize texture (feel), color, shapes. Very very basic. With animals, watch an episode of the Crocodile hunter and up the tone about 200%. There is a bird, isn't it beautiful? Birds have feathers and a beak and scaley legs. At this age, bird, mammal, is a very advanced concept, and frankly some won't grasp it. THen again, I guess some adults don't grasp it either! (hehe). Most kids this age will recognize cow, monkey, pig, mouse. But if you try to go deeper say, dairy cow, beef cow, spider monkey, rat, mouse, shrew, they can't handle it. They are just learning to identify the things around them. Even identifying differnet trees from the leaves might be too much. They don't understand different kinds of trees, just that trees have leaves, and leaves can be different shapes. Also, it is best to be over-the-top enthusiastic about trivial things. At that age, gaining appreciation is vital, but the content will be very very shallow, repetative, and you have to be over-the-top enthusiastic. A point worth noting is that the over-the-top enthusiasm sometimes helps with undergrads and grads too. :P Here is a video of me with my daughter this spring with seeds. She is 4.5 yrs here, and can already read and do some basic addition and multiplication. However, this is close to how you need to deliver stuff. I'm showing her the different seeds we are planting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiZW8SnT_OQ Its kind of funny, because in a way teaching little kids is so darn applicable to teaching undergrads it is funny, you are just going faster and more in depth with the higher students!!!!! (well, that depends too! Ok, I better stop this line of comedy or I'll get in trouble!). There is huge development in capacity to learn differences between things from about 3 to 5. Real concepts, even good and bad, are difficult for them even at 5. I went ahead and posted this response to the listserv because it might elicit more responses from teh environmental education folks on here. They surely can send you to some resources. A lot of this stuff is already done by others and you can just adapt them. There is a lot of 4-H, boyscout/girlscout/brownie badge stuff, and various programs like Project WET out there. I designed a number of education programs while at the aquarium focused on aquatics. Heck, I set up this one program that was teaching preschoolers about the ocean world by making crafts. I coined it the Art-Sea Craft-Sea Program. The kids would make an octopus out of a marshmallow and whip licorice (Made that up myself), there were a butt-load (and industry term there) of different things I pretty much cranked out in an afternoon from scratch. I just made them up and wrote them down. IT was very successful. That was done for pre-schoolers. Making things fun, or remembering what you saw are good activities. Briing them outside, let them touch a snail, then, bring them back in and spend an hour drawing snails.... if they can draw. Or, making snails out of clay. KEEP IT REALLY SIMPLE. On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 3:56 AM, J C Voltolini <jcvol...@uol.com.br> wrote: > Dear friends, > > I am a University teacher and education coordinator in Brasil and our > Departament is testing a new Biology curriculum with courses like teaching > ecology, botany, zoology, microbiology. > > The idea is to develop methods to teach these areas in public secondary > schools but now I was invited to teach a field class for preschool kids (5 > years). > > I would to share ideas because the school is near a rainforest fragment > with howler monkies, a very good place to teach! I am thinking in an > practice about observation of plants to understand the structure of the > rainforest comparing herbs, brushes and trees. Any ideas? > > Some pictures of my teaching ecology activities: > https://www.facebook.com/ecotrop/media_set?set=a.10207129950628258.1073741841.1266679242&type=3&uploaded=83 > > Prof. Dr. J. C. VOLTOLINI > Biology Department > Universidade de Taubaté > -- Malcolm L. McCallum, PHD, REP Link to online CV and portfolio : https://www.visualcv.com/malcolm-mc-callum?access=18A9RYkDGxO “Nothing is more priceless and worthy of preservation than the rich array of animal life with which our country has been blessed. It is a many-faceted treasure, of value to scholars, scientists, and nature lovers alike, and it forms a vital part of the heritage we all share as Americans.” -President Richard Nixon upon signing the Endangered Species Act of 1973 into law. "Peer pressure is designed to contain anyone with a sense of drive" - Allan Nation 1880's: "There's lots of good fish in the sea" W.S. Gilbert 1990's: Many fish stocks depleted due to overfishing, habitat loss, and pollution. 2000: Marine reserves, ecosystem restoration, and pollution reduction MAY help restore populations. 2022: Soylent Green is People! 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