This game can grow with your child. Initially, it’s a fun way to teach the name of nature objects. Later, it can become a guessing game or a sorting game, once your toddler firmly has a few of nature words under his or her belt.

For the easiest variation on a nature walk today, I asked Veronika to pick up treasures and fill a paper bag we’d brought along. Of course she didn’t entirely understand, but she certainly loved bringing me sticks and dropping them in!

I rounded out the collection with other items we spotted, like leaves, tall grasses, pine needles, acorns, and seed pods.

Once we were home, we took our treasures to the back patio. For older kids, have them reach into the bag and guess what they are feeling; you can even use a blindfold, if your child wants to! At seventeen months old, it was easier to dump the bag out in front of Veronika and hand her one item at a time.

“Leaf,” I could say, for example. She is a parrot these days, and loved practicing new words right back to me, as we then discussed the color or texture.

When I gave her grass, she immediately grabbed it…

…and ran to return it to the grass just off our patio, an amazing insight to her little brain!

There was definitely some new vocab here, including words like “acorn” and “bark”. I sorted our items into piles so she could better understand each new word.

In sum, we got a nice pause in the spring sunshine, and a little lesson all in one!