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Activities for Kids

Family-friendly activities, videos, articles, and more to aid in your nature exploration!

Natural Pigments

Sourgrass with bright yellow blooms
Sourgrass produces a bright yellow color

Experiment with creating art from nature! Many plants and rocks have pigments inside of them that you can paint or draw with. You can even go one step further and try making your own paint brush from found natural materials! 

How to find materials

Look in sidewalk cracks for leaves or flowers and look in dirt patches for different types of rocks. Look on bushes or trees for berries, flowers, and leaves. My favorite is oxalis, more commonly known as sourgrass (pictured to the right). It is a yellow flower that is common in Santa Cruz and makes a highlighter yellow color when used as natural paint. Bonus: this plant is invasive and is often considered a weed that you could completely remove.

A cluster of blueberries
Look in your kitchen for pigment materials!

On the other hand if you want to create art from nature but want to stay inside you can do that too! Some of your food can be used to paint and draw. For example, you can use colorful spices such as turmeric or paprika to create paint by mixing the powder with water. Beets, purple cabbage, and berries will also work – they often turn my cutting board different colors when I am chopping them! If you have a fireplace you can even use the small pieces of burnt wood that are left behind to draw with or you can grind it up and mix with water to create black paint. 

Collecting plants

  • Be respectful of the plants you collect
  • Only take what you need or take less than 10% of a plant (If there are 10 leaves on the plant, take only 1 and find other plants to pick from if you need more)
  • Collect with permission on private property and do not collect in State Parks
  • Stay away from harmful plants such as poison oak and stinging nettle

Creating Paint

  • Use your hands or a spoon to grind up the plants or rocks 
  • Try adding water or soaking items in warm water to soften them
  • Be patient, making your own paint is an experiment and it will often give you interesting surprises! See what happens if you add baking soda or vinegar- sometimes this will change the color of a paint!

Questions to ponder

  • What colors do you predict will be created from your items?
  • Did any of the colors surprise you? Why?
  • How did the colors change over time?
  • How did the colors change when you added different things (like baking soda or vinegar)?

Post by Elise

Observing Clouds Activity

Learn about different types of clouds, recording daily observations of clouds on your cloud chart, making weather predictions, and an experiment to make your own cloud at home!

What are clouds?

Clouds are made up of water droplets or ice crystals that float in the sky. We can learn a lot about the weather by looking at clouds.

Types of Clouds 

Types of clouds, including contrails, cumulus, cumulonimbus, cirrocumulus, nimbostratus, altostratus, cirrostratus, stratocumulus, fog, cirrus, altocumulus, and stratus clouds

Go outside and observe the clouds. Based on the diagram above, which clouds do you see today? If there are no clouds in the sky think about why that might be. Identify your clouds using this NASA Cloud Chart (Guía de las Nubes en español), and learn more about each type of cloud here. 

Each day go outside and observe the clouds for one week and record your observations in this downloadable cloud chart. Make weather predictions based on what you have learned about different types of clouds. At the end of the week you can look back on your weather predictions and reflect on if they were correct or not. Use your data to see which clouds were most common during that week. 


Download and print this worksheet to aid in your observations — or make your own!

My Cloud Chart (PDF | HTML)
My Cloud Chart (Spanish Version) (PDF)

Guiding Questions for Cloud Observations

  • Are they high, middle, or low clouds?
  • What do they remind you of? Do you notice any familiar shapes in the clouds today?
  • Are the clouds blocking the sun or moon?

Optional: Pair this with our Weather Observation Activity

Try This: Make a Cloud in a Jar! 

Materials: a jar, water, lid, and hairspray. 
Kid-friendly instructions for making your own cloud: https://www.notimeforflashcards.com/2015/03/make-cloud-jar-kitchen-science.html

Post by: Elise

Create Your Own Field Guide

To view the activity in Spanish, click here.Download

Creating a field guide is a great way to become an expert on a location. It is also a great way to share information with others. Choose a location to become an expert on! It can be your backyard, neighborhood, or any other outdoor spot that interests you. Once you have chosen your spot you may choose to focus on plants, animals, or both! Depending on how much time you have and what makes you most excited about learning. 

Recording data in an observation journal
Record your observations with writing, drawing, or by taking pictures.

Step 1: Bioblitz!

  1. Before you can make a field guide, you have to know what lives in your spot–start with a bioblitz! A bioblitz is when you try to find and identify all the species in a certain area over a short period of time. Bring with you a camera or journal to record what you find. You may also bring along field guides, or a smartphone to look up things on the go. Another option is to take pictures or sketch organisms you find outside to look up later. 
  2. On your bioblitz it is important to pay close attention to everything. Taking pictures or drawing what you find will be a helpful resource to look back on. 
  3. After the bioblitz you can do research using the online resources listed below to identify species that you don’t know. Once you have identified all the species you can start creating your field guide!

Making your field guide

  1. Choose your materials. Your field guide can be handmade with pen and paper or it can be typed on the computer. If you make it on the computer, it will be easier to share with others via email or posting on social media.
  2. Organize your field guide to make it user friendly.
    1. Make a table of contents and include page numbers 
    2. If you chose to include both plants and animals you should group those accordingly (plants in one section and animals in the other)
    3. Having images or a detailed description of what the species looks like
    4. Information or facts about the species such as where it is found, what it does, and what seasons it is around.
  3. When you finish your field guide, share it with your community! Then others can use your field guide to learn about creatures and plants in Santa Cruz. “In the end we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught”- Baba Dioum

Post by: Elise

A Collection of Resources

4 blackbird eggs

We’ve compiled some of our favorite online resources for digging-deeper into natural history. From virtual tours of other natural history collections to digital field guides that can supplement your outdoor adventures, explore what our community (both local and global) has to offer!

Digital Field Guides

  • Animal Tracks: Nature Tracking compiles animal tracking resources in order to “make learning to identify animal tracks as easy and fun as possible.” We also have our own animal tracking activity, here.
  • Feathers: The Feather Atlas is an image database dedicated to the identification and study of the flight feathers of North American birds.
  • Amphibians: Get to know our slithery and slimy friends through AmphibiaWeb, an online field guide and database of amphibians.
  • Birds: Identify your backyard birds, keep track of what you observe, and get to know the many birds that you encounter any given day through the definitive resource for birds and bird watching in North America — the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and their Merlin Bird ID app.
  • Marine Animals: The Marine Species Identification Portal offers information on thousands of different species in the world’s oceans and seas.

Digital Databases, Virtual Tours, and More

  • Biodiversity Heritage Library: An open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. BHL’s global consortium of natural history, botanical, and research libraries cooperate to digitize and make their collections accessible as a part of a global “biodiversity commons.”
  • Cloud Appreciation Society: Get a little poetic about nature and explore the Cloud Appreciation Society who urge you to “Look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty, and always remember to live life with your head in the clouds!”
  • National Parks: Maybe your vacation was postponed, but you can still explore our National Parks through these virtual tours.
  • Duke University: A database of 3D images of specimens for “Educators Organizing Online Courses Using Biological Specimens.”
  • The American Museum of Natural History: AMNH hosts a long list of activities, articles, videos and more, for educators, families, students, and anyone interested in teaching or learning about science.
  • Brains On: An award-winning science podcast for kids and curious adults from American Public Media.
  • NASA: A vast collection of images, videos, and articles all about space.
  • Smithsonian Museum of Natural History: Virtual tours of the museum and its collections.

Local Resources

Post by: Marisa