How Nature supports literacy development

How does nature support language development?

If you ever watched a group of young children out doors, you would see the world of vocabulary development take form!

Children are questioning, classifying, and experimenting with vocabulary.
If we want children to develop better comprehension skills, then they must understand language.

Remember years ago, we had The Language Experience Approach.
Well, I think we need to incorporate that into early childhood environments again, because I  have forgotten how powerful The Language Experience Approach is to literacy development.

All you have to do is go out doors to listen to children.  Whenever I take my class on a nature walk, I am amazed to hear such rich conversation and questioning!

After our walk, we often take time to record all that happened.
I often start by having children close there eyes and tell me what color(s) they saw when outdoors. After I record the colors, we talk about the other details.
A boy said, " I could feel the wind softly on my face!"
A girl said, " I could hear the traffic going by."
Another boy said, " I could feel the sun warming my legs."

Nature walks are a great way to allow children to understand key details through direct experience.
Once we have a chance to describe what we see, feel, smell and hear out doors, we then write a class narrative together.

The children love this activity and what a great way to "experience language."

I had a discussion with the director of the Viles Aboretum last week. We took our Kindergarten class to the Aboretum for a field trip and the director mentioned how wonderful it was to work with my children. They were not afraid to explore the natural world by touching bugs and trees.  He could tell that they spent time outdoors as a class.

We discussed the importance of creating a nature journal.
This year was the first year that I followed through on natural journals with young children.
The writing and language skills of my students began to sky rocket!

I hope I have the patience and developmentally appropriate approach to start Nature Journals earlier next year because we often take nature walks during the  seasons of Fall and Spring.

Has anyone else experienced the power of nature in the area of language development?