What is the story of your place?
Making Field Guides with Ground Education
Is this deer alone?
What else do you see in this picture?
What might be there that you can’t see?
Do these things affect each other?
What makes you say that?
Ecology is the study of how plants and animals interact with their place and all the things in it.
How does a scientist explore a place?
What tools might they need?
How can they show us what they find?
Watch this video and think about how you might explore a place near you...
What did you see in the video?
What different places were explored?
What parts of their bodies did they use to explore them?
Were things in the place alive or not alive?
How did they tell the story of the place?
Fun Fact: An ecosystem is a community of living things and the place where they live
Can you tell a story about what is happening in these places?
How about this place? What could the story be?
Stand up and show us what it feels like to be the bear in this place.
Now show us what it feels like to be the human.
How do your actions affect each other?
What is a field guide?
There are many ways to tell the story of a place:
Map
Drawing
Conversation
Model
Make sure you are with a grown up if you want to choose a place outside.
Now it’s your turn!
Tell us the story of where you are right now.
It could be a room, a view out a window, or your schoolyard.
Use your senses to observe all the things in the place with you. Is there an ant, another person or something you can eat?
Let’s practice by looking at this picture. Imagine you are small enough to see the world from here. What might you care about, or feel, or see?
Try to observe your place from a new point of view.
You are an ecologist!
Have fun using our activities and let your place teach you something...