Nature Challenge Pickers - Make Your Own

The Nature Kids absolutely LOVE making these and challenging each other to complete tasks in nature.

You probably remember these origami fortune tellers, but the Nature Kids have taken this idea and created it into the Nature Challenge Picker. They can spend hours doing this, making their origami, thinking of things from nature to write on it, creating nature challenges, taking turns to challenge each other, doing the nature tasks, and repeat. It brings them so much joy, helps develop their communication, collaboration and connection with nature and each other.

This is such a simple way get your kids and ākonga excited about and engaging with nature in any green space, leading their own learning.

Watch the video below to see how easy it is to make a Nature Challenge Picker

See the diagram below showing step-by-step how to make the origami and then read on to learn what to add to your picker

Stuff you’ll need A4 (or square) paper or light card trimmed into a square shape, scissors, coloured pens, any green space to explore and do your nature challenges

Instructions from @printablee.com

Once you’ve made your origami the kids will need to think of things from nature to write on the flaps, following are a few of the Nature Kids ideas:

  • tree

  • cloud

  • bird

  • sun

  • leaf

  • spider

  • flower

  • ladybird

  • shell

Anything from nature goes, write one word on each of the top and inside flaps of the origami, so 4 for the top and 8 for the inside flaps. Maybe challenge your kids to think of nature things from the local area, favourite things or specific things, for example bird, insect or tree species.

Now for the fun part, the challenges, these are written on the inside of the origami, under the inner flaps, there will be 8 challenges in total.

Here are a few of the Nature Kids ideas:

  • find a multi coloured leaf

  • climb a tree

  • watch the clouds

  • go barefoot for 10 minutes

  • make a bark rubbing

  • collect fallen nature items and create something

  • imitate a bird song

  • find an insect and observe it

  • hug a tree

  • draw a nature scene

  • write your name with nature

  • make a stick friend

The ideas and challenges your kids can come up with are limitless, let their creativity run wild just like they will once they’ve made their Nature Challenge Randomiser.

Nature Education, Nature ExperiencesKathy Broadhead