Children explore their schoolyard or nearby green space to find natural items like leaves, stones, and feathers. They learn to observe, classify, and appreciate biodiversity in their immediate environment.
Children create seed bombs using clay, compost, and native wildflower seeds. They learn about plant life cycles, pollination, and how small actions can help local ecosystems thrive.
Using simple materials, children construct a basic weather station to measure rain, wind, and temperature. They record data over time and discuss seasonal weather patterns and climate.
Children create collages using natural materials and recycled paper to express how nature makes them feel. This activity combines sensory exploration with emotional awareness and creative expression.
In teams, children brainstorm and sketch their ideal eco-friendly playground. They present their designs to the class, practising collaboration, creativity, and public speaking skills.
Children go on a bug hunt in the garden, learning which insects help plants grow. They draw and label their findings, building observation skills and respect for small creatures.
Here are some easy tips to help you and your class set up a recording booth in your classroom ! This is a great way to document students' new discoveries.
Here is a fun outdoor art activity. This will require you and your class to go outside and discover the hidden designs on trees !
This fun warm-up game helps students tune into their sense of hearing. One student is blindfolded and must listen carefully to catch their classmate using only sound!
Introduce children to basic coding, spatial thinking, and garden-related vocabulary through hands-on play with programmable robots.
This activity encourages students to pay attention to the sounds and movements of the birds around them. Through observation and the help from bird recognition apps students will learn to identify local birds.
To observe which natural materials attract which bugs and why.
Set up a free-play station where children are invited to rebuild their animal home models using blocks and/or natural materials. This station allows children to revisit and reflect on their previous designs in a creative and flexible way.
Children explore the structure, function, and beauty of butterfly wings, learn about symmetry in nature, and create their own butterfly art inspired by observation.
To collaboratively design and build a playful Rube Goldberg-style chain reaction machine using natural and recycled materials that illustrates how life on land is interconnected
Explore your school grounds through a new perspective
This activity introduces children to the concept of composting and decomposition through an interactive, movement-based coding game
In this activity children will search for different coloured natural materials. Students will discover a broad range of living things in a wide range of colours !
Visualize shared values, questions, and commitments from all participants.
This hands-on activity is a fun and simple way to show your class how plants grow. By decorating a bean and letting it sprout over 10 days, students can observe the fascinating changes a plant goes through in just a short time
To inspire children’s imagination and empathy by inviting them to build tiny homes for fairies and bugs using natural materials
Here students can learn to give kind and constructive feedback to their pairs. Through using helpful prompts students learn to be mindful when giving and receiving ideas.
Feedback Worksheet
Feedback worksheet
To help children express and reflect on their emotions after an activity or lesson.
This simple-to-make footprint tunnel is a fun way to discover which small animals live around your school grounds. By checking the tunnel regularly, you and your class can spot the footprints left behind by local wildlife.
Identify natural shapes and design patterned garden art inspired by them.
Through this hands-on activity, children explore patterns, colors, spatial thinking, teamwork, and creativity—all while connecting digital concepts with the natural world.
Children explore how some seeds travel by wind, learn about natural motion, and create their own paper helicopter seed models inspired by the maple seed (which spins as it falls).
This activity invites children to reflect together on what they learned and enjoyed during the project by building a shared flower made of their thoughts, memories, and drawings.
Learn basics of circuits by building artistic “glow bugs” that light up using LED + battery.
To help children develop a shared and deeper understanding of the space of the future garden in which the LGF challenge will take place
Take your class on a nature walk or a tree search! This activity can be enjoyed at any time of year, either on your school grounds or in a nearby park.
To empower children to explore, map, and transform an overlooked outdoor space into an adventurous jungle-style trail using natural elements
To create a child-led outdoor play kitchen using natural materials where children can explore creatively, play collaboratively and use their senses by making pretend “recipes” from mud, leaves, water, and gathered items.
Children create a “talking garden” by giving voice to plants they’ve explored. Using QR storytelling
Build mandalas using symmetry and found materials, fostering focus and peace.
Use natural items to form letters and tell short eco-stories.
Children explore basic electrical circuits using copper foil, while crafting interactive storyboards that highlight nature's small wonders — from insects and seeds to soil creatures.
To help children observe nature more closely using magnifying glasses
To observe natural shapes and recreate them on a geoboard, promoting spatial awareness, pattern recognition, and early design thinking through nature elements.
Create bright, colorful masks using natural treasures you collect on a nature walk!
Here are some top tips to prepare you and your class for a nature walk!
Children explore patterns and textures in nature by weaving natural materials through simple looms, learning about plants, habitats, and creative expression.
To engage children in designing, building, and testing their own outdoor obstacle course using natural and recycled materials. The activity fosters physical development, problem-solving, creativity, and collaboration
Empower adults to share practical knowledge, build recognition and participation.
To foster peer-to-peer learning among parents, strengthen eco-literacy at home, and support the formation of a new group of parent collaborators for the next Co-Design Lab cycle.
Here are some quick and easy tips for creating a classroom photobooth, a fun way to capture and celebrate all your class’s achievements.
Discover useful tips to kick-start your school’s garden in a fun and budget-friendly way!
To guide children in building and using simple rain gauges to observe, measure, and record rainfall, helping them connect scientific observation to real-life garden planning. The activity promotes data literacy, critical thinking, and environmental awareness in a playful, hands-on way.
Demonstrate how rain forms in clouds.
Outdoor Scavenger Hunt
To generate tangible and creative design proposals for improving the science garden design lab through collaborative imagination, eco-thinking, and hands-on prototyping.
To build environmental awareness by observing and reflecting on how the Science Garden changes throughout the year
To help children explore how the Sun’s position in the sky changes over time and how that affects the length and direction of shadows. By observing, tracing, and reflecting on shadows, children gain early understanding of astronomy, time, and space, and learn how to apply science to real-life decisions in their outdoor environment.
Use a Smartboard or projector to display a visual slideshow as part of your gallery walk, introduction, or reflection time. This activity connects student work to real-life examples and strengthens understanding of how animals build and live.
With just soil and water, you and your class can create beautiful works of natural art.
To help children explore the different types of soil, observe their textures, colors, and contents, and begin to understand how healthy soil supports life. Through hands-on discovery, they learn that soil is more than just dirt, instead it is a living home for plants, bugs, roots, and seeds, and it plays a vital role in helping things grow.
Children explore how solar energy can power motion by creating colorful spinning art with solar-powered motors. The activity builds understanding of renewable energy, cause and effect, and encourages creativity through design, testing, and observation.
Children explore sound by building outdoor musical sculptures with natural and recycled materials. They develop sensory skills, creativity, teamwork, and environmental awareness.
Head outside with your class, take a moment to be still, and listen closely to the sounds around you. Using your sense of hearing, draw what you imagine from the sounds you hear.
To involve children and their families in observing and recording pollinators
Strengthen children’s and adults’ emotional connection to nature
This activity encourages children to become tiny creature detectives, searching carefully around the garden to discover the mini-beasts and insects living nearby.
To introduce children to the use of a microscope and help them observe natural materials
Here are some simple tips to help you and your class set up a trail camera on your school grounds. You’ll be amazed at how much you can discover about your local wildlife.
Children explore a tree through sound, touch, and observation, then create a personal collage using recordings, bark textures, and natural materials. This builds on multisensory awareness, early storytelling skills, and a connection to nature.
This is a movement-based, reflective activity where children walk in pairs and explore each other’s animal home models through conversation.
To help children understand that plants need water and how we can use simple circuits to design a fun “thirsty plant” alarm system that tells us when the soil is dry.
To build a sense of community and interdependence within the Co-Design Lab team by role- playing different parts of a garden and discovering how each role contributes to the whole.
This game is a fun and engaging way to show students the many connections within our ecosystems. It helps them see just how important a rich and diverse environment is for the survival of all animals and plants.
Children create sculptures that move with the wind, using natural and reused materials.
Observe worms and how they move through soil. Children engage directly with a living system — observing worm movement and decomposition over time.