Increase nature connectedness in school to help youngsters thrive.
Improve the health of your school community by bringing pupils closer to nature!
This challenge will help deepen your students' relationships with the natural world. Together, you'll explore the term 'nature connectedness' and understand why it's vital for our mental, physical and emotional health.
To complete this challenge, you must do at least two activities that connect your pupils to wildlife and green spaces. You can use our suggested activities below or encourage pupils to come up with their own ideas.
This challenge is worth two points on the Green Tree Schools Award.
Nature connectedness is a term that describes the relationship between people and the natural world. It's about how we understand and appreciate nature, how we feel when we spend time outdoors, and how we relate to animals, plants and our environment. When we feel close to nature, we feel part of it.
A strong connection with nature has many benefits for your pupils.
Nature connectedness is also important because when we feel part of the natural world, we want to protect it and keep it healthy.
Credit: Jill Jennings / WTML
Ask your pupils what they enjoy doing outdoors and how they feel when they spend time in nature. You can gather all the responses on a mind map and discuss how we each have a unique, personal relationship with the natural world.
There are lots of ways to help children strengthen their connection with nature. Spending more time in green spaces makes a real difference, whether it's your school grounds, a leafy local park or a nearby woodland. Sensory exploration, mindful moments and hands-on conservation projects all offer brilliant opportunities to engage youngsters with the natural world, helping them appreciate it and feel connected to it.
For this challenge, choose at least two activities from the list below or encourage students to come up with their own ideas. You can even twin with a local school to share outdoor space or resources.
Use these activities to help youngsters immerse themselves in nature using their senses, observation skills and imagination.
Explore your school grounds or a nearby green space and encourage children to keep their eyes peeled for wildlife. You can repeat this activity in different seasons to discover a variety of plants and animals.
Use our wildlife spotter sheets to help pupils record what they find. Our extensive range includes common trees, birds, minibeasts and more. The tick sheets are printable, so it's easy to take them outdoors, and they feature high-quality colour images to aid identification.
Can your pupils find evidence of animal homes, such as twig nests, holes in tree trunks or burrow entrances? Investigate different habitats and discuss which animals might live there.
You can use our animal homes spotter sheet (PDF 1.43MB) to record your pupils' discoveries.
Invite pupils to take a closer look at tree leaves to explore their similarities and differences. Compare features such as size, shape and colour. What else do your students notice about them?
Use our leaf rubbing activity sheet (PDF 582 KB) to encourage hands-on interaction and our leaf ID sheet (PDF 1.52MB) to identify your leaves.
This activity is brilliant for helping pupils establish a personal connection with nature. You paint along the lines on the palm of your hand, then head outdoors to find a matching pattern in tree branches, fallen twigs or bark – this is your tree twin. (This activity is best done in an area with plenty of trees for youngsters to explore.)
Download our tree twins activity sheet (PDF 7.6MB) to hand out to children.
Once you've found your tree twin, give it a hug!
When you hug a tree your body makes happy hormones, just like when you hug a human. These hormones can boost your mood and ease anxious feelings. Trees also release phytoncides to protect themselves from pests and diseases. These chemicals help people by improving our immune systems and reducing stress.
Tree hugging is a fun way for your pupils to connect with nature while exploring their feelings. Encourage them to pay attention to the texture of the bark, the sound of rustling leaves and the solid ground under their feet. Does it help them feel calmer, happier, more relaxed? If they're comfortable, ask them to share how the experience makes them feel with the rest of the class.
Encourage children to use their imagination to find faces in nature. Can they spot eyes peering down from trees or animals formed by clouds? Seeing shapes or patterns in objects is a psychological phenomenon known as pareidolia.
Use our tree faces activity sheet (PDF 3.4MB) to support this activity.
Take PE outdoors with this fun forest-themed challenge. Youngsters can go for gold in a twig relay race, pine cone shot put or natural obstacle course. They can invent their own events, too. It's heaps of fun and your pupils will enjoy double the benefits as they get active while connecting with nature.
Download the woodland Olympics activity sheet (PDF 694KB) to get started.
Use these curriculum-linked activities to help students learn more about our relationship with nature and try hands-on conservation projects.
Take maths outdoors with this tree measurement task. Work with students to develop their understanding of trigonometry and help them use Pythagoras’ theorem to measure the height of real-life trees.
Download the tree trigonometry lesson plan (PDF 83KB).
Explore the local landscape with your pupils and help them identify trees before plotting them on an Ordnance Survey map.
Download the tree mapping lesson plan (PDF 80KB).
Boost wellbeing by doing something positive for wildlife. Help students investigate the sustainable timber industry and design a wooden nest box for a native bird.
Download the nest box lesson plan (PDF 73KB).
Explore woodland habitats and investigate food webs to help pupils understand how everything in nature is connected.
Download the food webs lesson plan (PDF 80KB).
Discover why trees are vital for all of us. Introduce students to the role of trees in the global carbon cycle and encourage them to produce a poster or presentation showing how trees help fight climate change.
Download the trees and the atmosphere lesson plan (PDF 72KB).
Increase nature connectedness beyond your school! Join forces with the wider community and develop a tree-planting plan to make a positive difference in your local area.
Download the community action lesson plan (PDF 78KB).
This challenge is worth two points on our award. To claim them, you need to tell us about two activities that have increased nature connectedness in your school. Don't forget to include activities suggested by your students – we might use their ideas for future resources!
To submit your evidence, log onto your Green Tree Schools Award dashboard and click the 'Submit evidence' button at the top right of the screen. Complete the form to show how you've completed this challenge and we’ll award your points within 10 working days.
Log onto your Green Tree Schools Award dashboard and tell us how you've completed this challenge.
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