Students will use the Spring Index Maps and USA-NPN Visualization tool to explore the timing of spring between their location and other areas of the country. They will also explore the overlap of phenology between two species in a single year.
Students will work with a small dataset taken from the USA-National Phenology Network database. The data show the timing of observations by Maine volunteers of milkweed plants and monarch butterflies in 2011.
Conduct this activity before students are introduced to data collection using the Nature’s Notebook observation protocols. This activity will familiarize students with some of the main phenophases present on select species during certain times throughout the school year.
Traducido por Viviana Beltran
Students record observations and collect data about birds visiting feeder(s) outside their school. They compare their records with
historical records from local birding experts and online citizen science data sources to determine whether the timing of bird activity has shifted in their community.
The following activity can be used as an introduction to the concept of phenology. It demonstrates the life cycle of a corn plant, a
plant familiar to many, putting this plant into a new perspective. The Life of Corn highlights the importance of the developmental lifecycle, something which all organisms experience in a predictable manner.
This activity is designed to help participants experience the importance of plant phenology from a pollinator’s perspective. Participants learn why pollinators visit flowers and what color, shape, and size of flowers their pollinator prefers to visit.
The following activity can be used as an introduction to the concept of phenology. The items on the phenology board are phenomena that participants have observed in nature, perhaps without even knowing their relationship to ecology, science, and climate, or their status as phenological events.
This activity can be used independently or as an extension of the Plant and Animal Life Cycle Drawings activity. Using those same
procedures, students will draw life cycle timeline calendars for two species that are interdependent for food, pollination, reproduction, or habitat. Adapted from Signs of the Seasons: A New England Phenology Program.
Instead of the traditional circle-shaped life cycle drawings that you see in many books, this activity shows you a way to have your group/class use their species observations to draw a life cycle for one or more species. For this exercise, the drawing is stretched out in a line and matched to the dates on a calendar year. Adapted from Signs of the Seasons: A New England Phenology Program.
Students will gain awareness of local phenology and each other by playing a game connecting their birthdays with local phenology and seasonal phenomenon. Adapted from Birthday Phenology Game: A Getting-to-Know-You Game by Georgia Gómez-Ibáñez, Cambridge Elementary School, WI.