Children love learning about the environment and the world around them. Here are a couple of fun ways to indulge your granddaughter’s thirst for knowledge.

Organize a scientific expedition to your back yard, or a nearby park. Even though your granddaughter may have been there before, there’s a good chance she hasn’t paid careful attention to what’s around her. You could look for animals and insects, identify them and record your findings with drawings or photos. You could also collect and identify rocks (geology.com can be a helpful resource), or do something similar with plants and preserve your specimens with a flower press.

Make a familiar outdoor area feel new by using different senses to explore it. Cover your granddaughter’s eyes (and your own if you’re game) and listen instead of looking. What do you hear? Identify as many sounds as possible. You can also cover your granddaughter’s eyes and ears and guide her as she explores the environment using her sense of touch. Try bringing her a few different things and see if she can identify them. Start with something easy (ex: a stick and a rock) and make it progressively harder (ex: two different types of leaves or flowers). Help your little scientist along by prompting her to describe her observations to you or record fieldnotes in a journal.