DNS Nature Revealed Virtual Portion

Nature Revealed is the pre-kindergarten instructional unit in the Discover Nature Schools series from the Missouri Department of Conservation.

This is a virtual professional development workshop. It consists of a 90 minute presentation to introduce important facets of the unit: Organization of the teacher guide including cross-referenced appendices, best practices in leading nature experiences in early childhood, connections to learning goals, seasonal arrangement of experiences, construction and use of developmentally appropriate science notebooks, and prep and use of manipulatives including puzzles and story board characters.

This workshop serves as a prerequisite to a second “Field Portion” workshop following the DNS “Hybrid” teacher training format. This section of the training is to be conducted in-person, outdoors, at the school(s) on a date and time arranged with the local Conservation Educator. This field portion of the workshop includes an assessment of outdoor spaces for learning experiences, how to lead outdoor experiences with confidence, discussion of specific methods to use Nature Revealed to meet the goals and objectives of the participants' early childhood centers, and presentation of the 375-page, full-color Nature Revealed instructional materials.