K to Grade 2 Ages 5 to 8
Backyard Explorer K to 2
Free online outdoor science course · 12 weeks
Birds, bugs, plants, furry neighbors, animal homes, weather and seasons. Read aloud, tap to answer.
Free Self-paced online course
A Rocket & Raven series
Backyard Explorer
A free online outdoor science course: birds, bugs, plants, animal signs, seasons and a field guide for your own region.
Backyard Explorer is a free online course about the living things outside your door, in two versions: Kindergarten to Grade 2, and Grades 3 to 5. Kids learn to sit still and notice, tell birds, bugs, plants and furry neighbors apart, spot animal homes and signs without touching them, watch the weather and the seasons, and keep a nature notebook with counts and drawings. Older kids map a habitat, tell an observation from a guess, trace a food web and read sighting data by month. Each week has a field guide of the plants and animals people record most in your region of the United States, built from public GBIF sighting records, and a grown-up picks the region once. Short lessons run Monday to Friday, and Saturday is Explorer Day, a short outing with a grown-up.
What's in every course
- · Two versions: Kindergarten to Grade 2, and Grades 3 to 5
- · Twelve weeks, from first looks to a citizen science project
- · Short lessons Monday to Friday, about 15 minutes each
- · A field guide for your own region of the United States, from real sighting records
- · A nature notebook with counts, drawings and observations
- · A Saturday Explorer Day outing for the family, with a note for the grown-up
- · Daily sight words in the K to 2 version
- · Free, start to finish. No card.
Courses in this series
Pick the course for your child's grade. Every course is free.
Grades 3 to 5 Ages 8 to 11
Backyard Explorer Grades 3 to 5
Free online outdoor science course · 12 weeks
Field notebooks, habitat maps, food webs, life cycles, migration data and a citizen science finish.
Free Self-paced online course
Frequently asked questions
What does it cost? +
Nothing. Backyard Explorer is free from start to finish, with no card. A free parent account saves each kid's progress.
Do we need a yard? +
No. A park, a schoolyard, a balcony or a window works for every week. The field guide shows what lives near you either way.
How does the regional field guide work? +
A grown-up picks one of nine US regions once, in the kid's profile. Each week's field guide then lists the birds, insects, plants and other living things people record most in that region, with their common and scientific names. The lists come from public sighting records on GBIF.
Which version should we pick? +
Backyard Explorer K to 2 is read aloud and every answer is a tap, so pre-readers can follow. Backyard Explorer Grades 3 to 5 adds habitat maps, food webs, life cycles, sighting data by month and typed answers.
Is it safe? +
Kids look with their eyes and ask a grown-up before touching anything. Nothing found outside is picked up, eaten or brought indoors without a grown-up, and the course never asks kids to handle animals.