Spring Backyard BioBlitz Bingo Card
Enjoy the beautiful spring weather while searching for native plants and animals in your yard, local park, or along a waterway! Play on your own, or with your family and see if you can be the first to find all the items in a row, column, or corner to corner!
To play, print out this card and use a marker to mark your card as you find these items. If you want to conserve paper you can play from your digital device by simply click on an item as you find it.
Don’t have a backyard? No worries, there are many great Parks, Greenways, and green spaces to explore and play this game at! Here are some links to help you find a place near you to visit:
- To explore Indy Park use the “Find a Parks” webpage
- To explore a greenway or trail use the “Find a Trail” webpage
- Check out this map to Explore the City of Indianapolis’ Office of Land Stewardship natural management areas
- Check out Keep Indianapolis Beautiful AES Indiana Project GreenSpace site map
- Use ROW’s Exploration & Celebration Guide to find places along our waterways to visit.
Keep an eye out for future seasonal Bingo Cards and other ways to learn about local plant and wildlife along out waterways!
Coloring Pages
Local artist Tyeesha Bradley has created six beautiful coloring pages that teach young ones the value of water and our waterways. ROW’s Canal Committee was inspired to develop these to distribute along with food boxes from Groundwork Indy during the COVID19 pandemic.
Click the images to open in a new window and right-click to save the image. You can upload these to an application like Sketchpad and color right on your device if you aren’t able to print!
Nature Monsters
This activity provided by educators at the Indianapolis Zoo uses the natural creativity you observe outdoors to imagine new creatures.
- Take a walk outdoors and find 3 or 4 items out on the ground. All the items have to be items that can be glued (or taped) to a page.
- Bring them back inside and grab your blank sheet of paper
- Lay out your items carefully on the sheet of paper and start to think about what type of monster you might be able to create with the items you chose.
- Start by laying one item on the page and gluing or taping it to the page. Start to draw your “monster” around it.
- Add onto your “monster” with crayons or colored pencils for color and figure out what the other items from your nature walk will become on your “monster”.
- Color in the background and create a scenery for your “monster”.
- If you have them, you can add any other items you would like: googly eyes, teeth, etc.
- Allow the glue on your creation to dry somewhere safe.
- Once it is dry, check to see if all your natural items are still glued securely. If not, add more glue and let it dry again.
- Once all the items are glued securely and it is dry, hang your nature “monster” somewhere you can see it!
Here are some examples!
Illustrated Nature Guide and Journal
Don’t forget the ever-popular ROW Illustrated Nature Guide and Journal, created by ROW’s Ecology Committee partnering with Indianapolis based artist Megan Hart. The guide explores the ROW waterways and their surrounding communities through various means of engagement and activities.
Check back as we add more activities from ROW committees and partners!