activities

Phone App + Nature

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Hi, I’m Jen! I blog over at plainvanillamom.com. I am a mom of four,  ages 11, 9, 7 & 8 months. The 11 & 9 year old are actually my “bonus kids” but we all have the same amount of fun! You can read about all of our goings on over at plainvanillamom.com. I post a lot about what we are doing with the babes because, well lets face it, he’s my captive audience while everyone else in the family is off at school or work. My personal hobbies fall into two categories…baking & photography and you will find a bit of both on the blog as well. I’d love to have you stop by and say hi!

Have you ever heard of the app Leafsnap? I hadn’t. My seven year old actually introduced me to it. He learned about it through his Uncle. I must admit I sometimes cringe when my child picks up his iPod, but this is an app that I can actually get behind.  If you are unfamiliar with leafsnap here’s a little snippet from their website, if you want to learn more about it I recommend a visit there. 

Leafsnap is the first in a series of electronic field guides being developed by researchers from Columbia University, theUniversity of Maryland, and the Smithsonian Institution. This free mobile app uses visual recognition software to help identify tree species from photographs of their leaves.

There is so much I love about this app! Mr A has had so much fun with it already that I had to share.  If you have older kids like ours that like to explore and investigate I suspect this will be a hit.  It gets the kids outside connecting with nature, and learning about it all the while.

The idea is you take pictures of different leaves (against a white background please)

Then it scans the leafsnap database to find possible matches.

Scroll through the results and match your leaf specimens up. When you find what you believe to be the right match you can label your specimen and add it to your “collection”. 

For every specimen you can click to read more about the type of tree that it is.  You can see different pictures of what the leaves and flowers of the tree look like, learn about what areas of the country it is native to, what the bark of the tree looks like, and so forth. 

My little botanist is looking forward to growing his leaf collection throughout the summer!

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Allison Waken is a wife, mom of boys and Phoenix, AZ native. She has been creating inspiring content for All for the Boys since 2011. Allison loves travel, movies and spending as much time as possible with her family while she can!

6 Comments

  1. What a cool app to have! That is amazing that it can scan your leaf and then start a collection for you. What a great way to learn more about nature. 🙂

  2. Wow, that's an awesome app! I can see so many uses for it–my son's curiosity about the world, being the top use. I just wish they made it for Andriod. That's an app I would totally pay for, if needed (gasp)!

  3. Love this and went to download the app, but its only for parts of the USA which doesn't work for me in the UK. If you know of any other similar apps please let me know as I think this is an awesome way to get aside and have some nature fun! Thanks!

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