September unveils a spectacular treasure trove of learning opportunities. The woodlands and parks transform into nature’s classroom, bursting with vibrant, changing leaves, glossy conkers, and scattered acorns—each one a gateway to wonder and discovery.
Embracing Nature’s Classroom
This September, step outside with fresh eyes. Every fallen leaf, every acorn, every unusual mushroom is an invitation to explore, question, and discover. Nature’s infinite treasure hunt awaits—what wonders will your curious minds uncover?
Nature’s Flying Engineers: Autumn Seeds and Biomimicry
September’s seed dispersal season offers incredible opportunities to explore biomimicry in action! As you collect conkers, acorns, and sycamore “helicopters,” you’re gathering some of nature’s most ingenious engineering designs.
Fascinating Autumn Seed Facts
- Helicopter seeds like ash inspired attempts to build single-bladed helicopters, with some model helicopters now flying on a single blade, though the connection isn’t as direct as often claimed.
- Maple seeds autorotate with a coning angle of about 22° and a pitch angle of just 1.5°, using complex aerodynamics that researchers are still studying.
- Dandelion seeds (still floating in early autumn) inspired new drone designs, their feathery parachutes create a stable vortex ring that keeps them airborne 100 times longer than expected.
- Burdock burrs, clinging to clothes after woodland walks, directly inspired the Velcro invention in 1941.
Biomimicry Activity: Design Your Own Seed Helicopter. Challenge your young engineers to create their own seed dispersal mechanisms using paper, tape, and paper clips. Can they improve on nature’s sycamore helicopter design? Test different wing shapes, weights, and dropping heights. Which designs stay airborne longest? This hands-on activity connects autumn collecting with engineering principles, showing how nature continues to inspire human innovation.
Observe how each seed type has evolved its own specialised dispersal strategy: some fly (sycamore), some roll (acorns), some stick (burdock), and some float (dandelion). Each design tells a story of millions of years of evolutionary engineering perfection.
Ready to dive deeper into nature’s adaptations? Explore our comprehensive digital resources:
- Woodland Animal Adaptations – bringing September’s woodland discoveries into interactive classroom investigations
- Camouflage and Mimicry – uncovering the secret survival strategies all around us
- Wildfires – How does a plant “choose” to be burned? Wildfires Around the World takes students on a journey across five continents, from Australian bushfires to Siberian boreal fires, to uncover how plants and animals have turned one of nature’s fiercest forces into a survival strategy.
You’ll find the resources here or here.
Transform your September nature walks into year-round learning adventures that inspire the next generation of biomimicry innovators!
Happy Exploring and Discovering!
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is biomimicry?
Biomimicry is the practice of looking to nature for solutions, then applying what we learn to design and problem-solving. Instead of inventing from scratch, it means studying how plants, animals, and ecosystems have already solved a challenge — like staying cool, collecting water, or absorbing carbon — and adapting that strategy for human use.
How does biomimicry help address climate change?
Nature has been adapting to extreme conditions for billions of years, so many organisms already hold working solutions to problems we now face at a larger scale — cooling buildings without electricity (termite mounds), collecting water in drought (the Namib beetle), protecting coastlines from storms (mangrove roots), and capturing carbon (corals, forests, kelp). Biomimicry means studying those solutions and applying the same principles to human design.
How can children get involved in biomimicry?
Children don’t need special training to think like a biomimicrist — just curiosity and a habit of asking “how does nature solve this?” Simple ways to start include a backyard scavenger hunt for nature’s patterns, a “design-an-animal” challenge for a changing climate, or building a small model (like a passive-cooling structure or a water collector) inspired by something they’ve observed outdoors.
Is biomimicry only for scientists and engineers?
No — biomimicry is as much a mindset as a profession. Anyone can practice it by observing nature closely and asking design questions. Professional biomimicry practitioners apply it in architecture, materials science, and engineering, but the same core skill — careful observation followed by “what if we built it that way?” — is exactly what this post’s classroom and family activities are designed to build in children.
Åsa Jomård
In 2015, Åsa completed a course in Biomimicry: A Sustainable Design Methodology at Minneapolis College of Art and Design. With over 10 years of experience exploring nature for inspiration and as a former member of Ben, Biomimicry Education Network, she brings both academic background and creative teaching experience to her work. Her materials seamlessly integrate stories, nature observations, and design challenges, making them perfect for inquiry-led learning in early primary contexts.
AI was used as a Thinking Partner.