For Educators
Help students understand how life's systems and features can inspire the design of systems and products that solve human problems. Whether you use biomimicry examples regularly in your teaching, or you are new to the concept of biomimicry, AskNature has tools for both you and your students.
Why Teach Biomimicry?
Introducing biomimicry into the classroom bridges the boundaries between school and real world for students. Biomimicry is an inherently interdisciplinary way of encouraging students to be observant of the complexity of the natural world and our interconnectedness to it. Rather than just learn about living things, biomimicry requires us to learn from the natural world.
More and more educational standards (such as the Next Generation Science Standards in the U.S.) are including biomimicry as a way to focus instruction on STEM. As focus on incorporating Engineering Design in K-12 education grows, biomimicry concepts become more and more relevant – design thinking inspired by nature empowers students to solve problems.
For more about the how and why of teaching biomimicry, check out our publication, Sharing Biomimicry with Young People.
Teaching With AskNature
AskNature provides a few different types of resources that can be useful to educators. In this Educator Resources section you will find curated collections of student- and educator-facing resources for teaching biomimicry concepts in the classroom.
But AskNature provides much more than that. AskNature is a catalog of inspiring natural phenomena that are great examples of nature solving a problem. Designers and engineers use the Biological Strategy pages in this database for inspiration in solving problems–and students can too!
Examples of biomimicry innovations, or engineering design solutions inspired by nature, are also cataloged on the site as Innovation pages. Check out the Biomimicry Stories links below to see examples of how different biological strategies inspired real innovations!
Biomimicry Stories
Velcro is a classic example of a design solution inspired by a natural structure and function, and there are so many more. Visit these biomimicry stories to expand your repertoire of biological strategy and innovation examples to share with students. Each Story is paired with related teaching resources.
Hooked on You!
Explore resources for introducing biomimicry to young learners using Velcro, one of the most widely recognized examples.
Keeping It Clean
Explore resources for teaching about superhydrophobicity and nanotechnology using the story of how super water‑repellent lotus leaves inspired self‑cleaning surface coatings.
A Gentler Robot
Explore resources for teaching engineering concepts and practices using the story of a flexible robotic arm inspired by the muscles in elephants’ trunks.
True Blues
Explore resources for teaching about physical science and structural color using the story of how butterfly wings inspired paints without pigment.
Get Students Started Using AskNature
Try these activities to introduce your students to AskNature and how to use the website.
AskNature Scavenger Hunt
Get familiar with how to use the AskNature website by exploring what it has to offer.
The Language of Biomimicry
In this 45-minute lesson students review and then practice key vocabulary used by biomimicry designers and on the AskNature website.
Grades K—2
Browse featured content for students aged 5-7 years.
Introducing Biomimicry in K-2
This collection of activities provides hands-on methods for students in grades K-2 to explore the natural world, learn to make observations and think about natural and designed phenomena in new ways.
Ask the Planet Children’s Music and Teaching Guides
An award-winning album with accompanying teaching guides to help kids connect with nature and develop a sense of awe for the environment.
Velcro Race Game
This interactive game introduces students to the idea that the natural world can be a promising source of inspiration for technological innovation, using a biomimetic invention they are probably all familiar with.
Five Minute Field Trips
This downloadable booklet provides a greatest hits compendium of schoolyard activities used by experienced environmental and biomimicry educators to foster connection with the natural world.
The Private Eye
This unique interdisciplinary curriculum is built around looking closely at the natural world using a jeweler's loupe. It has been used with kids and adults alike to promote thinking by analogy, creativity, critical thinking, and scientific literacy.
When a Butterfly Sneezes
This guide for parents and teachers uses 12 favorite story books to help children see and understand the world of systems around us.
Grades 3—5
Browse featured content for students aged 8-10 years.
Introducing Biomimicry in Grades 3-5
This collection of activities for grades 3-5 provides ideas and strategies for tying biomimicry into science and engineering design standards.
Reinventing With Nature
In this short activity students reflect on familiar human designed objects in terms of their function and identify inspiration from nature that could improve them.
Who Is Your Champion?
This article and resources for teachers outlines a series of 4th grade lessons on structure and function in which students observe ants and develop design ideas inspired by nature.
Introduction to Scientific Sketching
This 60 minute lesson introduces students to techniques for closely observing nature and drawing like a scientist.
Fostering Outdoor Observation Skills
This free curriculum provides 24 lessons over six units, full of activities to help students focus and hone their observation skills using multiple senses.
Wild Buildings and Bridges: Architecture Inspired by Nature
This book for kids aged 8-12, celebrates examples of nature's influence on the design of buildings and bridges around world and includes a few simple activities that help illustrate some concepts.
Beastly Bionics
This engaging book written for readers aged 7-10 presents more than 40 examples of biomimicry in action, from products in use to those in research and development.
Engineering Education for the Next Generation: A Nature-Inspired Approach
This book introduces youth educators to biomimicry and guides them in how to engage students in the topic in ways that will transform their outlook on the world and their own creativity.
Biomimicry: Natural Designs
This 50-minute activity provides an introduction to biomimicry and quickly gets students brainstorming design ideas.
Grades 6—8
Browse featured content for students aged 11-13 years.
Introducing Biomimicry in Middle School
This collection of activities will help you begin to incorporate biomimicry through engineering design challenges in your middle school classroom.
Dye-Sensitized Solar Energy
Bring biomimicry into chemistry class with this nature-inspired lab activity in which students build a working solar cell inspired by leaves. Available in English and Spanish.
Engineering Inspirations From Nature
In this activity, students learn about a deep sea expedition to explore the Mariana Trench and engineer an underwater vehicle that can withstand both heat and cold.
We Are Not Alone
In this 10-20 minute interactive exercise the functions that a building must perform are compared to the functions that a tree must perform, helping students see that humans are not alone in our need to solve challenges.
Biomimicry: The “Natural” Intersection of Biology and Engineering
This article describes a 5-lesson biomimicry engineering project for middle school students. Provided with NGSS alignments (MS-ETS1-1 and MS-LS4-6).
Biomimicry: Nature as Model, Measure, and Mentor
In this three-part lesson students explore what nature can teach us about the principles of sustainable design and reflect on applications to a problem in their home, school, or community.
It’s in the Bag: Engineering BioInspired Gear
Created for after school and camp programs, this eight-hour unit takes students through an engineering design challenge to create bioinspired backpacks or bags.
Grades 9—12
Browse featured content for students aged 14-18 years.
Introducing Biomimicry in High School
This collection of activities provides a high school level introduction to the concept of biomimicry, along with instruction to support student use of the resources on the AskNature website to apply biomimicry to any design challenge.
Concrete Without Quarries
In this lab students explore how sea creatures creates calcium carbonate, a compound needed to manufacture cement, at ambient temperatures and using abundant, readily available raw materials.
Biomimicry Youth Design Challenge
A free, hands-on, project-based learning experience and competition in which students work in teams to explore the wonders of the natural world and apply what they learn to create innovations that support a healthier planet.
Biomimicry and Science: Applying Nature’s Strategies
This 22-lesson high school science curriculum uses biological phenomena and biomimicry to teach core concepts in biology, chemistry, and physics.
A Biomimicry Primer
In this approachable eight-page essay, Janine Benyus defines biomimicry and the discipline's place in design and culture.
Exploring the Way Life Works: The Science of Biology
This unique, richly illustrated textbook explores the deep patterns in how life operates.
Biomimicry: Copying Our Way to Conservation
This 9-minute video introduces the concept of biomimicry and asks us to consider the importance of conserving the natural world because of what we can learn from it.