Are you an educator seeking to work with younger audiences who may not be able to use our standard suite of phenophases and their full definitions? Maybe you'd like to develop interpretive signs at your park and just want to describe briefly the phases which can be observed if participating in Nature's Notebook. 

These simple phenophase defintions and datasheets can be used for educational activities to help beginner participants understand the phenophases for each species in Nature's Notebook.  

These are NOT meant to be substituted for our standard phenophase definition sheets and field datasheets for the collection of observations. The full phenophase definitions were designed to standardize the way data are collected by observers participating in our nation-wide program. Changing the wording and content leaves too much room for different interpretations of what is meant to be observed when participating in Nature's Notebook, thus compromising the consistency and quality of the data in our database. Researchers who use the data want to be confident that information collected in Maine or Florida or Oregon is as similar as possible, and the only way to make that happen is to ensure everyone is starting from the same place in terms of the phenophase definitions. For more information about how and why the standardized phenophases in Nature's Notebook were developed, please read our reports in the USA-NPN Technical Series entitled, "USA-NPN Phenology Protocols" and the "Plant and Animal Phenophase Definitions."

Thus, if you are using paper datasheets in the field and fully participating in Nature's Notebook, please refer to the datasheets and phenophase definition sheets linked from the profile page of each species in our searchable Plants and Animals Species List.