Has Your Family Been Outside Today?
If you subscribe to My Web of Life via email, make sure that you come visit the site to be able to enjoy the video.
I don’t think I need to say anything more. Enjoy your weekend!!!!!
Filed under Easy Being Green, Nature | Comments (4)Nature Walks for Kids 101
- Photo by J Boles
I thought I would share a comment that I received from Craig at The Green Tenant. He asks some great questions and I have a large enough answer to warrant its own posting:
I just got into teaching and leading walking tours this year. We did a successful one on the Don River last weekend. Not exactly a beautiful stretch of it, but the focus was on brownfield redevelopment, so a bit of ugly is to be expected.
Perhaps more relevant, I also put together some suggestions for people who want to start leading their own walking tours.
Why am I telling you all this? Because I haven’t done one for kids yet. We’ll probably do one on a more scenic section later this summer, and it might be nice to make it more family friendly. Any tips for making it fun for kids? I’ve got some ideas, but would welcome yours.
That job sounds absolutely wonderful!
I think Craig is already on the ‘right path’ by choosing a more scenic stretch for the walk with the kids. Our jobs as parents or educators is to motivate children to have a relationship with the natural world. Think of your walk as an introduction to a new friendship that the children will hopefully follow through with. The goal is to make them fall in love. Make this introduction as beautiful as possible.
I have been so surprised at how many kids I have led through the woods who have said they have never been in a forest before. And these are rural children who live in towns of less than 5,000 people! Now there may be some selective memory or exaggeration occuring, but there are kids as old as Grade 6 who feel complete indifference or even disdain for the natural world. The good news is that usually by the end of a walk they have a new sense of wonder and an eagerness to discover more (even the ones who start out rolling their eyes).
Here are some tips to make your next walking tour successful with kids:
1. Do your homework. Walk the path ahead of time and make note of places to stop and talk about something of interest; whether it is a specific animal or habitat. These stops should be short and sweet (5-10 minutes).
2. Have some visual aids to help with your talk. Pull out a picture of a beaver if you have a beaver dam or lodge at your stop. Younger kids can talk about beaver teeth and wood chewing. Older kids can discuss what makes a mammal different from a fish or bird. They can discuss adapations that help animals survive.
3. Stops don’t have to be as exciting as beaver lodges. Pausing at a point in the woods where a variety of birds can be heard is the perfect place to talk about where different birds live and what they eat. Some of the favourites are herons, woodpeckers, kingfishers or canada geese).
4. Keep the species local. Kids are bombarded at school with information about polar bears, whales or elephants. They think their local animals are boring in comparison. Help show them what is exciting in their own backyards.
5. Make the walk interactive. Almost to a kid, the favourite part of a 2-hour hike for second-graders is the time we spend with small yogourt cups and magnifying glasses. Pick a stopping point that is shady and has fallen logs. Give the kids 10-15 minutes to see what they can find. Have a insect book handy for identifying but only if that is of interest. Kids care about the bugs themselves, and not as much about the label. Spend a couple of minutes talking about where they found their critters (under fallen logs or beneath rotting bark). Talk about why you wouldn’t pull bark from a living tree (it protects the tree like skin and protects the tree from bugs and disease).
6. A similar activity can be done with dip nets and shallow water. Make sure you have a couple of containers along that can be filled with water and viewing as a viewing spot. Crayfish, dragonfly naiads, leeches and frogs are often caught. Kids (and parents) that start out squeamish are usually enthralled by the end of this 20 - 30 minute activity. A good insect book from the library will help you identify the benthic species that are being caught.
7. Remind everyone (including parents!) that they are visiting animals’ homes when they are in the woods. The best analogy I have come up with is to ask kids how irritated they get when their rooms and toys get ‘messed with’ by siblings or friends. Why do they get mad?? Because it is disrespectful to have their personal space invaded. Remind them that when they are out in nature, animals and their habitats deserve the same respect.
8. Throw in a fun game for good measure. Nothing fancy. Just give them some running space and let them play a game of tag as ‘frogs’ and ‘great-blue herons’. Or give them a small patch of woods and allow them to camoflauge themselves like a small animal. The person who is ‘it’ stays in the same spot and the player who is the closest to them without being seen wins. Afterwards, talk about camoflauge strategies that animals use.
Like I said, keep your stops short and sweet and don’t hesistate to move along if you find attention flagging. The goal isn’t to bombard them with facts. Focus on the cool ‘nature nuggets’ and keep it light and fun. Even the youngest can handle a 2-hour walk if you break it up. Parents enjoy the enthusiam that their kids will show and will probably learn something new themselves. I guarantee the children will be asking their parents to bring them back the following weekend. They may even ask for their own dip net for their next birthday!
Filed under Life in General, Nature | Comments (4)Trail Guide
- Photo by J. Schaus
Holy cow! My last post was in May! Time has just been tripping along and I realize that I have been neglectful, especially in light of all of your thoughtful comments and support.
My new job at the Ausable Bayfield Conservation Authority is going splendidly! I am assisting with their education programs and spent most of May shadowing the other two fantastic educators as they led class field trips and adult nature walks. The info I have learned this past month has helped me broaden my schooling in wildlife biology. I’m now beginning to be able to identify a variety of fossils, plants and bugs. Most importantly, I’m learning how to communicate a sense of excitement about the natural world around us to the young and the old.
I now feel confident enough to lead my own classes, which is really exciting. I had the pleasure of leading my daughter’s second-grade class last week. Equipped with rubber boots, dip nets and plastic containers, we explored the world along the shores and beneath the water of our local Ausable River. I was impressed that 7-year-olds could readily dredge up words like ‘metamorphosis’ and ‘nocturnal’ when discussing frogs or raccoons. Some even knew the name of the jack-in-the-pulpit growing along the side of the trail and seemed interested to learn whether it was a male or female. I loved that they soon became just as excited about the dragonfly larva that they caught as they were about the larger crayfish in their nets.
I’m not sure how much information they retained in the end. But I’m also learning that it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I can help make them aware of the nature that exists just beyond their own backyards (sometimes even within their backyards). I want to stir up their excitement and awe of the natural world. Reading ‘Last Child in the Woods” by Richard Louv has helped me understand the importance of that. The attitude and exposure is so much more important than the naming and memorizing which can always come later. People need to care about something if they are ever going to care for it.
So forgive me if some of my energy has transferred from here to there. My new job and schedule are still relatively new and I’m feeling a touch scattered (putting it really mildly). Although I’m currently a bit consumed with this new venture in my life, the thing is I feel just as passionate about this blog. I feel that this little world that I have created is a fantastic medium in which I can be another type of educator; this time about environmental topics relating to our homes and families. I don’t claim to be an expert. Neither am I an expert at the conservation authority. I can’t pretend to know something that I do not. I often have to look up information or just let someone know that I simply don’t know. I guess I would rather think of myself as a guide. I do the best I can and can hopefully get some people heading in the right direction.
I’ll try to make sure that I’m around a bit more often to make sure that you can follow the trail. I’d hate for anybody (least of all myself) to get lost.
Filed under Life in General, Nature | Comments (3)
The APLS Carnival of Nature
Go check out the Carnival of Nature hosted over at The Green Phone Booth this month. There are some fantastic posts to be found there from a great range of bloggers. I was blessed to be one of them. So grab yourself a coffee and go do some reading!!
Nurturing a Love of Nature
I am just about to dive into the book “The Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder’ by Richard Louv. I have been anticipating this for months now. I finally have a break in my pile of ‘To Reads’ and this one is next in the queue. A friend and neighbor first brought this book to my attention last spring and I have been seeing reviews and posts raving about it. SimpleKids seems to be using the basic premise of the book as the foundation of many of her blog posts.
What is this book about? It addresses the fact that we are guilty of raising a generation of children who have a complete disconnect from the natural world. They know more about how to program a TiVo or play a game on Wii than they do about recognizing the call of a larkspur or identify a species of wildflower. Although kids are very aware of environmental issues such as global warming, the environment is actually a very abstract place to them. It is something to study from afar, not to experience or explore personally.
Why do we keep our children inside? I often hear people say that it is no longer safe to allow children to play alone outside the way that we used to do. But is this really true? I am listening to a series of CDs from Kim John Payne, a Waldorf instructor and psychologist who extols the virtues of a creating a simpler family life to aid with disorders such as ADD. In his talk, he mentions a study that compared crimes of violence against children 30 years ago compared to the present day. Surprisingly, the rates of child abduction and violence are statistically the same between these two eras. However, media coverage of these incidents increased dramatically. Another example is when 2002 had what was considered to be an epidemic of child abductions when the statistics revealed that there was no increase compared to previous years.
So basically, our children do not live in a more dangerous world today. We just perceive that they do.
The reality is that we live in an age of fear that is largely media driven. And because of this, we need to constantly remind ourselves that we are doing our children a disservice by ‘protecting them’ from the dangers outside of our homes. Because when we do this, our houses are actually becoming their prisons. We have to be willing to let our children roam. Within reason, of course. There should be some supervision, especially for the very young- but they can be given a long leash. Make an effort to dedicate time to get the family out. This doesn’t need to be a marathon of hiking while dragging whiny, overtired children along behind you. It can be as simple as setting up base camp on a picnic blanket and allowing your children to satellite out and explore around you. Kids should be allowed to create their own agenda during this time. They can explore what worlds exist beneath the underbrush or within hollow logs. Or they can excitedly invite you to join them watch a squadron of ants attempt to jam a giant crumb into a tiny anthill. Then again, you may just wind up drowsily lying on the blanket and seeing what pictures the clouds make.
Remember that experiencing nature isn’t just reserved for balmy summer days. Walk the woods in winter and stop often so that they can see that there is life inside those tightly budded trees. Let them go out in the rain and dig in the mud with the worms. Let them stay up later on summer nights so that you can lie out in the yard to stare at the stars.
But be careful. Don’t turn every adventure into a ‘learning experience’. How dull is that? Kids go on plenty of field trips where a teacher relentlessly explains the circle of life that surrounds them. That is the teacher’s job, and it is good that your child is exposed to that. But your job is to allow your child go out, muck around, get filthy dirty, and learn to love their Earth. Not because it is something to be learned about as a science experiment. But because the natural world is fun, heartbreaking, exciting, nurturing, and life itself.
Our children and grandchildren are inheriting an Earth that they will need to fix. They are not going to want to do this simply because we tell them they should. They are going to do this only if they truly love and respect the planet that they are on. Although the Planet Earth DVDs are beautiful and awe-inspiring to watch, they are still only a screen that our children can stare at. Even though the images are beautiful and exotic, they are a far cry from the tactile experience of running your fingers through wheatgrass under a brilliantly blue sky. Or the tickle of an ant that made a slight detour over your leg as you nap in the warm sun. These moments aren’t really exotic or exciting. But unlike what we experience on our screens, they are real.
How do you share nature with your children?
This is my submission for the February APLS Carnival on “Nature and the Environment”. The carnival will be posted February 20th at The Green Phone Booth.
Filed under Blog Carnivals, Nature | Comments (14)
