Feelings & Nature - Connecting to Emotions through Poetry

In this quiet activity, children connect to their feelings by assigning human emotions to the different things they see around them. Children learn to describe emotions in this brief, poetic exercise.

Preparation: You will need a stack of 3” x 5” index cards. On the cards, draw simple faces exhibiting different emotions. Go online and look for emoticons if you want some ideas. Draw the face and write the emotion underneath. You’ll want to start with a deck of at least twenty emotion cards. If you are doing this activity with a large group, plan on at least two cards for each child. During the play of the game, different children can use the same card.

Hand each child one of the cards. If the child can’t read the word, ask them what emotion they think the face is showing. Explain that their goal is to look around and find something that represents the emotion on their card. If children are confused, ask them to imagine life as a rock. Would the rock feel happy, sad, or bored?

If you have a group, you can warm up to this activity by asking them to imagine if different objects had emotions what feelings they would have? In poetry, the pathetic fallacy is the practice of attaching human emotions to nature, animals, and inanimate objects. You may decide to give this brief literary lesson to preteens or teens. With younger children, this activity can lead to a discussion of how things that aren’t alive don’t have feelings.

With a small group, when a child finds an object that represents the emotion on his card, the child can call the group to stop, point out the object and then allow the others 10-to-20 seconds to guess the emotion.

Option: With a large group, you could create a list poem, in which children connect the emotion to an object they saw on the walk. This poem also uses similes, or comparisons.

For example,
As stubborn as a rock
As bored as a fence
As flexible as a twig
As calm as a leaf

Experience the Outdoors, Don’t Just Read about It - Part Two

I’m not opposed to learning about nature from books. When I taught my first class about reptiles I went to the library and acquired a dozen books and then I went to the bookstore and bought a few more. There is a lot of general information about groups of animals that you can learn in books. I am particularly fond of learning about a topic by gathering information from children’s books – I mean here is the basic stuff you want to learn about a topic in a palatable format. Once I have an understanding of the topic, then I branch out to the adult books.

But, as I was talking about in yesterday’s blog, if you get too stuck in learning everything from books you kind of miss the point of learning about the topic. Studying, or reading, about nature in books can give you a basis of understanding what you are looking at. If you are in New England, you know the information that you read about rainforests or the Arctic doesn’t apply to the ecosystem you are in – no matter how rainy or snowy it is in the Northeast.

For kids (and adults) who memorize facts in books but never lift their head to look out a window or never take an exploratory walk in nature, they miss a big connection. You can read about a gray squirrel’s or blue jay’s behavior, but unless you experience it, the facts are flat. When you look at the way insects chew up the leaves of certain plants, the fact has more import when you look and feel those leaves.

I can read about carpenter ant nesting behaviors, but the day a tree snapped and I could watch the ants hurrying to bring the eggs and larvae to a new safe place made the facts real.

Watching a frog at a pond for 15 or 20 minutes is a different experience than diving in and grabbing it and shoving it in a critter keeper for a quarter-hour observation. I once had a group of art students draw a picture of a frog that we found in a swamp. The frog remained in the water with just its head poking out. The kids were amazed that it didn’t move. I could then bring out the book-facts – frogs don’t hop around looking for food because it would be a waste of energy.

Facts from books are important, just don’t forget to go outside and see those facts in action.

Experience the Outdoors, Don’t Just Read about It - Part One

School starts and kids get new textbooks. They sit in the classroom on the first day and look at the neat piles of books, gathering clues as to what they will be learning about during the school year. Chances are they will make regular trips to the school library, each week to get a new book. The ‘readers’ probably didn’t get to read as many books as they would have liked over the summer (“We just went to the library a few days ago; you’ll just have to wait until I have time to take you back,” says mom/dad/babysitter.) These kids will be ecstatic to roam the shelves at school. For the kids who dread reading and do so because it is an assigned chore, the weekly library visits hold less appeal.

Some of these kids, both the kids with lots of enthusiasm as well as those who are less so, pick up books about nature. Sometimes it’s a kid who loves to read everything, but more likely it is a kid who reads into a single subject and becomes an ‘expert.’ Who wouldn’t love reading about nature? The books have lots of pictures and you learn facts that are guaranteed to gross out a few adults at the dinner table.

My problem with these books is that kids tend not to pay attention to some important facts, such as where an animal is from. I’ve had third graders on field trips ask if the sanctuary they are visiting – in New England – has black mamba snakes, jaguars, primates, and a whole host of other animals. At first, I thought kids were joking, I mean, when was the last time they saw a spider monkey hanging from the backyard bird feeder?

But, no, because they had read about these animals and how they lived in wild places and our 2000-acre suburban sanctuary seems wild to the kids, so, well, we must have Wild Animals. I remember one ten year old boy that adored snakes and was a fount of information about snakes. He would recite facts about snakes (to the point that he annoyed and bored his classmates) in a superior fashion – that I didn’t know about all of these snakes he saw as a down falling in both my intelligence and training.

However, he would run off into the shrub and come back saying that he just saw snake X – a snake that could not live in New England. At one point I saw the common garter snake he was chasing after, but he identified it as something more exotic. His classmates looked at me with some anxiety as I explained the identity of the snake; all while their fellow student argued.

I named the snakes that lived in Massachusetts and told this boy that those were the animals that he could choose from when trying to determine which animal he saw. Oh, but he had read about these other snakes and he knew I must be wrong …. (continued)

Fall into Beginning

Fall is a time to wrap things up. Woodchucks snatch the last mouthfuls of green grass before heading into hibernation. Squirrels and chipmunks continue their wild run to store food for colder weather. Gardeners and farmers start thinking of final harvests.

Yet while some things are winding down, autumn is also a season for starting things. Kids start a new grade. No matter what month their birthdays, fall is like another birthday; instead of announcing a new age, they get to announce their new grade. September or October is also Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Unlike the secular New Year, there are no drinking binges and party hats. However, there is some introspection – what mistakes have been made in the past year and what changes will be incorporated into the New Year?

Even if you aren’t Jewish, you can use the changes of the season, not to mention the start of the school year, as an opportunity to plan some ‘fall cleaning.’ You can connect this contemplation to the environment – Is the lunchbox filled with plastic bags that get tossed each night? How could you change that? Maybe you don’t spend much time outside; consider how you and your children can get outdoors more often.

This doesn’t have to be a parent-directed edict, one more thing that you tell your children they can change. Instead talk together about what you observe in nature and consider how you can incorporate change into your lives. Unlike the January 1st resolution, try to make a promise to include something in your life instead of merely trying to eliminate things and make this a more positive experience.

Do You Close Your Eyes in Nature?

It is all too easy while walking to get caught up in one’s thoughts or in a conversation with whomever you are walking with. If you’ve ever had that heart-leaping feeling when you suddenly become aware of your surroundings but can’t remember how you got there then you know what I mean. This isn’t something that only adults do.

I remember one time at work allowing a group of homeschoolers to lead a walk. I didn’t tell them that they were leading the walk. I didn’t really plan this; we were walking and exploring, so it didn’t really matter where we went. They stopped at the edge of the nature center’s front yard and looked both ways before crossing the street. Some of the kids who were walking next to me asked, “Is that the direction we’re going?” I said, “It is now.”

I was the sole adult with ten or so kids, many who’d taken my science and nature classes for a year or two. We ended up dividing into two groups. The group to the front was deep in a conversation. Although they acknowledged diverging paths by stopping, someone in that group would inevitably select the route to take, glance back to see that I and the rest of the group was following and continue ahead.

Of course, the kids walking with me thought that this was hilarious. Although the kids in the lead were familiar with the trails, it was winter and the few inches of snow on the ground had obliterated this less traveled path. At one point, I commented to the group close to me that we were no longer on the trail. They were, of course, a bit concerned that we were lost; but, I knew that we were between two parallel trails and would come upon one of them soon.

The group near me started wondering when the chatting students in the forward group would notice that we were no longer on a trail. The fact that they had been walking for 30 minutes without a destination hadn’t bothered them, but wouldn’t the lack of a trail.

Twenty minutes later, the lead group stopped. We were just 20 or 25 feet behind them so we caught up in a few steps. One student proclaimed, “I think we’re lost. Where are we going by the way?” The kids walking with me broke up laughing. Within five minutes we found the trail. The walk was a bit longer than ‘planned’ but it taught an interesting lesson.

Know where you are going. Whether you are walking in a city or a suburban neighborhood, you’ll get directions so you can go from one place to the next. The number of people who head out without a map into a forest is astounding. When they call on their cell phone they are usually left fumbling as they try to describe their location and get directions back to the parking lot.

So, a couple of things when you set out on a walk, one, know where you are going – will you encounter steep hills, uneven footing, seasonal flooding? Two, pay attention to your surroundings. Don’t get so caught up in thoughts or conversations that you miss trail or street signs.

Glance around and see where you are. Get kids in the habit of stopping and playing observation games. They aren’t just to slow the pace but to train kids (and adults) to notice where they are. At one level, your walks will be safer. On another level, they will be more enjoyable as you notice where you are.

Restoring One’s Spirit in Nature

Okay, I’m a big proponent for getting kids outside. I don’t have children but I’ve worked in environmental education for 14 years. This summer has been about my father being diagnosed with dementia with Lewy bodies, dealing with hospital – nursing home – assisted living, cleaning out his house, testing/pre op/surgery/post op for his cataract surgery, and more paperwork than I could ever imagine. Every phone call that should complete a task only adds another task (or two or three).

The summer months I longed to arrive for early morning or early evening walks have fallen to the wayside in ‘favor’ of doctors’ appointments and picking through the remnants of my parents’, two hoarders, lives. My meager teaching schedule has involved indoor presentations to toddlers and preschoolers in day care centers. And, although I say that parents should make time for their kids to spend at least 10-15 minutes outdoors, no matter how busy the schedule, I am sad to say that I couldn’t take that advice for myself.

Two days this week I’ve tried to get myself back into the habit of walking at the cemetery, ‘memorial park’ that I favor. I check out the trees and branches downed by Hurricane Irene while my mind runs through to do lists and ‘I don’t wanna’ lists. I smell the fresh cut red oak and listen to the crows complain about my presence as they fly from tree-to-tree following me.

Nature reminds me that everything changes – sometimes in small steps, as with daily adjustments from one season to the next; and other times in great leaps, as with the hurricane. Everything transforms. My father is not the same person he was at the start of the summer and neither am I. My walks in nature have reminded me of this.

15 Minutes Outside

Whether you are at home or on vacation today, go for a walk with your child. It doesn’t have to be a lengthy walk – 15 minutes will do; and you don’t have to go anywhere ‘special’ for this walk. One of the goals of the walk is to remind yourself and your children that nature isn’t ‘out there’ – some place that takes effort to get to, a place that by some definition is ‘nature.’

Today, walk around the neighborhood and name ten wild things that you and your children can see, hear, feel, or smell. Yep, even if you are taking a 15 minute walk, notice ten things in nature – a crow flies overhead, the rough bark of the tree along the side of the road, crickets chirping, the smell of fresh cut grass, etc.

The time limit, layered onto the simple observation activity, forces you and your children to pay attention to your surroundings. Even if you were going for an hour-long walk, you wouldn’t be able to keep up the intensity of observation. Instead, you’d drift into conversations about schedules and other activities that you’ve done or will do.

After fifteen minutes, you’ll return home full of your experience in nature. Although there may be more trees in the forest, your children will have felt the bark, noticed the shape of the leaves, and seen the birds perching on the branches of the trees you walked past. Nature is everywhere.

Enjoy Summer While It's Still Here

The commercials for back-to-school clothing and supplies have already been playing on television for a couple of weeks. It seems too soon, but schedules will only get busier with school and extracurricular activities on the horizon. Create some memorable outdoor experiences with your kids.

• Have the kids eat breakfast outside. Outside can be the front stoop, a porch, a patch of grass beneath a tree. Breakfast can be simple – muffins and juice, Canadian bacon between a couple of waffles. Bring a thermos of coffee for yourself.
• Take a walk around the neighborhood … when it is raining.
• Collect leaves or flowers and press them between the pages of a dictionary.
• Go to a farmer’s market. Give each child one dollar to make a purchase of something for dinner.
• Count the number of birds that visits your feeder over five or ten minutes.
• Have a picnic lunch or supper in the backyard, at the park, at the beach, at the local forest.
• Read a bedtime story outside by flashlight as the day’s light fades.
• Lie on blankets and watch the stars come out.

Outdoor time doesn’t have to involve elaborate experiences but simple moments when everyone is present in the activity.

Nature Play Along the Way for All Ages

In 1997 I entered the field of environmental education as a field trip leader for a 2000-acre suburban wildlife sanctuary. As I sat through the training, I realized that third graders knew more about the natural world than I did. As a kid I rode my bike up and down the street for endless hours. As a preteen, I walked with a friend around the field that was her backyard. Aside from worrying that snakes were going to bite me, I didn’t give much thought about nature.

As an adult though, a new world opened up as I joined nature walks and learned the names of small green plants and shrubs and trees. I learned about the secret worlds of amphibians and arthropods, birds and mammals. The more I read and the more I learned in informal classes and workshops, the more things made sense. Instead of facts, nature was a story. People and plants and animals and even rocks were interconnected.

Teaching classes helped me to process what I learned. However, working with kids isn’t just about conveying facts. It is about getting them to interact with nature. So, as I became involved in the day camp at the wildlife sanctuary I started reading books describing activities adults could guide kids through outdoors.

I collected hundreds of activities and variations on those activities. I kept meaning to turn them into a book, but the format was never clear – should I gear the book for kids, for parents, for teachers … who? Every time I sat down, I tweaked the format and my notes became more and more disorganized. During that time, my mother required more help and then spent years going in and out of hospitals and nursing homes until she died; my work schedule changed and then changed again (and then changed again); I moved three times in three years after previously living at one address for years and years; I met a man, fell in love, and married him; I changed my career from teacher to writer; I helped my father get by living on his own until he had to move into assisted living, which hasn’t yet made things easier because now I’m cleaning the house – and my parents never got rid of anything (even empty boxes).

Before the end of September, my Nature Play Along the Way series will be e-published and available through BarnesandNoble.com. The series will consist of
Games on the Go – Walking Games for Parents and Kids
Nature Play Along the Way for PreK – K
Nature Play Along the Way for Grades 1 & 2
Nature Play Along the Way for Grades 3 & 5
Nature Play Along the Way for Teachers (Activities that require eight or more kids)

Each book guides adults, be they parents, grandparents, teachers, scout leaders, youth group leaders, camp counselors, or afterschool teachers through nature activities that they can do with children, even if the adults don’t have a background in environmental education, science, nature, etc.

Why mention the books now? Well, as I mentioned, I’ve been working on the books on and off for years and I need an incentive to finish them. Telling ‘the world’ is (with hope) that push I need to write, revise, and edit this series. So, get set to explore ….

Photography for Kids – Angles

Changing the angle at which you take a photograph is one of the most fun and easy ways to create interesting photographs. Instead of taking a picture head-on from the obvious “front” you produce imagines that get viewers to pause and maybe even think about what you are showing them.

By walking around a subject kids may discover a “secret” about that object that others overlook. By changing the tilt of the camera, kids can manipulate an image so to make it look larger or smaller

If you hold the camera high and angle it down, you can make something look smaller or foreshortened. Angling the camera is an easy bit of ‘trick’ photography; although you’re not creating an optical illusion, you are making people see the subject of your photo in a different way than they may normally have view that subject.

Walk around one interesting subject and take a
__Front angle
__Back angle
__Left angle
__Right angle

Select one subject and take a
__High angle
__Normal angle
__Low angle
__Take a picture while holding the camera at a small tilt
__Take a picture while holding the camera at a medium tilt
__Take a picture while holding the camera at a large tilt

Check out more fun art projects in by eBook, Art in Nature, Nature in Art.

Photography for Kids – Composition

I’m focusing on photography for a few days because it’s summer and kids go to camp or on vacation or do things they don’t normally do. This all adds up to opportunities for taking pictures. Whether kids have a disposable film camera, a digital camera, or a camera in their phone, they can practice some of the skills that will improve their pictures.

The activity below is a to-do list of sorts from my eBook Art in Nature, Nature in Art. If kids work their way through the list, not just once but several times, using different subjects, they will teach themselves how to take interesting photographs. In this case, interesting relies upon composition or where things are placed in an image. In some cases, kids can move something around before they take its picture, but in most cases the object is where it is. When kids can’t move the objects around, they can change their position, which will allow also them to modify their picture.

For example, stand back from a tree and take a picture of it from the ground to the leafy crown – this is a 3/3 crop. Move in closer and eliminate the bottom 1/3 of the scene and you have a 2/3 crop (because you can see 2/3 of the entire subject). If you go closer (or use a telephoto lens) to focus your picture on the leafy top of the tree you’ll have 1/3 crop. Don’t worry about dividing a subject exactly in thirds.

Another thing to think about is the Rule of Thirds. Imagine a grid that divides the image into thirds horizontally and vertically. A photographer should line up the subject of their photo along one of the imaginary horizontal or vertical lines. This allows the viewer’s eye to flow across the image without jerking here and there without settling.

__Take an overall picture of a scene
__Move in for six detail pictures
__Hold the camera vertically
__Hold the camera horizontally
__Take a picture at a tilt
__Crop an image 1/3
__Crop an image 2/3
__Crop an image 3/3
__Fill the frame with the subject
__Place the subject on the left 1/3line
__Place the subject on the right 1/3 line
__Place the subject on the bottom 1/3 line
__Place the subject on the top 1/3 line
__Place the subject on a “hot spot” – where vertical and horizontal lines meet

Photography for Kids – Lighting

The bright summer may be the most challenging light to take photographs in – particularly at midday. The lighting is harsh and the shadows create sharp contrasts. Maybe the best way for kids (and adults) to learn how to handle the challenges of natural lighting is to go out and take photographs in different conditions.

Unlike indoors, lighting isn’t something that you can control when you’re outdoors – or can you? You and your child can go to a location at different times of day to experience a variety of lighting situations. Let’s say you are vacationing beside a lake. You could take pictures of the lake from the same vantage point at sunrise, early morning, noon, late afternoon, early evening, sunset, and even at night. Kids could take pictures on a cloudless day, a partly cloudy day, and a cloudy day (even a cloudy day can have different lighting throughout the day).

Even if you are at home, kids can go into their yard and take a picture every day (or a few times throughout the day). Take some notes on paper or rename the pictures on the computer to note the lighting. It may seem like a bother at the time, but remind kids that they probably won’t remember the details a few days or a few months from now. Again, all of these experiments allow you to know what will work in the future. Learn to Take Beter Photographs.

__Take a picture in direct sunlight
__Take a picture in shade
__Take a backlit picture (the sun is behind the subject)
__Take a picture with the flash in direct sun
__Take a picture with the flash in shade
__Take a picture with the flash with backlighting

Nature Word Games for Kids

This word game relies on pathetic fallacy (a phrase that kids ages nine or ten and up will love to learn because it sounds so odd). Pathetic fallacy is the granting of human emotions to non-human things. When we say the flowers look happy or a scrawny tree seems sad, we are casting human emotions on the things.

For this activity you will need a stack of 3” x 5” index cards. On the cards, draw simple faces exhibiting different emotions. Go online and look for emoticons if you want some ideas. Draw the face and write the emotion underneath. You’ll want to start with a deck of at least twenty emotion cards. If you are doing this activity with a large group, plan on at least two cards for each child. During the play of the game, different children can use the same card.

Hand each child one of the cards. If the child can’t read the word, ask them what emotion they think the face is showing. Explain that their goal is to look around and find something that represents the emotion on their card. If children are confused, ask them to imagine life as a rock. Would the rock feel happy, sad, or bored?

If you have a group, you can warm up to this activity by asking them to imagine if different objects had emotions what feelings they would have? In poetry, the pathetic fallacy is the practice of attaching human emotions to nature, animals, and inanimate objects. You may decide to give this brief literary lesson to preteens or teens. With younger children, this activity can lead to a discussion of how things that aren’t alive don’t have feelings.

With a small group, when a child finds an object that represents the emotion on his card, the child can call the group to stop, point out the object and then allow the others 10-to-20 seconds to guess the emotion. With a large group, you could create a list poem, in which children connect the emotion to an object they saw on the walk. This poem also uses similes, or comparisons.

For example,
As stubborn as a rock
As bored as a fence
As flexible as a twig
As calm as a leaf

This activity connects a child to their own emotions as well as encourages empathy toward other things (and people).

For more word fun, try Writing Activities for Kids who Don't Like to Write and Write and Illustrate a Book of Poetry with Kids.

Welcome Summer!

Although we look at the first day of summer with anticipation of longer, warmer, sunnier days; more time outdoors; and relaxing or stimulating vacations (and summer camp for kids) – the irony is that the Summer Solstice hails the start of shorter days.

Try this bit of sympathetic magic with your children during this season when schedules change and (perhaps) we have a bit more time. If the idea of magic brings up negative thoughts, consider this a prayer or even a following of the season’s pattern.

You and your children can each think of something in your life that makes you dissatisfied. Maybe the messy state of your child’s bedroom causes arguments. Ask your child to state a goal, “As the summer days dwindle, so does the mess in my bedroom.” Perhaps you say, “As the summer days dwindle, so do my harsh words about your bedroom.” (The two goals do not have to be related.)

Next, decide on a positive action to get this goal rolling. Now, cut that goal in half (so instead of “Clean my room for an hour,” make the statement “Clean my room for half an hour). If this goal still sounds difficult, keep cutting it in half until you laugh with how simple it will be to keep this goal. (“Clean my bedroom for sixty seconds before dinner every day.” “Eliminate my nagging to a single word reminder, ‘room’ fifteen minutes before dinner.”)

Go out into the sun and feel the energy of the sun’s rays energizing your goal. You could also write or draw a picture of the goal and then burn it on the barbecue or fire pit. Toast and eat a marshmallow cooked over the flames created from the paper listing your intent to banish something negative from your life.

Kids may find this magical way of working on a problem different enough that they manage the task. Happy First Day of Summer!

Finding Peace of Mind in Nature

I’ve spent the last week and a half coping with my father going from the hospital to a nursing home. This has been an opportunity for me to clean through 37 years of stuff … in many cases because I need to get my hand on a document or item.

This stress has meant that I haven’t spent much time outdoors; in some cases, I didn’t even look out a window for hours. I pushed myself this weekend to make time for my walk. I have to admit that there is so much stuff going on in my head (to do lists, questions for the nursing home) that I walked but saw nothing. Today, my head cleared for moments so that I actually noticed squirrels and birds and insect-chewed maple leaves.

Encourage your children, whether they are two or twelve, to discover that nature can be a refuge for confusing feelings. While teaching them this, you too will develop this habit if you do not already possess it.

Don’t wait for your child to experience turmoil over an argument with a friend or a bad grade or another disappointment. Practice this stillness activity when your child is in a happy or relaxed mood so they will be receptive to the activity.

Activity 1: Find a quiet spot where there is someplace to sit – lush grass, a boulder, a log. Sit so you cannot touch anyone else in the group, giving each individual their own space. Move no body part but your neck, which will allow you to turn your head from side-to-side. Announce that everyone will sit still and observe for thirty seconds or five minutes or whatever works for the child’s age and temperament. That’s it. After the allotted time, stand up and walk a bit. If desired, everyone can discuss what they observed.

Activity 2: For a more active experience, each person walks without speaking to anyone. Set your feet quietly on the ground, trying to pass silently until you reach that rock up ahead on the path or for a set amount of time.

Both activities encourage observation and, perhaps, a bit of quiet reflection. When you child is used to the activities, and you know he or she is sad or disappointment, encourage the child to go outside, even if it is in the backyard, as opposed to allowing your child to brood in their bedroom. Your child may or may not feel better outside, but it is worth the try to get them to notice what is around them and not just what is going on inside their head.

Kid Science for Parents

Are you intimidated by the idea of going into nature with your child because you don’t know a lot about nature? It really isn’t necessary to know a lot about nature in order to enjoy it. Although I am an environmental educator, I’ve come to believe that it is more important to simply go outside and experience nature with your senses than it is to identify trees and birdsong and expound on the process of photosynthesis.

However, some facts are useful. For example, frogs, toads, and turtles, when picked up, will release a prodigious stream of urine to make them less appetizing to the creature that picked them up. (Remember, although we could use our hands, most creatures would have scooped up these critters into their mouths. – There is a fun fact that’s sure to be a hit with the kids!) So, where is a parent to start?

Go to the juvenile section of your public library. Don’t go crazy trying to learn a little bit of everything in a week. Pick a topic that is a favorite with your child – birds, frogs, insects. Now, these books aren’t for your child, they aren’t for you to read to your child; these books are for you to read. Don’t belittle starting with kids’ books these will give you a lot of the basics that you need to build on. Flip through a few books for grades 1 and 2, if they seem simplistic then go with books for grades 3 through 5.

Fourteen years ago when I started my switch into the environmental field, I didn’t have a science background (I was an English major who then taught English classes). Science books for adults were overwhelming. So, I’d go to the library and read a dozen or so books on a topic and then go off and teach about the topic.

The more you read about a topic the more sense it will make. The first time you learn a fact, it just kind of floats around in your mind wondering where to rest. When you see the same information numerous times it becomes easier to both remember those facts and learn new facts. Other advantages to reading science books for kids is that they are a quick read and they have lots of pictures – and even adults can appreciate that!

Take a Look at Nature through a Magnifying Glass

Chances are that somewhere around the house you have those inexpensive plastic magnifying glasses that are geared to kids. You might even have a slightly nicer magnifying glass (i.e. a magnifying glass that cost more than fifty cents) in a drawer for those times you need to take a closer look at something tiny.

Unless your child would throw a magnifying glass at a tree or a sibling, consider giving your child a slightly nicer magnifying glass.
By ‘slightly nicer’ I mean a magnifying glass that costs a couple of bucks but that gives your child a better view of what they are looking at.

Those inexpensive plastic lenses scratch and become fairly useless after a short time.) Don’t spend so much money that you’ll be upset if a lens gets dropped or banged about even if your child is trying to be careful.

After you have the magnifying glass, you need to show your child how to use it. Most children hold the lens against their eye as if it were a monocle. The proper use it to hold the magnifying glass close to the object you wish to magnify. Your child’s eye should be at least six-to-eight inches away from the lens, more is okay.

Now, encourage your child to look at a leaf, noticing the veins and the cells. Then turn the leaf over and get a clearer view of the stomata, through which the tree takes in carbon dioxide and releases oxygen. Don’t worry about knowing the names of the things your child is looking at; all you want to start giving them is a view of things that are often overlooked.

Take a close look at flowers and notice the spotted patterns on the petals of some flowers; these help direct insects toward the pollen and nectar the plant offers. Encourage your child to look at blades of grass, found feathers, crystals in rocks. Once you offer your child a more effective magnifying glass and show them how to use it it won’t matter whether your child is two or ten, they will move about the yard or wherever they are exploring this newly discovered territory of the tiny.

Check out other ways kids can Become an Animal Detective.

Getting Ready for Winter in June

For the past month, as spring has been working its way toward summer, I’ve been watching chipmunks zipping around the park where I walk. Their cheek pouches are so enlarged with seeds that their bodies don’t seem to be large enough to support their distended heads.

It is amazing to think that it is barely June and these small creatures are already in full-force winter survival mode. Humans are pulling on their shorts, slathering on the sunscreen, and talking about trips to the beach, meanwhile animals the size of chicken nuggets are planning to deal with three feet of snow on the ground.

So, start gathering seeds now for the winter. Collect leaves and flowers; press them between the pages of a dictionary until they’re dried. Take photos of the flowers blooming now. Take walks with your kids and when you go home, list three details of the season that you’ll forget about by the time November rolls around. Chances are you still have a bank calendar in your desk drawer that you didn’t use this year – turn it into a nature diary.

Collect memories and images of the season so you can pull them out when nature is gray and brown and white and nourish your and your children’s spirits the way the busy chipmunk nourishes its belly.

Nature Counting Game – Outdoor Inventories

Doing things in nature doesn’t have to be complicated (camping, kayaking) or require vast knowledge of the outdoors (lenticels?). Just go outside and take a walk with your children. Notice what is out there. Games, like ‘I Spy’ are fun because they get you to pay attention to the things surrounding you in a low-key way.

You don’t have to feel as if you are teaching your kids something each time you go outside. Nor is it necessary for them to spout nature facts. Experiencing the outdoors with your senses is enough for both you and your children to learn something about the world.

The nature counting game is an easy, you-don’t-have-to-plan-anything-in-advance, sort of activity. Simply select something to count while you are on your walk. No, really, it’s more fun than you might think (or maybe I just like counting things!).

You can count chipmunks, yellow flowers, red leaves, white rocks, etc.
The key is to select something that you think you’ll find but not in such a great quantity (field of daffodils) that it would be ridiculous to count. Do this with your kids for five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes. Or, count as you walk from one spot to the next.

If your children are young, work together looking for one type of thing (you don’t really have to count, just look for and notice one thing – but, chances are, you’ll start counting). If your children are older, each person could look for something different; perhaps starting the walk with each person predicting what they think will be the most obvious thing to find that day on that walk.

Your goal isn’t numbers, but an awareness of what you have walked passed along the way.

Observation Loop – Get Kids to Focus Small

A common naturalist’s tool for getting children to focus on a small area is to intentionally or randomly set a Hula hoop on the ground. Kids then use this boundary for their close-up investigation. See, if you just point to a grassy area in a yard or a leaf-strewn area in the forest kids will glance at the area (maybe, but not likely, crouching to do so), and tell you they see nothing. Define the area and now it’s easier for kids to center their attention.

Of course, a Hula hoop is an awkward item to carry on a walk, so you can carry a piece of rope. Tie two sliding knots and you can adjust the size of your loop. To do this, take a twelve foot piece of rope and cross the two ends over one another so they extend approximately a foot beyond the point where they cross. Now, knot one end to the loop and the knot the other end to the loop. You should be able to slide the knots along the loop, making the circle larger or smaller.

Go for a walk and find a spot to set the loop. Don’t worry if you don’t see anything obvious about that location, the key to the observation loop is that it helps to reveal things that you’d overlook. You and the kids may have to squat or kneel around the loop to get closer. Move the leaf litter (gently), push aside the blades of grass as you and your children look for insects, worm castings (little piles of soil), seeds, rocks, holes or trails worn into the soil, and whatever else you might find.

You don’t need magnifying glasses, although kids may enjoy using them as they are thinking small. The object of the activity is to learn that you just can’t give something in nature (and beyond) a quick glance and think that you’ve seen and learned everything that you need to. This activity encourages patience and if your child isn’t patient then when you set down the observation loop you can challenge them to find the five or ten secret or hidden things. You don’t have to know what these five or ten things are, but a random number makes this observation more task-oriented.

You can bring this loop of rope anywhere – forest, field, backyard, etc – and learn to see the tiny worlds that you normally walk past.