If you don’t know anything about nature can you really explore the outdoors with your children or students?
Appreciating nature is about much more than identifying the naming the things around you. When I walk through a local park I’ll often walk along testing my so-so tree identification skills. However, when I do, I miss seeing the trees. Instead, I focus on leaf shapes, branching, and bark – the tree is reduced to parts and a name.
When I don’t care about identification I see shapes of trees. I see the way the wind plays with the leaves. I better appreciate the colors and textures of the leaves and the bark of those trees. I notice buds, the play of light, and the sound of the wind rustling the leaves. I am certain that trees generate different sounds but I lack the ear to discern such variations.
Am I suggesting that there is no value to identification? No. But if we zip by something, naming it (correctly or incorrectly), without really seeing the uniqueness of that sycamore or that white ash, what have we experienced?
Do this – go outside with your children and pick up something they can hold in their hand. One person looks at the object and names something they can observe. Pass that same object to another person who holds up the item and describes another feature. If you are with one child, pass the object back and forth; if you are with a group, pass the object to different people.
Look at the object from the top, the bottom, each side (if there are sides), from different angles so two views are seen at once. Hold the object close to the face. Look at it from a distance. Name its colors. Smell the object. Rub it against your cheek or your wrist. How many different ways can you and your child (or children) view that pine cone, sea shell, piece of bark, etc.
If you are doing this activity with a group, switch objects when your observations of one item are exhausted. What happens if you suggest to a child who says that there is no other way to describe an object that there is one more way to look at the item?
This activity develops observation and creative thinking skills. Try it with a variety of objects found in different places.
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