Make a Flower Chain

A child wearing a headband or necklace of interlocked daisies just seems to symbolize carefree summer. Although it takes a bit to get used to interlocking the flowers, children with good fine motor skills (they can tie their own shoes with ease) can learn the process. Younger children can pick the flowers. Just be warned – you probably won’t be able to work fast enough if you have more than one child waiting!

You want a flower with a stem that you can easily slit with your thumbnail. The stem should also be flexible enough to bend without it crooking into a sharp angle. The shorter the stem, the more flowers you’ll need, setting the blossoms close together.

With your thumbnail, cut a slit through the stem. Next, slide the stem of another flower through the slit. The blossom of the second flower should stop at the slit of the first flower. Continue until the piece is as long as desired. To finish off the chain and bring it into a loop, make a larger slit in the last stem and fit it over the first flower. That’s it!

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.

Learn about Leaves with Leaf Art

Turning leaves into art makes children much more aware of the shapes of the leaves. For children eight or ten years old and older, this awareness can be a first step toward learning to identifying the trees around you. Is it necessary to know the types of trees in your area? No, but learning their names is like learning the name of a person you walk by every day.

Leaf Rubbings
Materials: paper and crayons

Set a leaf on a table, vein side up. Cover with a piece of photocopy or lightweight drawing paper. Peel the paper off a crayon. Lay the crayon on its side and rub over the paper. The texture of the leaf will appear.

Leaf Silhouettes
Materials: paper, paint, and brush

This time, set the leaf on top of a sheet of watercolor paper construction paper will work as well). Dip the brush in paint (it doesn’t matter whether it is watercolors, poster paints, tempera paints, etc). Hold the leaf in place with one hand. Brush the paint from the edge of the leaf and onto the paper. If you start on the leaf and paint outward, you will get a crisp silhouette when you pick up the leaf. Replace the brush for a sponge for a different look.

Leaf Printing
Materials: paper, paint, brush, scrap paper

On scrap paper, paint the vein side of a leaf (use poster paint or tempera, watercolors will be too light). Keep the layer of paint thin. Lift the leaf and set it on top of construction paper or another paint that will hold up to paint. Place the painted side onto the paper. Cover with more scrap paper and then run your hand over the paper. When you remove the scrap paper and the leaf, the impression of the leaf will remain on the paper.

These are fun projects to do with kids whether you collect your leaves in your backyard or on a nature walk.

Nature Investigation and Imagination

When walking with your child or children you can keep a few games in mind to play along the way. The games help to focus both you and your children on your surroundings. It is easy to get caught up in conversations, which, although valuable to your relationship, can move you out of the present moment. Instead of noticing where you are walking at the moment you are busy talking about going to the mall and selecting a birthday present for the child’s friend.

You can still talk, but every so often try to bring everyone’s awareness to the moment with sensory activities. The following game starts off with observation and works its ways to a (sometimes wild) imagination activity. Whether your child is a preschooler or a preteen, this word game allows kids to stretch their creativity.

One person starts this game by looking around and selecting something fairly large that is within view, such as a mountain or a tree, and says, “I see a tree.” The next person then picks something big on the tree, and says, “I see bark on the tree.” The next person has to pick a thing that’s on the bark, “I see a branch on the bark.” (If two people are playing, then you would go back-and-forth with your child.)

Participants continue in this fashion, noticing smaller and more specific details until they can no longer actually see anything to mention. Then they are free to make up details, such as, “I see a bug on the leaf,” and the next person might say, “I see a baby bug on the back of the big bug,” and so on until players can’t think of anything smaller. Move down the trail and have a different individual start another round.

Backyard Nature Fun

Whether your child loves collecting rocks or looking at insects, you don't have to travel far to encourage their interest in nature. By looking at the nature in their backyard, kids learn that nature is all around them and that it isn't limited to rainforests and polar bears that they can watch on television.

Below are links to explorations, games, and craft projects that kids can do in their own backyard, some on their own and other activities with at least one other child (or adult).

Play This Magic Square Nature Collection Game
Go Bug Collecting for Outdoor Fun
Make a Stone Cairn
Nature Memory Games
Backyard Games that Get Kids Playing in Nature
Activities for Kids Who Collect Rocks
How to Discover What Worms Need to Survive

Backyard Summer Fun

Although summer brings family vacations and camp experiences for some children, kids may best enjoy the simplicity of spending time in their own backyard. Whether kids are getting together with siblings, neighbors, or friends and relatives who are over the house for a play date or a party, there are an endless number of ways kids can have fun right at home.

Cool Summer Fun with Icy Kids' Activities

Backyard Games for Active Kids

Games Played with Sticks for Indoor and Outdoor Fun

How Kids Can Invent Fun Games to Play Outdoors

How to Make Bubble Blowers

Water Balloon Games

Backyard Camping for Kids and Families

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.

Pick up that Stick!

When walking along with a group of children, you’ll almost never hear me tell children to pick up sticks. Usually, I’m trying to avert having one child accidently hitting another child with a stick so you’ll hear me say one (or ten) times, “Stick down.” Kids always want hiking sticks, which I tell them are fine if they are walking with their family but not in a group of twelve-to-fifteen individuals. I can just envision some kid tripping over someone else’s walking staff. (On occasion, when I know the kids better than those on a two-hour field trip, I have allowed hiking sticks.)

Kids can play a lot of games with small sticks, those as long as the child’s forearm from wrist to elbow. Children can pick up fallen sticks and use them to build log cabin-like structures on a clear patch of ground. Natural sticks also provide a greater challenge for a game of pick-up sticks. Kids will think it’s silly to use real sticks as Lincoln Logs or pick-up sticks.

Children can also “write” their names or words with sticks or try creating other images with an assortment of branches so to get some different colors. Place two sticks opposite one another and encourage children to pretend they are jumping over a stream, as defined by the sticks. Keep moving apart the sticks, as the child continues to challenge himself. Try other Games Played with Sticks for Indoor and Outdoor Fun. Sticks are a free toy that are a bit like the boxes that house presents … they are an open-ended toy that supports a variety of creative play opportunities.

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.