Clean Quest - Get Rid of Litter

Part game, part good deed, this activity reminds children to think twice before tossing trash.

Materials: a pair of non-latex gloves and a trash bag for each participant, one pair of tongs or trash grippers, optional prizes

Do you and your children walk along a road or trail where people carelessly toss their trash? Does this diminish your experience of this location? Talk to your children about going to this location to pick up trash. Outfit each person with non-latex gloves and trash bags. The person to fill a bag with the most trash receives a small reward costing under a dollar (a tumbled gemstone, a small plastic animal, or a pencil).

Remind children to avoid picking up sharp objects or broken glass. You may want to have a pair of tongs to safely pick up these items. To keep energy levels high, set a time limit (if the kids want to keep going, that’s fine; however, if you end the activity while they are still enthusiastic then they will likelier be willing to do this again).

You may want to take a picture of everyone with their bags of trash and ask the site you helped clean to post the picture. Your actions may even remind people to not litter.

This teaches children about stewardship, caring for the environment. It is also a reminder that sometimes an individual must act instead of waiting for others to meet a task.

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.

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

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

Kids and Collecting in Nature

On this morning’s walk, I feel as if I am wading through maple samaras, those little propellers that, when broken open, stick nicely to your nose or fingertips. But we’ve had rain forever and these seeds are plastered to the road. They probably didn’t even pirouette out of the trees.

I pick up one, thinking to take a picture of it at home. Well, I can’t just take a picture of one maple seed and I come upon some more that instead of being bright green are tinged red. Then there are small keys with the propellers going in the same direction instead of leaning off in different directions. And then there were the keys with plump instead of flat seeds. Well, you get the idea.

Many kids are natural collectors. Even if they don’t bring their treasures home, chances are they are inclined to at least pick up a leaf, rock, acorn, stick … something. You can direct that energy – gathering is a great observation activity and can be focusing and calming. This does require a bit of observation on your part; look for something profuse in the area. If you notice a lot of acorns, challenge your children to collect as many acorns as they can in 30 seconds.

After collecting, you can ask your kids to sort what they’ve collected from smallest to largest, lightest to darkest, or whatever pattern the child can think up. If you don’t want your child picking up a handful of pink rocks or a pocketful of maple samaras, but you that he or she is inclined toward picking up something, challenge them to find the biggest and smallest __________ in the space between two trees, logs, rocks, or other markers of a defined space.

To (try to) convince your child to leave their treasures in nature, stop shortly before the end of your walk (when home or the car isn’t in sight) and ask your child to make a picture or pattern with what they’ve collected so other people can see the child’s wonderful finds. If the child knows or is learning her letters, she could write a word with what she’s collected, such as, “Hi,” “Peace,” “Walk,” or whatever short word strikes the child’s fancy.

By collecting, the child is noticing what is out there in nature. Don’t worry that they won’t see everything, the experience, and memory, of the time they collected 107 acorns on a walk will be enough.

The Lure of the Indoors

Last week I didn’t go outside as much as I could have. Yes, many of the mornings were dull and rainy but I could have taken a walk later in the day. I was coordinating a dance show and practicing for my performance but I still could have taken a short neighborhood walk. Instead, I spent much of my week glued to my computer watching the leaves on the trees and shrubs in the backyard opening a little bit more with each passing day.

People are always talking about how kids should spend more time outside and less time indoors watching television and playing computer games. However, how many adults who may exhort their children to go outdoors take their own suggestion?

I think we get caught up in thinking how outdoor activities and indoor activities are two separate animals. The outdoors is for gardening, walking, running around, playing sports, working on the car, fishing, etc. Yet, when was the last time you read a chapter from your book while sitting outside? Could kids take their homework outside or even (yes, the horror) bring their handheld electronic game outside?

Being outside doesn’t have to mean that we need to do anything outdoorsy. I have a deck with table and chairs literally on the other side of the wall where I am sitting now at a table typing. Granted, the door is open and the fresh air is coming inside, so why do I feel the need to sit on this side of that wall?

Read a storybook to your children while outside or encourage them to take their book outside and sprawl on a lawn chair instead of their bed. Persuade them to draw and paint; play with their cars or dolls; or give a new existence to a toy that’s become boring by playing with it outside. Yes, some pieces may get left outside and something will get rained on, but this also teaches children respect and responsibility for their belongings.

Challenge yourself and your children to do one thing this week that has no obligation to be done in the out of doors.

Listening to Nature Activities

Perhaps it is the time of year – the birds are singing but the trees are still bare so the sounds of nature stand out particularly sharp. Visual details capture my attention. When I take tests about learning styles or the various intelligences I inevitably “fail” as someone who takes in information through the auditory sense.

I’ve tried to learn to bird by ear, but it is an ability I lack. I’ve learned some of the mnemonics – for example, white throated sparrows sing a song that sounds like “Sam Peabody, Sam Peabody,” but it took me years before one day I heard a familiar, but unidentified, song and it suddenly occurred to me that I was listening to something very much like a bird singing “Sam Peabody, Sam Peabody.”

The following activities don’t require that you or the children you are with identify the sources of the sound; however, they do make you more aware of the sounds around you. You can do these activities anywhere outdoors – backyard, schoolyard, forest, field; preferably somewhere manmade sounds don’t entirely overwhelm the sounds of nature.

Sound Map
Each person starts with an index card and a marking pen (because markers don’t require as much pressure as a pencil or pen to leave a mark). Draw an “X” in the middle of the card. This represents the individual. As each person detects a sound, he or she draws a dot indicating where they think that sound is in relationship to where he or she is sitting.

For the individual who thinks they know what is making the sound, they could instead draw a simple picture of the plane, bird, wind in the trees, etc. that creating the sound. Natural and manmade sounds should all be noticed and recorded. Do this activity for five-to-ten minutes.

Sound Pictures
For this activity, you’ll interpret sound into an image. The image consists of geometric shapes, no need to draw a bird if you think you hear a bird or a plane if you hear an airplane. In fact, you’re better off if you don’t name the things which are making the noises you are drawing.
So, the chatter of a bird becomes, “- - - - - - - - - - - - - - .” The wind, at that moment, may sound like, “~~~~~~~~~~~;” the rain on the leaves, “``````````.”

As for me, when I take my morning walk, I hear a bird’s song and look for the source, “Oh, a robin.” Moments later I hear another bird and scan the trees, “Oh, a robin.” Ten minutes later, more birdsong and, yep, another robin.