Seeing What They See

My daughter is a keen observer of all things living outdoors. She will squat for what seems like hours to watch the activity at an anthill, turn over garden stones to find slugs, perch in a tree waiting to get a picture of a squirrel, set a "chipmunk trap" using a pot and a string, or catch flies with a bucket. She knows how to do these things because she is fascinated by things outside of her control. She watches them, trying to learn how they function and why they behave as they do. I would argue that most young children, given the opportunity and the freedom, would do many of the same things.



I love watching young children in nature. For me it's like discovering the world all over the again. The surprise, the delight, the joy - they are so palpable. Children explore with all of their senses. How many children can resist jumping in a puddle? Is it because they want to get wet or messy? Perhaps. Maybe they are learning cause and effect. Maybe they want to make something happen. Maybe there's just something irresistible about standing water - the urge to touch it, splash it. Whatever the reason, there is joy in puddles. And in mud too!


Most adults don't want to step in mud. It's dirty. It gets all over your shoes, maybe your pants too. But kids love it. They love the texture, the stickiness, the color, the way it feels and sounds and smells (I actually love the way mud smells too). Mud can be a great medium for creating. Mud can be used for building castles, cakes, sculptures, bowls. The consistency can be made thinner with water and mud can be used as paint on a sidewalk canvas.



The next time you are out in nature with a child, try to see the world as she sees it. Squat or sit down so you are closer to the ground. Try to engage your senses more. Pay attention to what you see, hear, smell, touch, and (if appropriate) taste. Follow the child's lead. You may be surprised at what you notice, what you learn, and what you wonder about. You might find yourself energized. And not so worried about those muddy shoes.

Literature Links

Some of my favorite mud/dirt/water picture books for children:

Mud, by Mary Lyn Ray
Red Rubber Boot Day, by Mary Lyn Ray
Wonderful Worms, by Linda Glaser
Wiggling Worms at Work, by Wendy Pfeffer
A Handful of Dirt, by Raymond Bial
One Small Square (series), by Donald Silver
Mudpies, by Claudia Little

What's in a Name?

I've been thinking a lot lately about how we come to know places in nature. Really know them. Know them in a way that makes them dear to our hearts. Know them in a way that makes us want to protect and care for them. Does a place become special to us though repeated visits and close observations? From the memory of something important happening in a place? From the way our senses can recall that place? From knowing it well enough to name it? Perhaps all of those things.

When I was a child we spent a lot of time on the north shore of Lake Superior. My parents owned a cabin outside Grand Marais. I fell in love with astronomy on the shores of the big lake, under a vast starry sky, away from the city lights. It was absolutely magical. I looked up and wondered about those stars and planets, marveled at the size, the numbers, the distance, hoped every time to see that blanket of light wavering in the sky - the northern lights. I had so many questions. What is a shooting star and if I wish on it, will it come true? Which ones are stars and which are planets? Which are satellites and how did they get there? The stars that are light years away sent their light hurtling out into space long ago. Are they still there or did they die out before their light reached my eyes? If there are so many stars out there, and our sun is a star, how can there NOT be other life out there somewhere? I felt so small, so insignificant in this grand astronomical picture, but so alive and full of wonder and the desire to know more.

I borrowed or bought and read every book and magazine I could find about astronomy. I got a telescope and set it up in Grand Marais and on the deck back home. I begged my parents to take me to the Kennedy Space Center when we were in Florida visiting my grandparents. I skipped school (with permission) to meet an astronaut at a book signing. I studied constellations. I wrote journal entries and poems and research papers. My love of the night sky began on the rocky shores of that big lake.

There are many, many things that connect me to the North Shore: the pine, spruce, birch, and aspen trees along Highway 61, the goldenrod-colored lichen on boulders, the memory of picking wild blueberries in the woods, spotting deer and moose and the occasional wolf, noisy gulls, a solitary loon on the lake, family stories around a campfire, the sound of our footsteps on a damp trail through the woods, the constant draw to the lake's edges, and that incredible night sky.

What does all of this have to do with urban nature? It has to do with a child spending enough time outdoors to really come to know a place and develop a special bond. It doesn't have to be the North Shore. It could be at the base of a favorite boulevard tree. It could be an alley where a child discovers raspberry bushes or bunnies. It could be a sidewalk crack where ants are constantly coming and going and doing mysterious things. It could be a small garden visited by pollinators. It could be a backyard bird feeder. The key here, I think, is for a child to be able to have repeated visits, unstructured time, be in a place that feels safe and happy, and for the child to take the lead (maybe we can all try to be "hummingbird parents" rather than "helicopter parents").

When I think about why I, as a parent and a preschool nature teacher, care so much about the natural world, I think back to my early experiences in nature. In fact, many environmental stewards can pinpoint early experiences as a key factor in their love and concern for the earth. So if we want to raise children who take care of the natural world, we can start by letting them get to know it.

Last spring at my preschool, another teacher documented some of the children's conversations at one of their favorite places (children's names have been changed):

Hank: This is the children's forest.
Teacher: The children's forest? Brady: Yeah, the children's secret maze forest. Gregory: It's the children's secret hideout maze forest. Over there is the Wild forest. The really wild forest. Hank: That's a really long name.

Naming something is powerful. What's in a name? In this case the children were taking ownership and telling us what is most important to them about this place, what they love about it. I'd like to think their experiences there, playing, exploring, discovering, and just being, helped connect them to nature in ways that are lasting.

Before I go, here's some advocacy from a former child of the North Shore (yours truly) hoping to keep the skies dark for future young astronomers. Photographer Bryan Hansel puts out this plea with a gorgeous image.

Earth Day 2014

Someone asked me how I celebrated Earth Day this year. I try to think of every day as being a day to care for and celebrate the earth. Teaching this to young children is easier than you might think. It all begins with relationships.

Good teaching, in any setting, stems from a foundation of solid relationships. As teachers we must connect with our students. Know them. Consider their needs in the moment. Find something special about them and acknowledge it. I'm not talking about curriculum and standards and test scores as a measure of good teaching or what is best for all children. I'm talking about something much more personal and in my opinion much more important. To me, good teaching always begins with an environment where kids feel safe, relaxed, and valued for who they are. Honoring children in a classroom, in the outdoors, on the playground, in your back yard, wherever you might be, begins with the teacher's relationships with students and their relationships with each other.

So on Earth Day this year I was teaching a preschool class at a local nature center. This is my dream job. It allows me to combine my love for teaching with my love of the natural world. I get to help young children develop their own relationships with the natural world at a crucial time in their development. I get to be with them as they experience the wonder and joy of poking around in the mud or climbing logs or looking at animal tracks. I get to sit next to them on the ground, look up into the trees, find the cardinal singing his little heart out, and marvel at the beauty all around.

These kinds of experiences can happen most anywhere. The nature center where I work is nestled in a residential neighborhood, not far from highways and big-box stores. While it feels like we are hundreds of miles from "the city," the sounds of airplanes and car traffic tell us otherwise. Nature is everywhere.

Last week I had lunch with teachers who had come to a learning conference at our preschool. One was lamenting the fact that her urban kids are afraid to be outside. She asked how to help them not be afraid of bugs and dirt and things they aren't familiar with. My best advice to her, to anyone who finds herself in nature with children, is to be present with them. Sit on the ground. Be level with them. Be close. Try to experience those things right along with them. Try to be that calm and nurturing presence. Children know when you are uneasy. They also know when you are excited, when you are happy to share your time with them, when you enjoy being in the natural world with them. Your enthusiasm will help to ease their fears and just might spark their own sense of wonder.

I spent my Earth Day this year with children, digging in last year's garden beds, holding worms, finding animal tracks and comparing them to our own, lying down in the leaves and looking up at puffy clouds, feeling the warm sunshine on my face and watching children do the same. I stepped in the mud, I caught children as they jumped from boulders and logs, I watched ants, built stick forts, laughed, and gave thanks to the earth for being the best classroom there is. And when I got home, I did a load of laundry.

Sounds of Summer

Cicadas are pretty active these days, which seems late in the year for Minnesota. While talking with a friend about this, she said, "Cicadas are the sound of summer." A few years ago I wrote a poem about my childhood summers that began with those exact words. Late summer in the city always meant scabby knees and stubbed toes, banana-seat bikes with colorful straws on the spokes, pigtails turned golden from sun, lemonade stands, hopscotch boards drawn on hot sidewalks, and sitting on gnarled tree roots, gazing up into a leafy canopy. Hearing a cicada today brings back all of those images for me. Sound is a powerful trigger.

I wonder what a cicada's song will mean for my daughter, years from now. Will she think about the box of cicada exoskeletons (a creepy, but cool, collection) she's saved over the years? Will she think about the time she got so mad and ran away from home (but let me accompany her), to a grassy boulevard a couple of blocks away where we sat in the shade of trees and listened to cicadas? Will she think about the adult cicada she "rescued" from a sidewalk, only to find that its abdomen was missing so it would probably die soon anyway? Or will her summer memories, triggered by cicada songs, have nothing to do with the insect at all?


I hope she remembers how much time I was able to spend with her in the summer, how we ambled through alleys, scootered all over the neighborhood, biked together, planted gardens, raised monarchs and praying mantises, and picked and ate raspberries and ground cherries. I hope she will still love the crab apple tree in our front yard, the flagstones she overturned in her search for bugs and worms, and the swing hanging from the white pine. Perhaps she will think of the sparrow she rescued from the dog, the bunnies she rescued from window wells, or the secret space between the garages that she called "Ponyville."

How can we help children make those memories and connect to the natural world in meaningful and joyful ways? Does it matter? The two greatest indicators of responsible environmental behaviors in adults are spending time outdoors as a child and having a parent or other role model who values the natural world (Louise Chawla). It doesn't have to be complicated. We don't have to go out of the city or have a degree in environmental education to cultivate a child's love of nature. It's already there. We just have to slow down, notice what kids are noticing, and give them a little time and space to explore.

What will your children remember of summer?


A few interesting cicada facts:

• Here in Minnesota, we have cicadas that are called dog day (annual) cicadas. They occur every year. The 13- or 17-year periodical cicadas do not occur in Minnesota.
• Only the males make the humming/buzzing sound. They do this to attract females.
• Cicada nymphs (young cicadas) feed on tree roots beneath the ground.
• Adult cicadas only live a few weeks - just long enough to mate and lay eggs.
• When you find a cicada with part of its body (the abdomen) missing, this is most likely due to a fungus called Massospora.

"Song is the sign of an unburdened heart"

We often go for family walks around the neighborhood after dinner. Our daughter skips ahead or lags behind, stopping to investigate something along the way, lost in her thoughts and discoveries. One evening as she sang one of her many made-up songs, which tend to be a narration of a game in which she is completely immersed, we noticed a message on a church sign. "Song is the sign of an unburdened heart." Our children's hearts should be unburdened.

I think of how music and nature weave their ways into children's lives. The benefits of both are well-documented for children's physical and emotional health, academic growth, and creativity. So  it really struck me to see the two beautifully played out INSIDE our home one recent Saturday morning.

Jesse loves music and has a small collection of CDs that she plays in her room. She will often dress up in fancy skirts, then sing, dance, and twirl for us. That particular morning, she had us sit in her room while she queued up the song. I noticed the bright sunshine shimmering on her collection of rocks, sticks, feathers, shells, and pine cones.

As I looked around, I also noticed how often nature is represented in her art. Some of her favorite things to draw and paint are birds, butterflies, animals, trees, and flowers. Nature should be joyful, never scary, for young children. We have to allow them to connect with nature in fun and meaningful ways. As you can clearly see from the smile on the butterfly's face, my little one finds joy in nature.

The music began and Jesse started twirling and singing, a look of utter happiness on her face. The song, appropriately, was "Free To Be...You and Me."

Literature Links:

• Treasures of the Heart, by Alice Ann Miller, is a lovely story about a child's collections and why they are so special.
• My Mama Had a Dancing Heart, by Libba Moore Gray, is about a mother and daughter, and a celebration of life through dance and the seasons.
• Come on Rain!, by Karen Hesse, takes place in a city neighborhood. A child and her friends hope for rain on a sultry day, then dance in the streets when it finally falls. I love the language in this story.

Fairy Houses

Magic happens when you take a child outside and leave her alone with nature and her imagination. Fairies may conjure images of forests, thick with green trees and teeming with wildlife, but our fairy houses are located in the city! Urban fairies don't mind traffic, or sidewalks, or a gaggle of kids on bikes. They love the intricate details in any child-built house. Details like leaf hammocks with dandelion flower pillows, play areas carved from the dirt surrounding gnarled tree roots, and picket fences made of twigs and samaras (maple seed helicopters).

This fairy house was built at a school a couple of blocks from our house. Something about the exposed tree roots in the ground, the swirls of bark, the ant community busy at work nearby, made it seem the perfect place for a fairy house. So my daughter and friends got busy gathering natural materials to create their welcoming little abodes. 

During a bike ride yesterday, we stopped to visit the Little Free Library at the school, then sat down beneath the giant maple to read our new books. Of course we also had to visit the fairy houses. I sat and watched my daughter's excitement grow as she created more rooms, added more decoration, and wondered what the fairies would do in their house. We went back again today, not to look at books, but to add rose petals, take pictures, and check for evidence of fairy mischief. 

I found a fun website about Fairy Houses with books, pictures, and ways to connect kids to nature. Check it out, and get outside and let them build!

Critters in the Garden

Gardening with children provides so many opportunities for discovery, observation, exploration, and fun! One of my favorite things about spending time with kids in the garden is watching them interact with bugs, worms, slugs, and any other critter they happen to come across. I'll be posting many more garden adventures, but this one is devoted to one of our favorite insects... the praying mantis.

For the third year, we bought a praying mantis egg case from a local garden center. Mantids are beneficial insects in the garden, as they eat aphids, Japanese beetles, and anything else they can catch. We put the egg case in a mason jar and waited for the babies to hatch. In late June, hundreds of babies emerged. We released them into the garden and watched as they moved out into the world.

As in summers past, we then lost track of them. Today, much to our delight, we discovered an adult mantis, camouflaged so beautifully on a plant that we were lucky to see it at all.  My daughter couldn't wait to hold it.

So what can children learn from a praying mantis?

• Empathy: Each living creature has a role in nature. Hold an insect gently and return it to its place.
• Patience: Waiting for the babies to emerge from the egg case wasn't easy. There was no instant gratification here. But when it happened, it was magical.
• Connection: Finding an adult mantis in our garden, most likely one that we hatched, made my daughter feel responsible for that insect and proud that she had provided a habitat for it to grow in.
• Joy: The delight on her face, at seeing this insect and holding it her hand, was priceless.

Literature Links

• Manuelo, the Playing Mantis, by Don Freeman. A story about friendship, cooperation, and empathy.
• Hey, Little Ant, by Phillip and Hannah Hoose. Great story of empathy and mercy, told from two perspectives.