It’s a Saturday afternoon. You’ve heard about Nature Deficit
Disorder and you’re determined that your kids aren’t going to spend their time
mired inside, pouring their energy into the latest new video game. You’d like to
get them outside, so you propose a hike, but not a
drive-to-the-Nature-sanctuary-and- walk-on-the-trails kind of hike. This one is
a neighborhood exploration hike!
Nature is everywhere, and discovering your own nearby Nature is a key to helping
children develop the sense of place necessary to build more sustainable
communities. The natural spaces within walking distance of our homes are
surprisingly busy, filled with any number of plants and animals that can serve
as vehicles through which we can learn how to better belong on this planet.
What a great neighborhood exploration takes is a bit of planning, a backpack
containing a few tools to enhance the experience, and an adult or two who love
the earth and have a desire to share that love with young people. When planning
a hike for kids, it is helpful to make sure the kids will be comfortable. Dress
for the weather, make sure everyone has had enough to eat and that no one is too
tired to go out. Bring a refillable water bottle and a snack in case someone
gets hungry. The goal is to develop a feeling of ease in the outdoors, but no
one will want to connect with Nature if they are cold, thirsty, hungry, or
tired.
Nature is a key to helping children develop the sense of place
necessary to build more sustainable communities.
Along with a water bottle and some snacks, a few tools will help to enhance the
experience. A glass jar with holes poked into the lid makes a great bug trap. A
few field guides and a magnifying glass are great tools for discovering species
you’ve never seen before. A digital camera is a great way to capture the image
of a bug, bird, or plant that you want to identify after the walk. Finally,
binoculars – the quintessential tool of any good naturalist – will help locate
the many small creatures that are too shy to come close. Making sure your
backpack is filled with any number of these tools will help provide a myriad of
opportunities to observe the many species with whom you share your community.
Ideally, a neighborhood exploration walk would become a habit. An after-dinner
walk two or three times a week will do more for our sense of place than a
five-day camping trip once a year. The first few neighborhood Nature walks will
likely involve a lot of identification. It is important to know the names of the
most common creatures in your area. In my community, squirrels (of all colors),
robins, chickadees, sparrows, groundhogs, starlings, garlic mustard, and maple
trees top the list.
However, once kids have gotten to know how to identify some of the most obvious
species, it is helpful to then choose a theme to help focus the walk. At best, a
neighborhood exploration is about grasping how humans fit into the environments
that we inhabit. Young children are fascinated with where their water, energy,
and food come from, and what the schools do or don’t teach can be either
reinforced or taught by parents who in turn increase their own ecological
understanding.
Here are some possible neighborhood exploration hike themes to increase
ecological understanding:
-
Electricity
-
Heating our homes
-
Air quality and pollution
-
Where our water comes from
-
Where our food grows
-
Wild edible plants
-
Soil
-
Population
|
|
Ask your child to choose one of these themes and focus the walk around the
theme. For example, you could do a walk about how your neighborhood makes,
receives, and uses energy or how water flows into your home, identifying all the
landmarks that show how humans interact with that element.
Joseph Cornell, author of Sharing Nature with Children, is a wise outdoor
educator who created a simple format for planning a Nature walk called “flow
learning.” He advises structuring any outdoor adventure in four parts to account
for how children learn.
Part 1 is designed to awaken enthusiasm
Part 2 is designed to focus attention
Part 3 is designed to experience directly
Part 4 is designed to share
inspiration.
It’s good to start a hike with a fun, active game or activity that gets you and
your child excited. Try tag, British Bulldog, a rousing dance party – anything
that will get your blood pumping and make you laugh. Once you’ve “awakened
enthusiasm” and burned off a bit of energy, you and your kids will be more open
to listening and experiencing an activity that involves “focused attention,”
like closing the eyes and identifying all the sounds in the area. The third
phase of “direct experience” involves games or activities that open children to
connecting through their senses with Nature. Activities like “becoming” a tree
or playing animal charades help children to empathize with other living things.
Finally, the fourth part of the walk, called “sharing inspiration,” involves
bringing along poetry or a book. Reading together in a beautiful outdoor setting
is a nice ritual for a parent and child to develop.
Choosing a theme and then keeping in mind Joseph Cornell’s flow learning are two
perfect ways to build a bit of structure into your neighborhood exploration
walk. As an adult, this will give you a sense of how the walk will unfold and
you will therefore be able to lead the kids through an adventure that will take
on a life of its own.
Many parents are intimidated about leading children in Nature because they are
worried that they won’t know the answers to their children’s questions. But it’s
okay to position yourself as a learner alongside the children. The field guides,
as well as the camera, allow you to gather information and find the answers
later in a book or on the Internet. This practice also helps demonstrate that
learning is a lifelong activity and that the only way to learn is to admit that
you don’t know.
Wonder is another essential ingredient of a good neighborhood exploration.
Wonder is the art of observing and asking questions. Your child comes across a
spider web and you pause together to look at the web. You leave some space for
her to ask her own questions then begin to discuss it: I wonder what that web is
made of? Why do spiders make webs? How long does it take to make a web? If the
theme of the day is water – how does a spider drink? What happens to the web
when it rains? Wonder is what keeps life interesting, as demonstrated by Rachel
Carson’s quote about the good fairy:
“If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the
christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the
world be a sense of wonder … so indestructible that it would last throughout
life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later
years.”
Wonder keeps things fresh and helps to humble us with the knowledge that
there is always more to learn.
Unfortunately, many children of this generation are not being mentored into
knowing and appreciating the natural world. Schools are busy places in which
teachers are overworked and burdened by tremendous liability issues that prevent
them from taking their students outside to learn as much as they would like to.
Education geared towards knowing and respecting Nature therefore needs to come
from conscientious parents, guardians, grandparents, and friends who know the
value of Nature connection and make sure the children in their lives get outside
and engage with Nature regularly. Good education ought to be a door into knowing
one’s place in the Universe, as a human connected to the web of life.
As adults, we need to make the time to develop our own Nature connection and
share that with young people. It may be challenging to make it a priority, but
in the joy of Nature lies the motivation to live more lightly and to protect,
through our habits and actions, something profoundly sacred that cares for all
our needs.
Learn More
Sharing Nature With Children by Joseph Cornell (Dawn Publications, 1998)
The Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder by
Richard Louv (Updated version, Algonquin Books, 2008)
Childhood and Nature by David Sobel (Stenhouse Publishers, 2008)
Into the Field: A Guide to Locally Focused Teaching by Clare Walker Leslie
(Orion Society, 2005)
Carolyn Ross is an environmental and outdoor educator and an advocate for
connecting people (especially children) with Nature. She is currently working at
Royal Botanical Gardens in Hamilton, Ontario, where she is helping build a Back
to Nature Network and movement to address Nature deficit disorder and re-connect
people with Nature. For more information about the Back to Nature Network or to
access resources for parents who want to get outside more often, contact
cross@rbg.ca.
This is one of a limited number of articles from Natural
Life magazine that are available on this website for free. To read more articles
like this,
subscribe to our digital edition.
