Hello from the Forest

find this story on Amazon.com here

A whole month has gone by since my last post... woops! Time flies in the summer time and this month has been a busy one. Lots of travel, lots of friends and families, a month-long art and nature summer camp, and a much needed respite from the daily routines that had started to wear me down. But, I'm am back refreshed and revitalized and ready to share lots of goodies and stories I've collected over the past few weeks. To start out, I'd like to share a book I stumbled across at the library one morning as I browsed for stories to share with my 4-6 year old campers. Although this powerful and important book is on the longer side, the story and illustrations held onto everyone's attention and the web-of-life concept kept most campers involved in a lively discussion long after I put it down.

The story starts with a young girl discovering that her cat had gone missing during the night and as she heads off into her beloved forest to investigate, she finds his collar and a few patches of fur on the ground. Suddenly, the girl is introduced to a side of wildlife she had not yet encountered and though it frightened and saddened her, she set out to understand it, and in turn the world, a little bit better. The author takes what could be a traumatizing and grim experience for a child and invites children to understand both sides of the predator-prey relationship.

Having the river in the forest as our playground made it easy for the kids to take what they learned in the classroom the world at large. Out here we came across a painted turtle, craw fish, wild mushrooms, and birds of all kinds to observe.

With my particular group, this story opened up conversation about losing pets and the emotions and rituals that surround dealing with death. It also invited children to share what they know about the food chain and what kinds of animals eat what. We talked about how although it seems mean that a mountain lion or wolf might have eaten the girl's cat, that each animal has a family to feed and are designed differently so that there is enough food for everyone. One child in my group suggested that if all animals ate grass there wouldn't be any grass left. Even though the children were sad for the girl and the loss of her feline friend, they were able to look beyond their sadness at the grander picture of life. These are important concepts that are often avoided with younger children because of their seriousness, but I have always found that children are never credited enough for their ability to both understand and work through even the most complicated emotions and concepts when guided and supported by loving adults and peers.

Depicting their new-found knowledge of birds via drawing

Following our reading and discussion, the children headed off to the art table to investigate and animal pictures in the National Geographic magazines I had brought in and many of them made collages of their favorite animals, pointing out the herbivores versus the carnivores. Other children gathered around the computer to watch episode three of this BBC documentary about birds, exploring how their beaks are uniquely shaped to suit their diet. Other children headed outside to do a bit of bird watching with the binoculars I had brought in while others grabbed one of the many non-fiction animal and nature book on display in our classroom. I also set out the story on the art table with some paper and markers for children as an art provocation and a few sat down to draw animals and forest scenes of their own. All in all, I was pleased with the fun and learning that was born out of this story and I can't wait to read it again with another group. If you have ever read this one with a child or class, I'd love to hear stories of the discussions, projects, and inquiry that resulted.

Green Education

I have been deep in research mode lately, since my camp doesn't start up for a few more days and I haven't been working directly with any kiddos recently. This means that while I don't have as much direct experience or stories to offer at the moment, I do have tons of ideas and resources to share. First of all, I've been reading and investigating more on Richard Louv's concept of Nature Deficit Disorder (remember his book Last Child in the Woods from this post a while back?). I picked up his follow-up book, The Nature Principle as a graduation gift for my little sister who is starting at Sterling College next fall, a small alternative school in Vermont that puts the need to connect with the natural world at the heart of their curriculum. She is still in the middle of another book so I decided to dig into it first--we are sisters after all, we share stuff all the time anyway, particularly our favorite books. Well, this book is just as incredible as the last and I want to share with you a quote Louv recorded on page 72....

In addition to the benefits to physical and mental health, there's the added spiritual value of green exercise. The theologian Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, "Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement, to look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; to be spiritual is to be constantly amazed."

I love this idea, and I completely agree, there is magic all around us, every day if we just open our eyes and hearts to it. Just yesterday I was trying out my new binoculars and struggling just to get it so I was no longer seeing double, and in a bit of frustration let them drop and hang around my neck. Just then I noticed that a few feet in front of me, a little brown bunny was watching me from next to the purple and white bell flowers that surround the trunk of the old maple tree in our yard. The rabbit froze as we locked eyes, but since I didn't move, he stayed there for a moment rather than hopping immediately away. He hopped around a bit as I watched him and then scampered off to the crab apple tree toward the back of our small piece of land. He continued to watch me and I continued not to move, content in the moment just to see what he might do next. The sweet little bunny went about his business of munching on clover leaves and sniffing the air as I went back to messing around with my binoculars. He was still hanging out when I got bored and headed inside and back to my computer.

Oh how I miss working in the garden with K, the best little lima bean (and pigeon pea) sheller I ever knew. She is a girl after my own heart, as plucking peas from their pods was my favorite task too back when I was my mother's little garden helper

I was so inspired by my experience with the rabbit, that I went on the hunt for what other bloggers, teachers, parents, and writers had to say on the subject of getting out into the outdoors with kids. Ever since I had the opportunity to teach in an outdoor classroom, on the farm in Hawaii with little K, I can't stop thinking about the value of green education. Louv's books are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the literature available on this subject and although his work and a few others are the only ones I've delved into so far, I am so impressed by and excited about what I foresee learning over the next however many months, (or more likely, years) it takes me to get through it all. And not only is there literature available to satiate my own hunger to learn, there is just as much, if not more geared toward the most important audience, the children themselves.

Being a long-time lover of children's literature, I am well aware that such stories exist and I have used many of them in my classrooms quite regularly, but I had no idea just how many books are so well suited for green education. This is what I am calling a nature-based program that is rooted in a belief in a sustainable lifestyle that is in harmony with rather than opposed to the natural world, while at the same time encourages and supports technological and economic innovation and development through an interest-driven program fostering a life-long love of learning. Green Education is my new philosophy and passion, though it seems this is where I've been heading all along, I just didn't know quite what to call it yet. The name has probably been around for a while, I'm fairly certain I am not the first to think of it, and the concept is certainly not my own creation, but either way I am advocating for it like crazy, regardless. I firmly believe that a green or sustainability focus is exactly what is necessary to breathe new life into the education system, and in turn the economy after that.

So now that I've rambled for a bit, it's time to get to the good stuff...

Check out more about this incredible book here

• Here is Joyce, from Inner Child Learning and her 5 tips for exploring nature with the kiddos. I love this post because it offers a lot of really simple and easy tips for getting outside with kids for the every day parent. Don't have expensive camping gear or a whole weekend to spend, then this post is for you!
• Check out this gardening and growing plants themed list of amazing children's books, I love them all!!
• Here is the Amazon.com page for David Sobel's excellent book, Childhood and Nature, one I have repeatedly used to help explain the Reggio concept of natural materials and the infusing of nature in classroom design.
• If you live in an urban area or have struggled to get outdoors, this awesome indoor growing system offers kids an up-close-and personal view of how plants grow that requires little beyond the initial planting and regular watering but can provoke tons of inquire and exploration into the process of plant growth
• and the gem of all gems, the Center for Ecoliteracy and their publication co-written by Daniel Goleman (remember him from his work on emotional intelligence?), Ecoliterate: How Educators are Cultivating Emotional, Social, and Ecological Intelligence

A Breath of Fresh Air

Find it on Amazon here

I started reading Richard Louv’s national bestseller, Last Child in the Woods: saving our children from nature-deficit disorder, this week which explores the consequences of dwindling exposure to nature. It is a fascinating book and after being here in Hawaii with nature as my main classroom for 4 months, (also having been diagnosed with ADD as a child) I find great truth in his writing. I have am not quite at the halfway point yet, but this book is an instant classic in my mind, and not just for educators and parents either because it’s not just children who are experiencing a disconnect with the natural world, it’s all of us, children just have it the worst. At least we adults have memories of playing in the woods and exploring nature, not enough kids these days get the chance to freely explore their natural surroundings, if they even have them at all.

A friend here at the farm brought this book to me last week, he noticed it sitting on his shelf and thought I’d be interested. Last Child in the Woods has been on my Amazon wishlist for quite some time now but it was always checked out when I looked for it at the Seattle Public Library and I just never got around to ordering it online. Either way, it couldn’t have fallen into my hands at a more perfect moment since I am currently contemplating how to best teach environmental compassion and sustainable innovation. I am in the process of developing my own example curriculum and contemplating how to promote a more harmonious relationship between humans and nature, one that is more reciprocal than the take, take, take variety we have going right now. Louv confirms what I have been building up to in my research and experience, the idea that direct connection with nature as early and often as possible is the direction we need to take in our schools.

view of lava lake below and caldera in the background from the crater rim trail

Anyway, inspired by the discussion of nature and all her powers of restoration and balance, and because we already had the trip planned, Dylan and I spent this past Saturday exploring and hiking around Volcano National Park. As we trekked across the black mass of a former lava lake, looked out over cators with steam billowing from within the earth and wandered through magical tree covered corridors, Louv’s words rang truer than ever. I felt like a kid again playing in the woods across the river behind my house, filled with energy and awe. Perhaps it was the fresh, clean air of the outdoors, or the sheer beauty of it all, but I felt the healing power of being out in nature. This always seems to happen to me, just as described in the book. Whenever I spend a good deal of time surrounded by the green of the forest or field, the blue of the ocean and sky, and the sweet smells and sounds of the earth, I get not only a sense of rejuvenation, but motivation to get to work, start creating and make whatever changes I have been contemplating.

watching the ducks fish in pond behind Punaluu's black sand beach

Most importantly, though, being in nature, weather I am hiking, playing in the waves, or simply watching a few birds fluttering about as the clouds slowly drift by, allows me to clear my head of all the junk that’s been holding me back. This time away from my problems, whatever they may be, is always the perfect remedy, allowing me to get back to working from a position of strength. This time, when my head cleared, it allowed me to see the world, the natural world, from an educator’s perspective. It was as though everything I looked at was showing me how I could use it to teach the various concepts found deep within just about any curriculum imaginable. All of it, all the lessons were right there in front of me and I thought, why the hell are schools paying for textbooks when they could simply step outside expose children to just about anything they could possibly want to learn about? We are lucky enough to have the internet to feed our brains with all the information we could possibly want, all we need is to expose students to things that will provoke their desire to learn. Nature does this better than just about anything found in a traditional classroom, and it doesn’t cost a dime.

Hawaiian red chillies harvested for making hot sauce

I came to Hawaii to connect with the land, to grow my own food, to get away from everything for a while so that I could build better habits, clear my mind, get some direction. I could not have imagined exactly how this place would change me, and I’m sure it will be quite some time before I truly understand its effect on me, but I am different somehow and my path seems clear. I was never a big environmentalist, sure I recycled, I regularly went to the farmers markets, and I lead a pretty low-impact lifestyle, but I never thought of myself as an environmentalist by any means. That hasn’t changed, although these habits have been more deeply cemented in my daily life. What has changed is that I have reconnected with the awe I felt as a child when out exploring with the woods, only now as an adult my interest in nature from an academic perspective is suddenly piqued. I want to learn all I can about my natural surroundings, about how the natural world works and what I can glean from her systems to improve my own life and my own community.

Who wouldn't be inspired stumbling upon this path on a hike in Volcano National Park?

This is the very reciprocal relationship with nature that I hope to harness and facilitate in my curriculum, to help rectify the take, take, take approach and transform it into a wholly gratifying and healthy give-and take between man and nature. The next generation of students are entering a world with few affordable resources for 90% of earners, where jobs are constantly changing and are often unstable, and the effects of climate change are just beginning to rear their ugly heads. We must make serious changes to our schools so that students are prepared for the future they face, and it is not going to look like anything we’ve seen before, though there is much we can learn from the past, as there always is. We need a green generation, one that is deeply connected to the natural world and can tap into all it has to teach us. In order for students to create green solutions, we must rip open our traditional classrooms and schools and both bring nature in and let the students out so that their investigations and innovations may be inspired by the highly effective and powerful systems naturally found all around and within us.

Hello from Hawaii! The start of the Nature series

Have I mentioned yet that I am currently stationed in Hawaii?? I guess I probably should. At the end of 2012, I left Seattle, and my beloved preschool, Bella Mente, with my partner Dylan in search of a home. Ever since I left for college and my mom moved into a new house, I have been leading this transient, “move-every year” lifestyle. Although Dylan and I set out for Seattle with the possibility of it becoming our new home, we quickly realized that it was too far from family and lacked that clichéd home-sweet-home feeling. His family always rented and they moved around all the time so both of us decided that it was high time we find ourselves a place to settle into more permanently.

As we pulled up to the farm for the first time I thought to myself, Hawaii is going to be good for us

It’s kind of a long story and I’m not going to get into the details, but we ended up in Hawaii for four months, which is even further from home than Seattle was since we are both from New England, but in the long run this is bringing us closer to what we are ultimately seeking. The Central Coast of Maine is where we plan to make our home once we are ready. So then why Hawaii, one might ask. Well the idea of home, is about more than just a location and a house for us, it is about a lifestyle and the lifestyle we are after is one of self-sufficiency. We want to become farmers, and so we are in Hawaii through the WWOOF program, learning to live off the land and test out the farming life. At the same time, we are giving ourselves the chance to have one last big and crazy adventure, refresh ourselves and develop some healthier habits, and get some much needed Vitamin D.  

www.thegardenofenchantment.com

Since I am going to be surrounded by nature for the next few months, I have decided to start my first series of themed blog posts on the subject. This topic is a big one and will definitely require being broken down into multiple posts to avoid overwhelming you, my wonderful readers. It made sense to me to do this now since I was going to get to it at some point anyway. If you have been to my Pinterest page, you’ll notice I devote quite a bit of energy to showcasing various ways of incorporating the natural world into the lives of children, in the classroom and the home.

Following the Reggio Approach, I believe that by surrounding children with natural accents and materials, and exposing them to real live nature, we as educators and parents can help foster a relationship between the two. Children who grow up connected with their environment and the natural world grow up with a deeper respect for it and that makes a huge difference. We need more children who will grow into adults who care about and want to live in harmony with our planet rather than continuing to deplete it until it is all dried up. We need creative thinkers who will work with rather than against their environments to create a more sustainable and successful future for everyone.

Great example of a nature-infused classroom from http://earlylife.com.au/info/

Nature is on my mind and is deeply entrenched in my everyday experience and my current work with children, or with little K anyway. K is the going-on-two year old daughter of our host family whom I spend a good chunk of my time with each weekday (about 3-4 hours each morning), hanging out on the farm and learning together. You are bound to hear more about my adventures with K throughout the next few months while we are in Hawaii since I get to give her my everything as a teacher. It has been a while since I’ve done one-on-one work with kids but I am super excited. My biggest frustration working at a big preschool was that I never had enough time, energy or attention to give to each child in my class. Now K has my undivided every day and I get to experience the opposite end of the spectrum for a while.

The roaming chicken coop in the mango orchard at K's house

We just finished our first week of work here at the farm so K and I are still getting to know one another and I am still getting to know the farm, the island, and the people who I am sharing this beautiful space with. It is amazing having come from working with urban children in Seattle to be here working with a little one who spends her days among the food in the garden, the geckos all around us, and the hot, hot sun. In the mornings we feed the chickens together and walk around the farm checking on the progress of the various crops until the hot sun sends us inside to read in the cool of K’s tile-covered bedroom floor.

Since Dylan and I have arrived on the farm, K has taken a serious interest in food and cooking. A few weeks ago she began weaning off of nursing and eating more and more solid foods. At first, her mother told me, she was quite resistant but suddenly she has become an adventurous little eater, more so than most adults I know. At her age, she is soaking everything in like a sponge so being around the garden and so many people who work with and love good food means that she is beginning to develop quite the sophisticated palate.

One of K's salads ready to eat!

We spend at least an hour each morning in food-related creative play games and actual preparation of meals for her. The first night we arrived, we had a family dinner that featured a big salad that K watched her mother prepare. Since then, she and I have been making “salads” for Dylan as he works nearby. K’s salads consist of shredded leaves that were trimmed and discarded off the hedges by her house and we put them in a wooden salad bowl. I ask her how she wants to dress them and sometimes she wants salad dressing, other times she prefers just olive oil and salt, and sometimes she wants pepper, mangoes, and avocado too. She tosses it with her hands and gets a stick that she calls a fork and we deliver it to Dylan, who kindly pretends to eat her carefully prepared meal.

Her interest in food has got me thinking about fashioning an outdoor play kitchen for little K so we can take her creative play to another level, introducing new dishes, new kitchen tools, and new preparations methods. This way K can continue to pursue her newfound interest in cooking and eating while at the same time developing those essential fine motor skills as she rips and grasps and handles the materials. Over time I have collected a handful of great examples of play kitchens on Pinterest and will continue to add a ton more as I delve deeper into my research on the topic so check out and follow my education boards for more inspiration for your own classrooms and homes.

I love this outdoor play kitchen set up from pre-schoolplay.blogspot.com

Though most kids at some point take an interest in kitchen play, K is not yet two and her knowledge of food and her adventurous palate are likely connected to her upbringing here on the farm. She spends a lot of time around food in every stage of its production and so almost nothing on her plate is unfamiliar to her. Growing up as an active participant in her own nourishment will likely be a valuable asset to her in the future and I know it makes life a lot easier for her parents who never have to worry about what to feed her. K takes part in deciding what she eats and her preferences right now are eggs, fish, mangoes, raspberries, purple potatoes, broccoli, kefir, olives, and she’s always up for trying something new.

The main garden of the farm where K helps harvest her dinners, she loves to nibble on the broccoli florets as we go.

I have already salvaged an old frying pan that a neighbor was throwing away and so hopefully by the end of the week I will have a good start on K’s play kitchen to show you and more stories to report about K’s continued interest in food. If there’s anything I have learned so far in my week with K it is that continued exposure to a wide variety of foods certainly impacts what a child will and won’t eat. K also happens to be a pretty strong-willed little girl so I’m willing to bet that getting a say as to what goes into her meals makes a big difference too. Her only options are healthy ones so it really doesn’t matter what she picks because anything she chooses is going to be good for her. Being a food person myself, she’s my kind of eater and I can’t wait to see where we go from here.

This simple model from natureforkids.net is similar to what I'll try to fashion for K

Natural Elements in the Classroom

Both the Reggio Approach and the Montessori Method (two models of education that I very much support and admire) emphasize the use of natural materials in the classroom. Now I cannot speak much for Montessori because my background is in Reggio, but I imagine the reasons for this emphasis are quite similar. What does this mean exactly, natural elements in the classroom? Well, rather than using plastic tables and workbenches, there are wooden ones. Instead of storing materials in brightly colored plastic bins, you will find glass jars, metal tins, and wicker baskets lining the wooden shelves and tables in these kinds of classrooms. Rather than plastic cars and blocks you would find metal and wooden ones in children's hands. In place of those crinkly plastic floor activity mats, artist's smocks, and costume masks, cloth ones are used. Do you notice a pattern here? Plastic is as artificial a material as one can find and while there are plenty of affordable toys and play materials available, their more natural counterparts offer so many more benefits (not to mention that plastic is often the uglier choice). You might think that beauty is pretty low on the priority list when designing and filling a classroom, and that kids do not notice such things, but the Reggio Approach takes aesthetics quite seriously (both Reggio and Montessori come from Italy after all, where art and beauty are ingrained in the culture) and with good reason.

We have all seen those classrooms with white vinyl flooring, awful fluorescent overhead lighting, and plastic primary colors all over the place. I would never use these elements to decorate my own living or workspace, so why would I want to subject my children and students to such an unappealing work/play environment? When given the choice, why choose tacky over artful? In the Reggio Approach, as in the Montessori Method, every aspect of and material in the classroom environment is chosen thoughtfully and purposefully.

Not only do natural materials create a more visually appealing space, but they serve the purpose of fostering a connection to the natural world, which is especially important in more urban schools where exposure to nature is often quite limited. So not only do you want to switch out your plastics, but also offer actual items from nature as play materials, like pine cones, leaves, dried flower, tree slices, etc. for creative play and exploration. The more time children spend around these materials, the more comfortable they are with them and come to prefer them over the unsustainable, non-environmentally-friendly plastics. Basic values are being built and shaped here, however subtle they might be. We need our next generation of students to have a deeper connection to and appreciation for the natural world so that they will help preserve it rather than continue to destroy it the way past and present generations (often unintentionally) have. Using natural materials is a way to bring these kinds of ideas into awareness without the annoying lectures and posters and other stuff that gets labeled as “liberal propaganda.”

In addition to the benefits of using more natural materials already discussed, many of these items can be made by hand, thus saving a bunch of cash to be used for field trips, better quality food, paying an extra part-time teacher, or just getting the bills taken care of. I especially recommend making many of these items (check out my DIY Classroom board on Pinterest for project ideas) with or around your kids because not only does it show them how things are made, but it inspires them to get more creative and innovative, opening up new uses for the materials available to them.

By building things with kids, they learn many self-reliance skills, safety and math skills, problem solving and critical thinking skills that inspire them to embark on projects of their own. These are the skills you get to model when doing such projects in the classroom and at home that are simply not feasible when working with plastics. Most plastic toys cannot be made at home by the average person and cannot be repaired when broken, so they perpetuate the throw-away culture and remove children from understanding the process of how things are made and fixed. It is from understanding and experience that respect for materials and the natural world are born, not to mention the respect your kids will have for you (and themselves) when they see what you (and they) are capable of.

*If you want more examples and ideas of natural materials in the classroom, and/or are curious where these images came from, check out my corresponding Pinterest page. All of these images were found through basic Google searches and scanning classroom ideas on Pinterest. I do not take credit for these pictures, I am merely a researcher sharing what I have found.