FOREWORD

Mary Rivkin, PhD

“It’s such a nice day! Let’s get the kids outside. Do something fun as a family!”

If you have ever said this or something like it, isn’t the next sentence about what to do? You start to think what is possible, where is possible, and what is needed besides snacks. Maybe you grew up without playing outdoors much or in a different area where the outdoors had different things to do. This book can help you with what’s next.

Monica Wiedel-Lubinski and Karen Madigan are seasoned outdoor teachers of young and elementary children. They have a strong understanding of what the outdoors offers to children for play and interest, and how adults and children can enjoy nature activities together. They also know that in the last 100 years or so, children have had increasingly less time outdoors, and firsthand knowledge about nature has decreased. Thus, parents and children are often beginners together in their nature explorations. This is particularly true in our migratory society, where contemporary families often live far from landscapes familiar to the adults. I observe my son, from Maryland’s well-watered green fields and forests, now appreciating the subtle shades of olive, brown, and gray in the shrubs and grasses on the stony hillsides of Southern California. He and his three-year-old child roam trails and meadows, day by day making this their “home” country. “Hear that owl?” one will ask. Or “Where did the tadpoles go?” Child and father are learning together about this rich natural environment.

The authors’ extensive teaching experiences are rooted in the mid-Atlantic states, and their deep array of activities reflect this background. Colleagues from other places also have contributed to the array. Every activity has been tested, tried numerous times, enjoyed, and found practical. Not every activity is doable in every location (for example, maple trees require long periods of cold weather to make the sap for maple syrup), yet all the ideas behind them can be widely applied. Some of the activities, such as boiling maple sap, work better with the supervision provided by parents, which is closer than that in a typical class. And often parents like a concrete result from their actions, so numerous activities satisfy that desire, such as the cozy stick houses. Children often are less concerned with making finished products than experimenting with, managing, rearranging, and playing with objects and environments, so activities are advised to those ends as well.

The book has a seasonal organization, but the standard four seasons don’t have the same dates everywhere. Winter comes earlier and leaves later in northern parts of the Earth, and thus a gardening project in Maine has to be much more mindful of this short growing season than one in Arizona. Seasons are termed summer, autumn, winter, and spring, but families may learn other names related to their particular environment, such as “hurricane,” “planting,” or “fishing.” And furthermore, as environmentalist in her book The Sense of Wonder, Rachel Carson noted, “There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.” Young children sensitive to the routines of their individual lives can also tune in to, and find comfort in, nature’s routines. In a graceful touch, Monica and Karen honor the primacy of the seasons with an original poem beginning each section.

The season poems along with many others, both original and well-known, exemplify a theme of this book: many modes of expression and response to natural phenomena. Painting, dancing, drawing, writing, building, making and using butterfly wings, fingerplays, singing, inventing, imitating, and caring for things are major observable responses. Sometimes children silently observe and later, sometimes much later, perhaps at bedtime, demonstrate what they have taken in. Notably, in this book, naming things is much less important than noticing, observing, and re-creating through multiple means. Young children are open to learning in many ways—their active minds range quickly over possibilities. If play with others—siblings, parents, friends—can be part of the response, so much the better. Play, with its fun and freedom, brings the concepts, vocabulary, social and motor skills, and other desirables along in its wake. And indeed, the lightness of the authors’ prose underlines this.

A second theme of this book is nature’s abundance. Layers of crispy bright leaves invite running, shuffling, flinging, collecting, sorting, and crafting. If a parent shakes a just-ready branch of blossoms over a child, the shower is delighting. Pinecones, fir cones, gleaming chestnuts, sprouting acorns, flying seeds from dandelions, milkweed, thistles. Brown cattail heads packed with seeds. Golden fields of mustard and dandelions. Bushes drooping with sweet berries. Stones, pebbles, gravel, broken shell bits, whole shells. So much to touch, and finger, and smell, and pinch, and, if irresistible, stash in a pocket. So much to love, really. And different from inside, not needing to be put away. Everything is where it belongs already but can be played with. Snowflakes, raindrops, rainy creeks. Such things are close at hand, but take a look around—how many trees, hills, mountains? Look up, so many clouds changing all the time, in different shapes and sizes. On a clear night, note the abundance of stars, especially in a dark area. Truly there is plenty to go around, to share together, to rejoice in.

Much of the abundance shows visual beauty, even if transitory. Bright leaves turn dull brown, flowers wither, and snowflakes melt. The authors provide ways for children to savor and save beauty through art activities, such as leaf wreaths and sun catchers, and poems help children remember what they have experienced. Beauty is important in education because, as Rachel Carson also wrote, “Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.” When we help children notice beauty, their spirits are nourished.

This is a book to page through, looking for ideas that interest you. Monica and Karen invite you to “take a wander.” Take a wonder too, because there is so much to this world we live in and noticing and cherishing can be a richly rewarding part of your lives.