Although I credit my early childhood exposure to orchard, field, woods, and creek as the foundation for my understanding of the natural world, I would despair if I thought that same understanding is lost to children who grow up in urban, constructed places, or mostly indoors. My father told of swimming in Wissahickon Creek, a Schuylkill River tributary, and digging garnets out of the Wissahickon schist in Fairmount Park in his childhood in the city of Philadelphia in the 1920’s. The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education is where he might go today to learn about ecosystems in Philadelphia. My mother’s childhood was filled with box turtle sightings and catching gudgeon on the Patapsco River, on land that is now part of Patapsco Valley State Park in Maryland. I wish such experiences for all children.
Many of my students spend limited time in natural areas but their sense of wonder is not diminished when they encounter living organisms in human-constructed environments (indoors)—it just needs to be encouraged as the spider episode in class yesterday demonstrates:
As the children were gathered around listening to a teacher read aloud, one child drew their attention to a tiny spider slowly dropping on its thread in the center of the group. The teacher directed the children to move a bit and kept on reading. The discoverer came to tell me and get a small viewing container. This is what she told another teacher 15 minutes later, “I caught it from a web spinning from the ceiling. It looks like a bee because it has a ring of fur around its neck.” As they were lining up to leave the room I noticed she was empty-handed and I asked what happened to the spider. “I let it go back to its home.” She understood that the room was the spider’s habitat, an interior one.
Click on the word “Comments” below to share how your class experiences nature.
Peggy
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Science is the best subject for interacting with the world. There is so much to see and explore, starting with the wide angle and zooming in to get a real up-close view of everything. We are hatching ducklings in class. Yesterday, a student who was turning the eggs, noticed that one of them had cracked and leaked out all over the bottom of the incubator. Caught early, there wasn’t a big smell problem for us. A student found a dead wood boring bee so we brought it in to touch and look at under the QX3 microscope and hand lenses. We visit the vernal pool in back of the school, build our own machines, plant seeds and watch them grow, and visit the pumpkin patch and the zoo. That is only a small part of the activities but as you point out, there are experiences waiting for us to experience every day and everywhere. A great thing for teachers to do is grab your camera and record the event. Sometimes you are right in the middle of things and won’t find the moment to capture on video but do your best. The scientific process is going on and it’s a good idea to talk about the experience so the students can see their own learning.
I wish I was in Mrs. Poulin’s class! I applaud you for following the children’s interests and using the teachable moments that come your way. (How did the egg become cracked?)
Very cute story! I think that it is so important to be able to respond to a child’s interest and not to discourage them in thier choice of interests!