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!
In my opinion, no matter where you group up in you will still have some experiences with nature whether they have a small fee associated with them or not. Depending on where you grew up there may be some similar experiences or some different experiences, but by sharing these with others is how we find out about other locations. Some of the examples that I have had with nature throughout my live are getting to go to the apple orchard, going down to the river, going to Richardson Nature Center and the Audobon Center. The reason why I had all of these childhood experiences is because my parents philosophy was I want to make my children experience different places that we did not get to do when we were growing up. Most of the experiences that I had with nature took place with school, girl scouts, and other organizations in the community, so parents here are some resources to let your students get to explore nature.
Being as we have been students coming from different background there may be some student that get do a lot of activities with nature, but there may be others that have not gotten to do anything. We as future teachers need to represent ideas that students can learn from while they are inside and outside of the classroom that way the students get to use their exploring skills. Students retain more information when you vary your instruction every day. As teachers it is not always best to give students the answers on experiments the better approach is to have students use their critical thinking skills to come up with the answer. It is amazing how the students can use there creative minds to come up with something related to science when they are given the opportunity to experiment.
Thanks for the ideas for parents on exploring nature. I agree that young children can be deep thinkers and creative when given the opportunity!