Explore as a Family

What is the best way to get your kids excited about nature? Make your family time involve nature. Kids love spending time with their moms and dads and those moments are moments that they will never forget. If you can make your special family time happen in the great outdoors your children will automatically associate the outdoors with good times and will make it a priority for the rest of their lives and will then do the same when they raise a family.

Many people work long hours maybe even at more than one job and when they get home they just want to relax. Many families turn on the T.V. as soon as they get home and consider watching T.V. as family time. If you cut the T.V. and spend that time out in the backyard garden, at a local park, or on a neighborhood walk you can get exercise, spend valuable time together, and teach your children about the outdoors.


Also consider the family vacations you take. Do you visit large cities, watch movies, or visit theme parks or do you go camping, hiking, and backpacking as a family?

The way you choose to spend time together as a family does have a huge impact on who your children will be as adults. If it is important to you that your children have a love of nature then make an effort to explore nature as a family.

Guest Post: Nature journaling

Today we welcome a guest post from Melyna Harrison of Your Wild Child and Outdoor Baby Network.

To Thoreau’s eye a meadow was more then just undifferentiated green space, more than the green blur my college plant taxonomy professor tried to clear up for us. It was specific plants and creatures whose forms, colors and habits he knew well.

Almost all great naturalists, writers and artists were most certainly journal keepers. Journals develop an observant eye and acute senses. Journals help deepen perception and focus attention. Journaling reminds us that we all lead lives worthy of observation.

One thing I like to put in every journal is an observation log. Repeatedly collecting data at the same place provides a wealth of information to be used later on. The Observation Log does just that—it forces observation. Children begin to notice day-to-day or week-to-week changes. They can graph temperatures for a given month or year or average precipitation. Children can compare and contrast cloud cover at different times of day and look for correlations. The possibilities are endless and depend only on your creativity.

An observation log might look something like this:

OBSERVATION LOG
Place- Yellowstone National Park
Date- December 22, 2010
Time- 4:35 pm
Temperature- 5 F
Wind- Light, wispy breeze from west
Cloud Cover- Almost 100%, thin, low clouds
Precipitation- Very light snow, medium-sized flakes
What do you notice about this place?- Snow piling on the back of bison as they push the snow
with their massive heads looking for vegetation.

For the "What do you notice about this place?" question, Encourage kids to use descriptive words and to notice details. They don’t have to capture everything, but they should capture a of couple things well. Since this is a place they will be returning to, they should look for new details each time.
You can modify the categories, help younger children write the words down, or suggest they draw pictures. Nature journals are extremely adaptable.


Melynda Harrison is mom to two wild boys (ages 2.5 and 4), a writer, naturalist and ridiculously enthusiastic about playing outside with her family. She writes about connecting kids and nature at Your Wild Child and Outdoor Baby Network .

Nature Bingo: A Kids Nature Activity

Looking for a fun activity for your children to do in nature? Have you tried Nature Bingo? Nature Bingo is a fun and easy activity that is suitable for preschoolers through elementary ages children. This fun nature activity will have you kids busy searching for items in nature. It is like a nature scavenger hunt but when you find something you simply draw a picture of it and leave it behind for others to enjoy.

First, follow the link and print this page or make your own to suit the natural items you might find in your neck of the woods.

Then take your children to any natural area and send them out hunting for the items. When they find something on the page like a special rock, a pine cone, animal tracks, or a certain flower then have your child draw what they found right on the page.

Just like Bingo, if you get any four in a row you win. If you get four in a row then try and find as many more as you can.

This activity makes an afternoon in nature more fun and kids will learn more about the items they find and you can discuss what these items are doing in nature. Then my kids always enjoy looking over their drawing on the car ride home and talking about all the fun things we found. Drawing really makes the items come to life your your child's eyes and helps them remember more of what they experienced.

Go ahead, give it a try. Use mine or make your own.

Another option with younger children is to use pictures or clip art in the boxes and just have them search for items and check them off. For young children identifying items in nature is plenty fun but if the child can draw I recommend doing as described as above.

Have fun!

Print my game card here.

Make your own here.

Connecting Kids with Nature: Plant a Garden

One easy way to show children the wonderful powers of nature is to plant a backyard garden or to become active with a community garden. I think it is very important for kids to understand where food comes from. Many children these days think food just comes from the supermarket; all prepackaged and covered in corn syrup.

Growing food in your back yard is healthy, saves some money on the grocery bill, allows you time to spend time together as a family, and teaches kids how plants grow. Nothing makes me happier than to see my kids picking carrots out of the garden and taking a bite. My oldest daughter even sneaks tomatoes out of the garden and eats them like an apple.

The entire gardening process is a valuable lesson for children. My kids love helping dad prepare the soil, plant seeds, water the garden, pull weeds, and of course they love harvesting. They can also get involved in composting and seed collecting. Starting a garden in the spring is a great way to commit to teaching your kids about nature all summer long. The lessons your child will learn about growing food will affect your child for their entire lifetime.

I have talked about my favorite childhood memories and backyard gardening with my parents is definitely something I'll never forget. So if you already garden make sure to think of ways the kids can help out this year or if you don't garden why not start a small garden this year. If space is an issue start with one tomato plant in a planter on the patio.

Keeping Kids Engaged With Nature: A Final Destination

I personally love to go for super long hikes sometimes all day long. I have climbed many of the Colorado 14ers, some 13ers, and lots of peaks in Rocky Mountain National Park. When I first started trying to get my kids out into nature I started with really short nature walks. I figured this was all they could handle and it was just nice to be outside. So we would go to a familiar trail head walk out as far as we could then when the whining started we'd turn around and go back to the car.

This accomplished the goal of getting the kids outside but never really got them engaged in the hike itself. I realized that my personal love of hiking is all about the destination. While I like short walks in the woods it is getting to a destination that really inspires me. It is far more exciting to climb to a summit of a mountain, hike to a waterfall, or arrive at a unique rock outcropping than to just walk into the woods and the return the same way.

I have found the children really respond to a hike to a destination much better than just a hike. You can use it as a motivator to keep going. When the kids start to complain it is easy to get them back on track if you can say, "We are almost there".

Some of our favorite family hikes include a short walk to a Keyhole in a series of rocks called the devils backbone, a small rock cabin and overlook, an old cabin at bobcat ridge, waterfalls, or even a hike around a lake. Starting out with the goal of reaching something exciting always leads to a more successful hike.

Animal Tracks

One conversation that I use a lot with my own kids to keep them excited about a hike is to talk about the animals. My daughters love to think about what animals we might see, what signs we might find of animals, and what animals might we hear.

It seems strange to me that every child knows what an elephant, tiger, and lion look like but they don't know the difference between a fox and a coyote. Television and books are quick to point out exotic animals and the sounds they make but our children don't know anything about the animals that live all around them.

How to have fun with talking about animals:

• What might we see today?
  
• Where do they sleep?
  
• What do they eat?
  
• Identify animal tracks
  
• Identify animal scat
  
• What animals eat other animals? How do animals protect themselves?
  
• What animals hibernate in the winter
  
• Do the animals come from an egg or live birth?
  
• How do they use camouflage to blend in with their surroundings
  
• Do they migrate? Why do birds fly south in the winter?
  
• Are they scared of us or should we be scared of them?
  
• Do they live in large groups (herds) or live alone?
  
• If you find a hole in the ground guess what animals live in there.
  
• Stop and watch an ant hill. What are they doing? Where are they going?
  
• Find a feather. Who does it belong to?
  
• Find bones, skulls, fur. Who does it belong to? What probably happened?
  
• Discuss the food chain.
  
• How does everything in nature fit together? (ex. Bees pollinate flowers)

These are just a few examples of conversations to start with your children. Their imagination and questions will follow and before you know it you've got a full hike in. Remember, be sensitive with children about animals that may scare them. I'm careful with my children about Bears and Mountain Lions. You don't want to scare them into wanting to go back to the car.

Don't be afraid to tell your children that you don't know an answer to their question. When you get home look it up online. There is nothing better than learning about nature together.

What other animal conversations could you start with a child?