Walking the Land

One of the tremendous joys about being with my boys full time is that we fill our moments and days with small things. We watch they "baby flowers"- daffodils turn from just leaves or a bud, into a blossom. We walk the perimeter of our yard surveying for anything new. Ann Pelo in the book she edits called Rethinking Early Childhood Education has a section about how to Cultivate a sense of place — of belonging to a particular patch of earth and sky — and a connection to the earth and its creatures. To cultivate such a sense of place in my boys' world is so important to me.

For this reason we note the landmarks of the natural environment and those of the urban environment. In our yard it is quite easy and safe, but as we venture out into the urban world of sidewalks, streets and shops,our stops alternate between natural finds and driveways. The boys call out "baby flowers" as well as "no cars" as we pass by driveways or stop at crosswalks. Instead of the changing plant life we notice the changes in shop and restaurant window displays.

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Pine cones

We collect pine cones from different trees. I love the way my boys, just learning to talk and put two words together say, "pine cone." They always say it with such glee and excitement, whether they have just found a cone on the window ledge, or in the grass outside, or perhaps they are picking it up and putting it in their bike storage compartment as treasure. Pine cones are wonderful.

We have been finding various uses: from adding them to the sandbox,putting them in and dumping them out of dump trucks,making spinning tops, to counting- even though two is our highest number. Since my boys are learning Spanish they usually go- "uno, dos...dos pinecones."

There is a debate in nature education about how much information to give children. Do they need to correctly identify something or is it enough to know that a bird is a bird or a pine cone is a pine cone despite its individual differences? Currently my philosophy is a balance. I will present things with a both general and specific names and allow the children to choose how to name it. Most importantly we will look for differences in things. For example with pine cones which is a general group of cones and can be from various trees in the pine family we notice which ones are big, little, have "mouse tails" or are pointy. We practice the art of observation, perhaps the most basic skill of a naturalist or scientist. Whether my children say this is a cedar, a douglas fir, or a larch cone at this time makes no difference to me. However, I will use the more specific name when I tell them something special about the cone.

Often naturalists tell the story of the mouse tails and why you can see them in a douglas fir cone. There are many versions of this story and several picture books as well. I think this works wonderful for older preschoolers, but for my young children I think it is just fine to let them know that pine cones can be seeds, they can be food for animals, and that they can fall in the forest. Lately we have been reading The Ancient Tree in the Forest a beautifully written book by Carol Reed-Jones and illustrated by Christopher Canyon. My boys come up to me and say "read." However they don't want me to read the whole book, just the page with the martin almost getting hit by the falling pine cone and then occasionally the next page where the perspective changes and now the cone is small and the tree big.

The Soundscape of our Lives

The cityscape is full of sounds. Although the sounds I long to hear and point out to my children are the sounds of bird calls, in a single minute pause yesterday we heard: a train whistle, airplane, various birds (chickadees and crows) and the hum of cars passing on the highway a block and a half away. It reminded me of how far away the city is from quiet and the acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton's search for one square inch of silence. He found the quietest place in the United States to be in the Hoh Rainforest of the Olympic National Park where you can hear only a diverse natural soundscape combined with substantial periods of natural quiet. http://onesquareinch.org/

Hempton's organization now strives to maintain this quiet. As a member of an urban community I wonder what we can do to help quiet the city. My first thought is to move lightly by foot travel and bikes as often as possible and use people powered tools to maintain yards (not loud gas mowers like I still have). Can you think of others?

Over our wonderful larger parks I also wonder if there is a way to create no fly zones. Most recently I was walking in Seward Park when I noticed there is significant small aircraft that flies overhead. Is this necessary? If it has an effect on me, what is all this noise pollution on the wildlife that lives there?

Despite all the noise, it appears that we can stop and listen for the unique and individual sounds that surround us. A favorite activity that I have done with grade school students is to stop along a forest path and do a sound map, where students document the sounds that they hear around them. Students are often amazed at all the "noise" you can hear even in a semi-remote place.

We can also learn to appreciate the sounds in our communities by making recordings and let those tell our stories. I once taught a lesson where I had recorded sounds from a walk around our city's International District. I had students stop and listen and write a story of what they heard through the sound.

Sound is the background of our lives, but as a mother I want to pay attention to the impact it has on my children and community. Do the sounds we hear make us feel like people and animals are vibrant and healthy or are they stifling, distancing, and a nuisance? Can a smiling face waving at us from beside the sound make a difference? I think so.

Fun Bird Song

These days you can't miss the birds and we enjoy them daily. We read about them. We have little stuffed birds that make bird calls. We have a favorite bird cd by Elizabeth Mitchell You Are My Little Bird Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. We also sing/chant about them:

Way up in the sky
The little birds fly
Way down in the nest
The little birds rest
With a wing on their left
And a wing on their right
The little birds lay down for the night
Shhh! They're sleeping.
Then up comes the sun
The dew falls away
"Good morning,"" Good morning!"
The little birds say.


I am not sure who wrote this song. I learned it over ten years ago as a Daycamp Naturalist at Discovery Park and it still sticks in my head. Add in hand motions and for older kids they can mimic and repeat each line. Change tone of voice to give lines expression.

Beyond Ecophobia

The challenges of getting children safely outside in urban environments can be overwhelming. Today I stopped with my children at a city park for a bit of stretching since we had been running an out of town errand. As we started to play I noticed a black cloud of smoke come from a large machine across the street. It took me a few minutes to decide that this area was not a healthy place to be playing. My boys were happily engaged in the new play structures and there were beautiful trees on two sides of us. Nonetheless, the more I thought about it I realized that this pollution had to be unregulated and even though the black cloud was gone the construction zone was continuing to demolish and clear a site right across the street from where we were playing. As a parent you can't help but worry about our environment, but the goal is to keep that fear from your children as you gently guide them to healthy places.

So it was fitting that as my boys napped I wrote my congressional delegates to please to support critical protections for the health of our air and water . See http://environmentalpriorities.org/. I also re-read a book called Beyond Ecophobia: Reclaiming the Heart in Nature Education by David Sobel published by the Orion Society. Sobel states in it that it is important that young people experience nature and learn to love nature before they have to fight to protect it. Two quotes I will ponder from his book:

By John Burroughs, "knowledge without love will not stick. But if love comes first, knowledge is sure to follow."

By Thoreau, "the more slowly a tree grows at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think the same is true of human beings. "

I have been re-reading a book called Ecological Identity by Mitchell Thomashow. A quote that I read a few days ago that has been standing out in my mind is by Joseph Meeker from his book Minding the Earth. "It is too much to say that you are what you read in the morning, but it is a sure bet that you aren't what you don't. A morning that begins with numbers, words, or machines is likely to turn into a day filled with the same things. When a scanning of sky, trees, and birds begins the day, it could still turn out to be dominated by words and machines, but at least there would be a natural perspective to provide the larger context. A day that starts with a recognition of the living process can't be all that bad."

The way I try to greet the boys in the morning is to hold them and look out the window. We watch for the sun coming up and then the birds waking. We often see a lone gull catching sun on its wings or the crows leaving their night resting trees making the loud caw caw- which I sometimes think was my boys' first words.

A favorite activity of the boys is to look out the window and watch the cars pass by. Often the most cars pass by just as they are waking up in the morning or in the afternoon from nap, since that is when the nearby school starts and finishes. I long for the days when children actually walked to school and I love the idea of walking school buses more info and encouraging walkable communities. A great Seattle resource is at http://feetfirst.info/. In anycase, I can sometimes distract the boys from their car watching if they find a "natural mystery" on the window sill ( a pine cone, leaf, or toy filled with greens).

Will our boys have a ecological identity and a connection to nature due to their early experiences? Some theorists according to Thomashaw maintain that it is during middle childhood ages 9-12 when place making occurs and children expand their sense of self that the most memory making and natural world connection occurs. I wonder if what I do with my toddlers will prepare them to have a deeper experience in nature at those critical years. If only the enchantment can last.

Family Biking

Our family likes to bike. We have been thinking about getting a family bike, but I wonder if it is not just better for the boys to learn to travel on their own. Today in an urban adventure the boys rode seven blocks to the park. We stopped and watched many trucks- as they are doing in this photo. We crossed several streets. The way that we do it is that I put their bikes over the double strollers handle bars. Then I push the stroller and have the boys walk close to me. It is a bit stressful for me, but they seem calm enough about it. When we finally reached the park, the boys rode up and down a small hill underneath a robin and beside a bush where we could hear another bird.

Birds are a great resource for nature in the city. Just recently we started a bird feeder and now we don't just watch cars out the window; we watch birds too.

Getting started

Our family does urban treks. We started when our boys were four months old, journeying by double stroller. Our radius was a bit larger when we had wheels. Now we usually all travel by foot since we have two toddling youngsters (2 year old boys). Our current radius is about 7 blocks but that can get us to a bus, a lightrail train, and through plenty of terrain.

This blog is going to be a bit of a journal of what we do to find nature in our urban environment. Hopefully we will inspire others to do the same. We believe that by getting out on our streets, visiting our local parks, and paying attention to our community, that just maybe we can help make it more vital. Meanwhile, maybe we can be a bit more healthy. Find out more by reading links.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/01/04/how_the_city_hurts_your_brain/