Urban Nature Families Play Together

 

Today was a gorgeous sunny day for our first Urban Nature Families Play and Learn.  We had a total of five children attend, three parents, and two grandparents.  The kids had a great time – expressed by the way kids and adults were engaged and how they attended for almost two hours, as well as several positive comments.  Today’s activities were:

A watering station, where kids took small containers of water and scooped water from a larger container and then delivered to the very thirsty plants.  ( This activity reminds us that there is much we could do at the center in terms of the small garden beds) Future activities could include- making garden flags, adding to beds, making signs to identify plants, or even just welcoming signs.

An art table that included both natural items as well as feathers, and the beloved googely eyes!  At this station the kis used a glue water mixture and stuck items/ objects on “matte” board – which was just cardboard

Story time:   The story was Subway Sparrow one of my favorite preschool stories since it has trains and diverse people (young to old, English to Polish to Spanish Speaking)  working together to solve the problem of getting a sparrow off of the train. Then during snack we also read another story: The Tree in the Ancient Forest.

We had a couple of other activities set out including balls and rings, but these were explored by kids only briefly.

The parachute: We started this activity with Ring a Round a Rosie and then play some “wave” games, ball toss games and general kid mayhem.  With so many adults and so few kids the games all felt safe. 

Finally we went on our walk to the Cheasty Greenspace.  It was a hot day and the walk is all uphill, but there were no complaints, just pleasant sighs of joy and amazement when we got to the woods.   In the woods kids mostly played in one relatively open area.  They touched moss, made tree rubbings, and had a generally nice time.  One boy and his dad ran the hiking loop!  My boys slowly walked the loop and found BIG sticks.

Future activities may include: more crayon  rubbings, but using leaves, and cardboard to make a firm backing.  We also could give more time to explore & build forts or make homes for imaginary friends.  S worked quite hard on making a moss covered bed for his elephant.

Future questions to consider are:  Do we just start play group in the woods?   Do we use a form of transportation?   We just want to be as family friendly as we can be- while encouraging outdoor play.  Maybe I will even make a flyer to share with parents about how to add outdoor play to their lives/ the benefits of it.

A Children's Garden

Today the boys attended a Children's Garden Preschool Class put on by the Seattle Tilth. The boys loved it.  Actually S. was happy from the very beginning.  He loved entering the garden from through the archway.  He liked discovering mosaic tile steps that led him up into a garden bed.  He enjoyed being a butterfly.  T was slower to warm up to the activities, but they were so hands on, there was no way for him not to engage.

The activities were  the kinds of things you would expect from a garden:

• making suntea with the herbs

•  collecting seeds from the flowers and then decorating the seed envelopes

• studying things with magnifiers

• finding snack 

• and making crowns/ and bouquets. 

The teacher even read the fabulous story: The Reason for a Flower

What made the day work however was the way that the teacher and student interns connected with the children: their genuineness & calmness.  The way they casually led them to the worm bin after snack and started discovering worms and slugs with the kids & songs at just the right times.

Leading activities with children is an art: part planning, part spontaneity, and lots of love.
It is also allowing children to make connections to the natural world around them.

Reclaiming the Wild

In small pockets across the city, volunteer work crews are reclaiming greenspaces and returning them to a natural state.  They are removing the years of invasive overgrowth, the layers of garbage and finding beautiful old growth trees, snags, and vegetation.  Then they are planting new native plant starts and designing and placing new trails so that people can enjoy access to these great natural areas. I just recently learned about an amazing organization the Nature Consortium that helps organized work parties and even includes art as part of the restoration process. 

However on a purely neighborhood level the other day my family visited a local greenspace.  The Cheasty Greenspace.   It was volunteer work day and folks were working hard at adding gravel to the trails.  It was on a steep area and it wasn't really the type of job that 3 year olds could help with, however, papa joined the crew and the boys and I played in the woods with another neighborhood child.   The other boy showed my boys a fort in the trees.  And it was wonderful to see the kids scramble over logs and under boughs in order to get to the "hideout."

This week I will be leading a play group for kids 0-4 on a hike in this same place.  It is always hard to imagine how the day will unfold as children always bring their own interest.  My goal will be: Make families feel like this greenspace is a good place to just go and explore.  Watch. Learn, Plan for future events. 


Finally, here is just an interesting link for making birdfeeders with young children.  I have yet to try it but it looked interesting.

Block Party

 

Mostly I write about sharing nature in the urban environment, but what keeps my family here in the city,  besides work and car less commutes, is the community.  It is the backdrop of our lives and we wind through it on a daily basis.  We are always aware of it, but just as on a hike in the woods even when we think we are aware many things go unnoticed or nameless.  Today people we had previously only passed with a brief nod of the head or smile- had names.

Last night our neighborhood celebrated Neighborhood Night Out, a nationally celebrated day for block parties.   It is in part to know your neighbors and fight crime, but is also to develop relationships.  It was amazing!  A small group of neighbors who barely knew one another communicated by email to plan the event pulled it off with remarkable success.

Kids were biking and scootering around the street as soon as the block had been closed to vehicle traffic.   Tables were converged to make a giant potluck buffet and dinner table.  A five year old was the official face painter.

A street pinball game was constructed to take advantage of our street’s slope.    The construction of it being nearly as exciting as the myriad of ways that people played the game. 

In another area t-shirt paints and t-shirts were set out.  Artists emerged from the very youngest of neighbors to the oldest!

Later the ax and wood came out.  Young city folks split wood; learned by doing.   A fire was built and s’mores were eaten. 

Our block ,where most of the time the only walking and biking occurs as people pass through, showed that it truly is a community.  We just had to have the opportunity to get out of our houses, past our front yards and into the street.

It made me wonder how we could encourage this type of behavior more often.  Carless Streets are one way......Community art that slows people down or makes people stop and interact.   Nature that invites investigation & conversation and brings people to their boulevards to water and pull weeds. 

Suburban vs. Urban Nature Kids

The first two years of my children's lives we spent completely locally in our urban community.  We traveled almost solely by public transit or on foot.  When the boys turned two we started to venture out a bit more.  They could face forward in their car seats and we could talk about where we were going.  We became regular visitors of the Mercer Slough and my kids new the route by tunnel, lake, tunnel lake, and then exit.  We hiked on the east side of the park again and again so that my kids could tell the seasons were changing based on what they saw.  On our return trip we would stop on Mercer Island at Luther Burbank Park where we would go down to the water and then spend time at the playground.   I figured if we were already out of the city we should enjoy the sights and make a full day of it.

Now I realize that the suburbs, having been placed more recently in nature, tend to have terrific places to play in nature: only you must drive to most of these sites.  Nothing is made for walking and there is very limited mass transit.   This raises the question for me: is it worth it to take these excursions or should we stay truly local, truly urban?  And if we do then what is it that we will find?

My thoughts are that we will mostly find areas that  the community is trying to return to natural states, with volunteer work parties.  The result is beautiful places and greater community: however there is also a lack of just wildness.  The type of wildness that comes from having old growth trees and snags - home of hawks and bears and cougars.  But, do children really notice this difference?  I have to say that they do.   If only I can judge it by the smiles that my boys have when hiking in a woods filled with moss and layers and layers of old growth forest.  Or as they walk across the furrowed land of a blueberry field that has been there for almost a century?

So if there is this difference, then how do we make these suburban nature areas accessible to everyone?  And why don't suburbanites demand it?  Do people really like to ride in their cars from one parking lot to another so they can experience nature?   And will this nature be preserved?   A recent hike after a class offered for children by Tilth near the Pickering barn in Issaquah makes me worried.  We were on a nature trail, near a river and beautiful old trees when we hear and then see construction vehicles.  It doesn't seem like you should see bulldozers clearcutting an area in the middle of your natural area?  What does the osprey we saw perched on the old growth snag think?  What is the future for this place?

Is it Summer?

It was a busy month.   Sam's almost daily question from May through June: "Is it summer yet?"   It has finally been answered in a myriad of ways this past month even though only recently have the temperatures in the NW felt like summer.

Now it is I who ask, "Is this summer?" and the kids smile and say yes while they
are eating strawberries, then raspberries from our garden
watching butterflies and hummingbirds flit from flower to flower
swinging shoeless in the hammock
swimming in a lake
riding bikes to an outdoor concert
hiking in the woods and then picking blueberries
and finally wrapping up the day with a piece of corn on the cob or a special ice cream treat.

How does your family recognize the seasons? What traditions do you celebrate?