Developing a Sense of Place

Our closest natural urban park is Seward Park in Seattle.  The Audubon runs the Environmental Learning Center which offers a lovely Toddler Tales and Trails program.  It wasn't until I mentioned to my boys that the lead early education teacher Cadi was leaving that I realized what an influence this park program had had on my family.  Even though we did not attend weekly; we went regularly over the years.  They were sad about Cadi's departure and wanted to go to her last class and say goodbye even though they had aged out of the 0-3 year old Wednesday class.  I am glad we went.

There is something very special about having been to the same place for years, walking the same trails, and seeing the same people.   As soon as we got to the center the boys were ready to run up the stairs even while I paid the $2 per child fee.  There is a comfort in going to a class whose routine is the same: from opening to closing.  The boys knew what to expect, some songs, some stories, a bit of counting and a hike.  The class didn't let them down.  We even went home with a new song to sing about fish.  

The nature walk is where I am most thankful that we have gone to one place again and again.  The boys know where to look for the "squirrel log" with its telltale sign of douglas fir scales scattered about  and the lightening tree which although burned out is still hosting young branches of big leaf maple.  They hug their friend a newly planted Cedar tree and notice the differences a season makes along the trail.  T even picked up two Douglas Fir cones and noted, "mama look one is open and one is closed.  This one feels pointy."  Although T may not know it he is developing scientific reasoning and skills that will be a scaffold to future learning about cones.  

My children's deep understanding of this single path behind the education center gives my children confidence that they take with them when we go a little farther into the NW wilderness. When my boys feel the soft leaves of the thimbleberry plant or notice the pokey leaves of the oregon grape plant they feel a connection to home.  David Orr writes about Place and Pedagogy in the book Ecological Literacy:Educating Our Children for a Sustainable World.  He references the work of Paul Shepard who writes that writes about "terrain structure" and how it shapes how we learn and who we become.  I  am confident that by giving young children deep knowledge of place it offers grounding in a world that is often filled with dislocation.