Weekend in the Woods: Weekend in the City

This past weekend I was privileged to get to take part in a Coyote Mentoring Experience at the Wilderness Awareness School in Duvall, WA.  The experience was inspiring on many fronts. Mainly,  it was exciting to be with so many people inspired to create a world that values nature and holistic human development.   The teachers were fabulous, experienced and passionate educators.

We learned about their Natural Learning Cycle and practiced many of the core routines that they have found lead to "nature connection" outlined in their book.    While many of the activities and practices were not new to me- it was encouraging to see it so succinctly outlined.   It makes it a wonderful way to be deliberate in planning nature experiences for children.

I come away from the weekend thinking about my intentions.  I have many: to build community, to teach my children ( and hopefully other children and families) to have a deep knowledge of the place they live in and I am now considering how learning survival and wilderness skills can lead to a richer personhood and in time community.

I am not sure where I will go with the new practices that I began while attending the weekend, however I realize they are already informing how I talk to my children.   The last words of one of the instructors when we left the experience was to go home and remember that others have been living lives too, while you were gone: Ask them questions.

So when I came home to my family I really listened, with a refreshed perspective, to what my family had experienced while I was gone.  I was truly happy to hear about their urban adventure with a make-shift carseat carrier  (they needed to haul two!) that they made all so that they could walk a half mile and take a train to the car rental shop so that they could visit friends in another town.   I enjoyed how they explained that they hadn't thought about the challenge of rain as they went, but how it didn't stop them.  I heard that that they had noticed an eagle soaring over our neighborhood as they walked and it reminded them of the time that they had seen an eagle being chased by crows.  They also informed me that there is another rooster somewhere near the train station & that they could hear its crow.  I asked if they had seen neighbors: they told me yes and named them but said that conversation was quite limited as they all were watching the library truck driver unload books from his truck and deliver them to our branch.

My whole family is learning the practice of paying attention: our natural world and our community is not removed from us. It surrounds us.

Measuring Success by the Smile

On Friday our boys participated in  a class at the local Arboretum.  It was fabulous.  Although it had a topic of the day- bats; the children and adults enjoyed it because of the delightful pacing.  Planned activities were interspersed with the children's own discoveries.  Mushrooms were bountiful today and the kids seemed to find them all.  Compost piles were heaped in different areas & Teacher Sarah allowed the children to explore them by climbing up  and over them.  For one child every pile of dirt begged poking at- and he found plenty of time to poke & dig.  Meanwhile,  a story about bats was woven throughout the day with science, art, literacy and physical activities.

The day started with open ended activities until everyone had gathered
Then the kids were able to touch a real bat specimen.
Kids were handed out a "rubber" bat and they learned the parts of the bat as well as developed a connection to it by carrying it around all day.
The kids began the day by using "echolocation" and learning one another's names.   The teacher said her name; the kids repeated it.
The kids were bats: looking for insects, looking for shelter.
Then they heard the story of  Stella Luna.
The children also learned about how a mother bat finds her baby bat with her own particular sound:Old film canisters were filled with different objects and the kids had to find the child who had the other one that sounded like theirs.
Then the kids played a game where the children had to find a tree to "sleep in" and when the sun came up and then when it was night they ran around catching insects.
In closing there was a painting activity.   A silhouette of a bat was taped onto a large piece of paper the kids were told to paint around the bat and then the bat was removed and they were supposed to see the "bat" on the paper.

As an observer/ participant mother along for the adventure I saw kids engaged all day, but also thriving with just some of the "free play" opportunities:  stopping to throw leaves, lay in the leaves, and look at the leaves.  Investigation of a nurse log that was filled with shelf mushrooms and had isopods crawling in and out of cracks.  Discovering HUGE leaves that were big enough to be umbrellas.

The day was so lovely &  it inspired my family to stay and experience the arboretum for another couple of hours....and bats became a topic of family discussions as well as other nocturnal animals.