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Sharing Nature
by Michele D.

"If a child is to keep alive his/her inborn sense of wonder…
he/she need the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, …"
Rachel Carson

You need not have a degree in biology to enjoy nature with your child. You can foster a sense of wonder in your children by sharing nature with them - and rekindle your own delight in nature. In each column, I will describe some great ways make the most of your time together - by having fun with nature!

Have fun!!

August 2006 - A is for Apple
September 2006 - Leaves
October 2006 - Pumpkin Explorations
November 2006 - Getting Ready for Winter
December 2006 - Animals in Winter
January 2007- Snow
February 2007 - The Color Red in Nature
March 2007 - Mud!
April 2007 - National Frog Month!
May 2007 - May Flowers
June 2007 - Busy Bees

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 A is for Apple
Apples are a great fall treat especially here in New England. After trying apple picking, either in the market or the orchard - try some of these fun activities. Apples are a great tool for teaching about colors, shapes and tastes.

Have an apple tasting. Cut different kinds of apples into slices and try them. Which ones are your favorites? If you have a few kids, you can try graphing the choices.

Try cutting a Red or Yellow Delicious apple around the middle (the equator). Open carefully and you will find a star with five seeds. This is great for making a fruit print. Put a small amount of paint on a plate, put the cut side of the apple in the paint, and blot the apple a few times on newspaper. Then put it down on paper and pull straight up. What other shapes can you cut the apple in?

Apples make great dried fruit snacks. Cut the apple in to thin pieces and dip into lemon juice to prevent browning. Place on a cookie sheet and put in a 200' oven for a few hours or until dry. This can also be done in a dehydrator. The apples are especially sweet this way.

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 Leaves

Leaf Prints
(Supplies: newspaper, white paper, finger paint, and leaves)
After raking leaves - and jumping in the piles a few times - gather a few of each different kind of leaf. Take them inside and spread out newspaper. Find the bumpy side of a leaf - the side with the raised veins. How does this side feel compared to the other side? Some leaves are hairy on the underside. Spread a thin layer of finger paint on the bumpy side of their leaves. Ask children to put their leaves, paint-side down, on white paper, place newspaper pages over them, and press to make prints. Children can then remove the newspaper and peel off the leaves (with clean fingers). This can be done on fabric too.

Quick Ideas:
*Trees for Lunch - what trees or leaves do we eat? Lettuce, spinach, cabbage…maple syrup (sap), cinnamon (bark), apples, pears, nuts…
• Maple hands - trace your hands and cut out to resemble a maple leaf
• Leaf music - watch the leaves fall, put on some music and pretend to be a leaf
• Leaf Suncatchers - Press leaves between two pieces of wax paper and iron. Cut out the leaves, punch holes on one end, and hang in the window.

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 Pumpkin Explorations

Fall is a glorious time for outdoor explorations with kids. The weather is cooler, the bugs aren't bothersome and there is very little mud. Fall in New England brings bountiful colors - vibrant oranges, deep reds, and bright yellows - not just in leaves, but also in wild flowers, fruits and vegetables.

One of the most fun fall fruit is the pumpkin. It is well loved by kids of all ages as jack-o-lanterns and turned in to yummy pumpkin treats. The freshest pumpkins are picked at the farmer's fields. Always choose fruit with the stem still attached and thump them. A ripe pumpkin sounds hollow.

Small pumpkins are usually a different variety of pumpkin than the big jack-o-lantern pumpkins. Sugar pumpkins are smaller, often darker and are used for making pies, cookies and other yummy treats. Larger pumpkins used for carving have watery flesh making them less desirable for eating.

Here are some fun ways to explore pumpkins together:

Pumpkins have ribs - grooves running from the "north pole" to the "south pole". Are they all the same? Do big pumpkins have deeper ribs than small ones?

Do big pumpkins have big seeds? Cut open different sized pumpkins, scoop out the seeds and find out. Do some pumpkins have more seeds than others?

After scooping the seeds out, you can clean and roast them in a hot oven for a few minutes. Try them with salt or lime and chili powder.

Pumpkins are great fun to count, roll, paint, and eat; no matter what size they are!

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 Getting Ready for Winter

What do we do to get ready for winter? What do animals do when it gets cold? They can be active like squirrels, hibernate like bats, migrate like birds, or leave their eggs to hatch in spring like most insects.

Many insect eating birds go south for the winter. Most insects die leaving eggs or larvae to start over in the spring. Look for Robins in the winter - their red breast fads to a reddish gray in the winter and they no longer eat worms. Robins switch over to eating berries.

If you put out food for the resident birds many will come to visit. Look for the Massachusetts State Bird - the Black- capped Chickadee at most every feeder. They are fun to watch and they say their name. Gather acorns and put them next to your feeder. Acorns are a favorite food of Blue Jays and Wild Turkeys.

Feeding the birds is a fun activity for all ages. Even the youngest of children delight in the antics of squirrels and the excitement of birds.

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 Animals in Winter

Animals have a few different ways of coping with the cold and dryness of winter. Some fly south, others hibernate, and some tough it out by growing extra fur, changing colors or hanging out with their friends.

Put out some bird seed and see who comes to visit. Consider popcorn and raisin or cranberry string on the trees outside for the holidays. Many birds flock together for the winter making it easier to find food. Try putting out some fruit as well. Robins, long though of as the harbingers of spring, eat fruit in the winter. What other animals visit the food? Look for signs of deer, squirrels, and rabbits. They may visit a feeder in the winter.

What other animals group up in the winter? Ladybugs often snuggle up for the winter. You might see some of them on your windows on a sunny day.

What do you do in the winter? Humans usually wear more clothing, eat more food, and snuggle more!

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 Snow

Snow is great fun to play in, on and with. After you have made some snowmen what do you do with a small child in the snow? Here are some fun ideas to get your kids looking forward to the snow!

Snow Math - Make lots and lots of snowballs. Make big ones and little ones, square ones and round ones. Try ordering them from smallest to biggest. Try using words like big, bigger and biggest and small, smaller and smallest. Sorting and ordering are great pre math skills to practice.

Snow Paint - Grab your watercolors, a brush and paint the snow. Watercolor paint works great in the snow. The colors will mix on snow making a rainbow. Mix colors on the snow and watch how the colors blend. You can also put food coloring in water and use spray bottles to paint the snow.

Snow Maze - After shoveling the driveway, shovel a path in your back yard. Make the path a circuit or a maze for kids to run thru. You can make rooms to stand in or dead ends. This is a great idea for little kids who are too small to walk in the snow. Dig out the sand box toys and play in the snow. You can use the pails to make great turrets for a snow fort or just for fun.

Snow walk - This is an activity for older kids. Take a walk and make a list of all the natural sounds you hear. Does the snow change the sounds? Can you hear things that are snow related such as animals walking on the snow or drips from melting snow? If you can, take the same walk on a cold day without snow. Are their differences in your list?

Enjoy the snow with your kids. It is a terrific chance to make lasting memories together!

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 The Color Red in Nature

The color red is easy to see in the winter against the white snow. Even though it is easy to see, usually the color red is a warning to other animals. Ladybugs are a bright shiny red to warn other animals not to eat them. The red color says, "I taste bad!" to other animals.

To make a fun ladybug, put your finger on a red ink pad or in a tiny amount of paint. Then you can 'stamp' a ladybug body on paper. You can add spots and legs.

If you take a walk in the woods this time of year, what red things can you find? A few things to look for are berries. Many different plants have red or orange-red berries that you can still see in winter. Only eat berries that come from the supermarket! Other red things you might see are birds. Male Cardinals are bright red to attract attention. Right now they want to attract a female's attention. Cardinals pair-bond early and will sometimes spend the winter together. They love sunflower seeds, so if you put a handful on the ground, you might attract this bright red fellow to your yard. Listen carefully when you see him; Cardinals have a beautiful whistle like song. The female Cardinal is a buttery gold color and unlike other female birds, she sings just like the male.

Fun things to do with the color red inside are to have a red day. Can you wear red and eat red food? Think about how red strawberries attract animals to eat them so their seeds move around and grow new plants. Play with red toys and red playdough. Have a red scavenger hunt in your house. You can set up a red basket or red wagon and then gather all the red things you see in a given room. Before you start, make a prediction, how many things do you think you will find? Did you guess too many or too few? Make a red collage. You can cut out red things from magazines or for younger kids tear red tissue paper and glue on to paper. You can add red glitter glue, red string, red stickers, and more.

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 Mud!

Mud is a fact of life in the spring. In the spring, we get lots of rain and snow melting that fills rivers, lakes and ponds. It is a large part of the water we drink. The mud made by spring rain and snow is also a whole lot of fun to play in too.

Take a mud walk. Put on your rain boots, extra pair of socks, and go out for a walk. Look at your footprints. Are they bigger or smaller than mom and dad's? Who can make the muddy prints last the longest on dry pavement or sidewalk? Does the mud make a sound when you walk in it? Read We're Going on a Bear Hunt, by Rosen and Oxenbury. They go through the funniest sounding mud!

Do a mud color hunt. Grab an old egg carton and see just how many mud-colored object you and your kids can find around the house. Make a guess as to who might find the most or which room has the most mud-colored stuff.

You can paint with mud. If it is warm enough, grab some big paper and paint with mud. This is messy and fun. You'll discover that there are many different colors of mud in your own yard. Each will have its own texture and consistency. For the less adventurous, paint with brown finger paint. You can add sand or shredded newsprint to make different textures.

Eat mud! You can make mud pies from mud, but it is much tastier to make your own delicious mud from chocolate pudding. Crush chocolate graham crackers in a baggie and sprinkle your 'dirt' on the mud. Another way to make edible 'mud' is to crush 6 chocolate graham crackers in a baggie and pour them into a cup. You'll need about a cup of crumbs. Add just enough milk to make mud and eat!

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 National Frog Month!

April is the perfect time of year to learn about metamorphosis. Metamorphosis means to change and one of the best spring creatures to watch change are frogs. The eggs hatch into tadpoles, the tadpoles grow into pollywogs and then frogs. Keeping them is easy. You need a container to keep them in. I like to see them so a clear-sided container is a must for me. Make sure it is clean and well rinsed. Keep the container in an area away from direct sun so it doesn't get too hot.

Just about any pond in the area has frog eggs this month. Check along the edges along branches or plants growing out of the water. Look for eggs with a dark center surrounded by a clear jelly. If the center is white, the egg is unfertilized and won't hatch.

Gently put a few, and only a few, eggs from a single mass into a bucket or jar to transport home. To keep the eggs healthy, put them in pond water and change it often. Include algae and plant material from the same pond to feed the tadpoles. Don't mix egg batches in the same container. They may eat each other when they hatch!

No matter what you collect, put them back in their home when they have legs and still have a tail. They need to re-acclimate to their home before leaving the pond.

Great Books to check out:
A Frog in the Bog - Karma Wilson
A Wide-Mouthed Frog - Jonathan Lambert

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 May Flowers

Bright sunshine and warm temperatures make spending time outdoors easy this time of year. Many flowers appear in the spring bringing color and fragrance to our outdoor adventures. For the youngest of children, simply naming the colors or shapes of flowers can be fun.

For older kids, gather a few flowers and explore the parts. Petals are the outer parts and usually are the most colorful. The pollen is on the anthers. Shake some off onto your hand. What color is it? Are the grains big or small? Pollen that is from colorful flowers is usually big so it can easily stick to insects or other animals called pollinators. These are animals that move pollen from one flower to another. They leave the pollen on the stigma. The pollen travels down the pollen tubes to the egg cells to make seeds.

A fun way to save the flowers is to pound them. Take an old board or other hard flat surface, cover with white paper, and put your flower down on it. You may need to tape the paper in place. Rest the flower upside down or just use petals. Cover with another piece of paper. Take a hammer and tap the paper. You will see the color from the petals and leaves or stem showing up on the paper. Stems that are really watery don't work well for this. (If you are really adventurous, you can do this on fabric!)

For the youngest of kids, grab some white 3x5 cards and you can take petals and smear them on the paper. This is like using flowers as crayons. What flowers work best?

Learning words to describe - color, shape, more/less, bigger/smaller, a lot/few - are all science skills that we need to practice. Scientific literacy will be an important skill for our children in the future. Start early and build a love of nature together!

Books I like:
Planting a rainbow by Lois Elhert
Magic School Bus Plants Seeds adapted by Patricia Relf

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 Busy Bees

Bees are a great way to introduce kids to insects. Like all insects, bees have three body parts, wings, and six legs. Bees are the only insect that produces food for people - honey! We also need bees to pollinate flowers for many of the fruits and vegetables we love such as apples, oranges, avocados, squash, and tomatoes.

Bees live with their families just like we do. A Queen bee is the mom to all the bees in a family or colony. A colony lives in a hive.

Bees go to brightly colored flowers to gather nectar and pollen to make honey. You can check out what pollen looks like by pretending to be a bee. Gently brush your finger on a flower like a lily or squash flower. These flowers produce a lot of yellow and orange pollen.

Can you dance like a bee? Bees dance to tell each other where the best flowers are. Bee dances are quite complex and share a great deal of information.

If you garden, be sure there are plenty of blooming flowers around your garden to attract bees. Different flowers make different tasting honey. Try one or two flavors of honey and see if you can tell the difference.

If you want a good resource for older preschoolers, Magic School Bus Inside a Hive by Joanna Cole is awesome.