Back to school: an outdoor perspective on learning
While some schools are back in session in August, September still feels like the official start to the school year. The kids are excited (and maybe a little nervous) about new teachers and subjects and seeing their classmates again.
School schedules mean less time for outdoor adventures, so find opportunities before and after school to get outside while the weather is still mild. And remember that learning about nature is a lifelong process that happens at home as well as in the classroom. For example, this is a great time of year to invite beneficial wildlife into your garden by providing a water source (bird bath, fountain, or a small pond) and native plants that provide food, shelter, and places to raise young. Our family garden has a small water feature and native plants like the aster (a perennial that provides nectar for butterflies); trees such as evergreen foster holly; and shrubs, like the deciduous Virginia sweetspire, that add beautiful color in the fall.
All year round, my family sees so many cool things in our yard, including skinks (a lizard with a black upper body and an electric blue tail), praying mantises, grasshoppers, and frogs. Sometimes we play “I spy,” where one person names a creature they have spotted and it’s up to the other players to spot the creature too. After we planted a native climbing red trumpet honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervivum) right outside the kitchen window, we had daily visits from a hummingbird!
Really, any game with a bouncy ball will do. We often play four square before setting out for school. Using chalk, draw a quadrant of four squares on the pavement and bounce the ball back and forth to one another, technically one bounce at a time and staying within the squares. There are more rules, but my kids change them all the time! Have the kids make up their own rules.
When the temperatures are back down in the sixties and seventies, plant easy-to-grow cool-season vegetables like collards, kale, spinach, scallions, lettuces, and radishes in the ground or in containers. You can even replant peas at this time. Don’t worry if you’re not a fan of these vegetables. When they are ready to harvest, you can try them, alongside your kids!
Gather some paints and brushes, along with a few old plastic or terra cotta pots for planting, paper towels, a small bucket of water, and a trash bag. Cover your workspace with newspapers to protect it, and then help your kids decorate the old pots with festive new designs and pictures. My boys made a friendship pot for their friend who was moving in a month, complete with their handprints and signatures.
Leaves change colors at different times depending on where you live. Your kids can start to learn about the leaves around you and track their changes with a leaf scrapbook. For example, start with collecting five different leaves for leaf rubbings, then label them. Look up the names online or ask a neighbor if you don’t know. Later, when the leaves start to change color, collect the same five leaves and glue them into your scrapbook, noting the date. With each addition to your scrapbook, ask your child to tell you a story about your experience that you write (or they do if old enough).
Your kids may or may not have homework, but the concept applies for anyone. Invite a friend to join your children in laying out a blanket in the grass and taking workbooks, journals, reading, or coloring. My kids actually get their homework done faster and complain less if they have a friend come over and do homework at the same time. Best of all, the kids can play outside when they are done; I love to keep the fun going with a picnic dinner.
Back-to-school time is a wonderful time to tour a local farm, see what is growing, and have another pick-your-own adventure with a crop like fall raspberries. Call before you go, as weather impacts what is available and when. No farm? Head to the local farmer’s market and explore what you can taste together.
Let’s face it; our schedules are busy. Many times, if I don’t schedule something, it doesn’t happen. Schedule in fifteen minutes before you leave in the morning to let the kids have outside playtime if they get ready quickly. Do the same in the evening; for example, stop by the playground on your way home with the kids. Keep a picnic blanket in the car and on occasion you may even want to pick up sandwiches for a picnic dinner.
Kids love to collect things from nature, and my boys are sad when they can’t bring something they’ve collected inside. They are afraid it will get lost outside. A nature container is a perfect solution. Give your child her own plastic container with a lid where she can keep what she finds. The container can be stored in a closet by the door or in the garage, and she can easily grab it when she wants to play with her nature objects outside. Take a tip from the National Wildlife Federation: and hang a clear shoe organizer on the back of a door so your children can put treasures into the convenient pockets and see what they’ve collected. (Visit their website at www.BeOutThere.org for more ideas.)
My neighbor’s girls love their plastic child-sized pails. The girls are constantly taking their pails around the yard and collecting things to look at: blades of grass, acorns, pine needles—anything from nature. They then sit with their objects and look at them under a magnifying glass and invite others to sit with them and look at their discoveries. Have each of you take a pail or basket (even a plastic bag will do) and independently search for ten minutes in your surroundings to see what you can find. Then, come together to share your discoveries and do a little show and tell.
Aster is a perennial (it returns each year) and native to North America; best of all, butterflies love it! We had seven orange monarch butterflies and many more smaller butterflies frequent four aster plants. Plant aster in full sun in the yard or in containers; just remember that containers in full sun will need water daily. In the ground, water two to three times a week after planting, then gradually wean back watering to one time a week if it hasn’t rained. Not only will your kids love the butterflies, the neighborhood kids will love them too!
When my kids were two and four years old, we didn’t have much nature around us, so we went to find it and we loved the local nature center. It was a good twenty-minute drive from where we were, so whenever I was near that area we always stopped by to see up close turtles, frogs, and snakes. A recent Internet search with my county name and the words “nature center” turned up five that I didn’t even know about! Sometimes we just need to remember to do a quick Web search to discover the great resources available to us.
Pretty quickly, we can get sucked into the stress of our commute or the summer vacation high finally fading. What made summer so great for you? Write down the best three things about your summer; ask your kids the same question and add their answers to the list. Then decide a simple thing that you can do in the moment to make it feel like summer, whether it’s walking barefoot in the grass, having a glass of lemonade, or taking a family walk in the fresh air.
Each of you grabs four sticks to see how many different letters or shapes you can make. For example, I saw a three-year-old make an E with his four sticks. You can also make a rectangle. What else can you make? If you combine your sticks, how do your creations change?
Neighbors are wonderful; we try to help one another as often as possible in ways that complement our schedules and give our kids some fun. For example, invite your neighbor’s children to come over for thirty minutes of playtime, which gets your kids and the neighbor’s kids outside and running around. I always have a pitcher of water or juice on hand and a stack of small cups, as well as a big tub of pretzels for a snack. If we pick up some kids for a walk, I put juice boxes and a large bag of pretzels in a backpack. Soon, your neighbors will reciprocate. These short outside play dates are a great way for the kids to get exercise and for you to get things done (or run around with them too).
According to the Afterschool Alliance, “Each afternoon across the United States, 15 million children—more than a quarter of our children—are alone and unsupervised after school,” and 8.4 million children are enrolled in an afterschool program. Regardless of where your kids are after school, ask them what they like to do after school and what they would like to do more of. Often our personal resources limit what our kids can do, and these questions may provide inexpensive ideas for your child’s afterschool program or a way for our children to become involved in the community or activities that don’t cost any money. For example, your child may want to spend more time outside at aftercare or there may be a nearby Boys and Girls Club for afterschool activities.
Watch boats come and go, see birds fish, and soak in the breeze at a local marina. You don’t have to own a boat to appreciate their beauty; just lay down a picnic blanket for a snack while you watch. There may even be canoe or kayak rentals that you choose to come back to another day.
Are you seeing orange monarch butterflies yet? Head to your garden, a neighbor’s, or the local Cooperative Extension master gardener’s butterfly garden and see if you can spot some resting their wings on their journey to southern California or Mexico. Check out a book from the local library to read while you’re there, such as Hurry and the Monarch by Antoine O Flatharta and illustrated by Meilo So.
On occasion, I will suddenly notice a beautiful reflection of puffy clouds in a window I pass by on the street, or my kids will notice their reflection in my sunglasses. Raindrops, puddles, or a nearby pond or a creek offer beautiful reflections too. Play a game where you count how many reflections you can see. Play the game whenever you are together and keep a running tally. The kids can draw pictures of their favorite reflections or describe them to a friend.
During a sailing lesson for my television series, Get Out of the House, the sailing instructor asked us to close our eyes, feel the breeze, and then sense from which direction the breeze was blowing. At any moment and wherever you are, you and your child can do the same. How do you check and see if you’re right about the direction of the wind? Take a small leaf from the ground and hold it flat on your palm. See in which direction it flies away!
We’re always running from one place to another. The next time your family is out of the house and waiting around, whether in between practices or outside the doctor’s office, make the most of it. For example, kick a ball, spin around, or climb a tree. No space to roam? You can ask one of my Curiosity Card questions, such as, “What could we build with what is around us right now?” While waiting outside a doctor’s office with me one evening, my son made sailboats from leaves and acorns.
Move summer-blooming perennials out of pots and into the ground, then put colorful fall mums into your containers. The mums can be kept in the containers all winter. Then, in spring, you can clip off the dead branches and replant the mums in the ground (repeating the cycle of putting newly bought perennial flowers into your containers). The mums may return next fall and bloom again. Simply cut back the mums’ green foliage in late spring by as much as two-thirds to ensure the stems grow strong enough to support the flowers that bloom in the fall.
Pick a glorious September weekend and take the whole family—grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins—fishing. Make your fishing poles together beforehand! All you really need is a long stick, string, and a hook to put at the end. When my family went fishing for the first time, we cut some four-foot lengths of bamboo (my mother-in-law’s yard has too much of it) with a saw. Next, we drove a nail through one end of each pole with a hammer (a rubber mallet is great for the kids to use). Then we removed the nail, threaded through some fishing line (scotch tape folded together on the end of the fishing line holds it straight so you can thread it through the hole), and secured the line around the end of the bamboo pole with a knot. You can have one of your kids determine the length of the line by pretending to be a fish! A foot from the end of the line, hook a bobber (so you can see when the fish bite), attach a weight a couple of inches below the bobber, and tie a hook to the end of the line. You can purchase lures that look like bugs or worms or take a hand shovel with you and the kids can dig up the worms for you!
On two trips with my kids, one to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and the other to Central Park in New York, something very similar created at least an hour’s worth of fun: rocks. These boulders, ranging from two feet to ten feet tall, were the perfect diversion from the ordinary. The children were drawn to “rock climbing,” as they called it, hopping from rock to rock, and even sliding down. “Mom, you’ve gotta try this!” they called. So hesitantly, then happily, I joined in on the fun.
The Maryland Zoo has a giant tree slide and lily pads; Ski Roundtop in Pennsylvania has an outdoor zip-line for tots; the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois, has a four-acre children’s garden with lots of spaces to explore. Many gardens also offer tree house exhibits that make you feel like a kid again. Find a nature-inspired playground in your area or for your next road trip at www.KidsPlayParks.com.
Are the kids bored or getting on each other’s nerves? Take a family vote about what you want to do. My husband and I suggested we vote on A, fishing, or B, renting a canoe. Each of us cast our vote on a small piece of paper, and my boys both wrote down A and B: to go fishing on a boat! Our forced family fun was so fun that we were out all day together and officially hooked on fishing. If you need ideas for which of your area parks offer fishing, boating, biking, hiking, or camping, enter your zip code at www.Discover-TheForest.org.
Go on a walk with your child and simply watch what they watch; see the world through their eyes. I remember when my younger son was twenty-four months old and we were on vacation in Florida. What normally was a five-minute walk to the beach took thirty minutes because he would walk a foot and then bend down to watch something on the ground. Back then, I was frustrated with wanting to get to the beach. Three years later, I got a chance to follow his lead through Paris, and his curiosity and wonder inspired me to learn alongside him at his pace.
Sometimes you don’t have to do anything outside for the impact to be great. Find a comfortable place to be still and watch the nature around you. Sit for as little or as long as you can together, taking deep breaths and simply watching what is around you. If it’s easier for your children, have them bring a notebook and colored pencils or crayons with them to sketch what they see. At the end of your quiet time, talk about what you notice.
I created a checkerboard on a flat stone, drawn with a permanent marker, and two sets of different colored rocks for playing pieces that I gathered from the ground. But you don’t have to be crafty to take games outside. Horseshoes, a bean bag toss, croquet, or your favorite board game like Chutes and Ladders on a blanket will do just fine.
Have the kids do an outdoor show and tell of their latest schoolwork for you and family members. Gather outside and your children can take pride in describing their new learning experiences and art. Top it off by having the children show you the outdoor games they play every day—make sure you take part!
My children and I recite our “three great things” before bed each evening. When you are together, ask each of you to say your three great outside memories since the start of school. Decide which of them you are going to do next, or draw or write about them in tribute to making more special memories in the fall.