Nature-Based Learning for Young Children: Anytime, Anywhere, on Any Budget

NATURE-BASED LEARNING FOR YOUNG CHILDREN

Anytime, Anywhere, on Any Budget

JULIE POWERS SHEILA WILLIAMS RIDGE

www.redleafpress.org

800-423-8309

Published by Redleaf Press

10 Yorkton Court

St. Paul, MN 55117

www.redleafpress.org

© 2019 by Julie Powers and Sheila Williams Ridge

All rights reserved. Unless otherwise noted on a specific page, no portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or capturing on any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a critical article or review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper, or electronically transmitted on radio, television, or the internet.

First edition 2019

Cover design by Jim Handrigan

Cover photograph © iStock.com/debibishop

Interior design by Percolator

Typeset in Tiempos Text

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Powers, Julie, 1957- author. | Ridge, Sheila Williams, author.

Title: Nature-based learning for young children : anytime, anywhere, on any budget / Julie Powers, Sheila Williams Ridge.

Description: St. Paul, MN : Redleaf Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018029071 (print) | LCCN 2018043132 (ebook) | ISBN 9781605545974 (electronic) | ISBN 9781605545967 (pbk. : acid-free paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Science--Study and teaching (Early childhood)--Activity programs. | Nature study--Activity programs. | Environmental education. | Outdoor education.

Classification: LCC LB1139.5.S35 (ebook) | LCC LB1139.5.S35 P68 2018 (print)

| DDC 372.35/044--dc23

To our families

Julie’s family—Margarita Kay, Marty Rosenthal, and Gabriel Powers

Sheila’s family—Robert and Jeannette Williams, Faruk Williams, Kimson Ridge, Faline Williams, Hailey Williams, Sierra Williams, and Olivia Williams Ridge

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: Nature Education

Building a Connection with the Natural World

Chapter 2: Does It Work for My Kids?

Individual Needs in Your Setting

Chapter 3: Taming the Wild

Nature-Based Experiences in Your Indoor Environment

Chapter 4: Take That Outside

Making the Most of Your Outdoor Environment

Chapter 5: It’s Raining, It’s Pouring

Getting Outdoors in Any Weather

Chapter 6: Splish-Splash

The Joys of Water

Chapter 7: Beneath Our Feet

Sand, Soil, Mud, and Rocks

Chapter 8: Let’s Get Growing

Flowers, Trees, Fruits, and Vegetables

Chapter 9: Pollinators, Predators, and Decomposers

Insects, Spiders, and Worms

Chapter 10: The Egg Is Only the Beginning

Learning about Birds

Chapter 11: Slither, Hop, Jump, or Crawl?

Reptiles and Amphibians

Chapter 12: Got Milk?

Learning about Mammals

Chapter 13: Beneath the Surface

Diving into Aquatic Life

Chapter 14: Where Do You Live?

Habitats in Nature

Chapter 15: Strengthening the Bonds

Getting Families in Nature

Appendixes

Appendix 1: Lesson Plans

Appendix 2: Children’s Books

Appendix 3: Resources for Adults

Appendix 4: Websites and Apps

Appendix 5: Materials, Supplies, and Equipment

Appendix 6: Nature-Based Recipes

References

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

From Julie: Mama (Margarita Kay), thank you for letting me play outdoors unsupervised in the desert, on empty lots, and around the neighborhood when I was very young.

I have had many amazing mentors and colleagues who have inspired and encouraged me. Marcie Oltman has been the best mentor I could have had for my entrance into nature education, and Elaine Yamashita, the best colleague I could ask for in this time in my life. I would also like to thank my coauthor, Sheila Williams Ridge, for eighteen years of friendship, mentoring, humor, and acting as both my literal and metaphorical GPS!

From Sheila: Mom and Dad, thank you for your continuous support and encouragement, and for my dog Cinnamon, a wonderful friend to explore the desert with for many years. Kimson and our amazing daughters, Faline, Hailey, Sierra, and Olivia, thank you for taking time for hikes, canoeing, camping, snorkeling, biking, bonfires, and going on many other adventures. Our times spent exploring, especially those days in Yosemite and Hawaii, are some of the best moments of my life. Faruk, Aunt Sandra, Grandma Renate, Sameerah, Jody, and Uncle Larry, thank you all for your care and inspiration. Julie, you have been an amazing mentor and friend—thank you for believing in me and nurturing me and my family with your love and support.

We would both like to acknowledge Alyson Quinn, Amanda Janquart, Amy Vavricka, Ayuko Boomer, Cherie Lazaroff, Elizabeth Criswell, Jenny Hanlon, Kit Harrington, Marcie Oltman, Marie Lister, Natalie Gilmore, Patti Bailie, Rachel Larimore, Ruth Wilson, and Sarah Sivright for sharing their stories of experiences with young children in nature; Faline Williams, Sierra Williams, Hailey Williams, and Olivia Williams Ridge for research and editing support; Gabriel Powers for his encouragement; our editors, Kara Lomen and Stephanie Schempp, for their great support and leadership on this book; Marty Rosenthal, who tolerated us taking over the house when Sheila came to Telluride to work with Julie and for responding to Julie’s calling out, How do you spell …? (Oh, and also for his love and support.); and Carl Marcus for his patience taking our photo while fighting off mosquitoes.

We would like to thank the schools that were used in examples of best practice in early childhood nature education, including All Seasons Preschool, Dodge Nature Preschool, Minneapolis Nature Preschool, My Nature Preschool at Tamarack Nature Center, Nature Preschool at Chippewa Nature Center, Shirley G. Moore Laboratory School at the University of Minnesota, Tucson Community School, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa Children’s Center, and Valley View Preschool.

INTRODUCTION

From Julie: For those of you readers who are new to nature education, welcome to our world! You will find the connections between early childhood education philosophies and nature a comfortable fit. Your experience may closely mirror my journey. After twenty-five years in the field as a teacher and/or director in early care settings including Head Start, parent-cooperative nursery schools, for profit and nonprofit child care centers, and an inclusion-based public preschool, I set off on a new adventure: starting a preschool at a nature center. I found many similarities between the people drawn to each field. Both chose their fields because of deep convictions, got lousy salaries, worked hard, and played hard. There were also differences. A good example was when a preschool educator came across a dead creature in the wild and her reaction was, So sad. I heard the naturalists instead say, Cool! I began to appreciate learning experiences, even dead creatures, as I broadened my educational practices to include what I learned working with dedicated naturalists. In the years after my time working as a teacher, director, and later as a consultant for nature-focused organizations, I have brought my newfound understanding to other jobs, including my current position as associate professor of early childhood education at University of Hawai‘i Maui College. I wish a book like this existed when I first went to work at Dodge Nature Center, or even before when I worked with young children and their families, and moved from Arizona to Minnesota to Colorado to Hawaii and could no longer use my own childhood experiences to guide me.

From Sheila: For those of you who are already comfortable with nature education and are looking for ways to take your explorations with young children deeper, we hope this book will offer inspiration and community that will allow you to reflect on your teaching practices and nurture the relationship between children and nature. I entered the field from the opposite direction of Julie. I was focused on business management, health and safety, and environmental conservation. My background in biology fostered my love of nature as well as my work with the Minnesota Public Interest Research Group (MPIRG) around air quality and the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and working with children in local Kids for Saving Earth groups gave me an opportunity to focus on environmental issues with elementary children and college students. When I began at Dodge Nature Center, the extent of my early childhood education experience came from my own children and from our Early Childhood Family Education (ECFE) groups.

We have designed this book to meet the needs of a variety of readers. You can read the book from cover to cover and realize how much nature education you already offer and discover ways to increase the focus. You can select chapters to read to gain specific information on a particular area of nature education. You will find chapters on setting up your indoor and outdoor environments, on specific topics such as mammals and plants, and on children with special needs and their families. We recommend that all readers begin with chapter 1 to provide a framework for what the rest of the book offers. We have also included resources for you to use: sample letters for families at the end of each chapter, sample lessons for each topic, suggested children’s books, books and other resources for adult learning, and suggested materials, supplies, and equipment.

We do not view ourselves as experts on early childhood nature education, but rather as voices from the trenches. We have included short stories from a variety of experts working in our field that are meant to inspire you.

CHAPTER 1 

NATURE EDUCATION

Building a Connection with the Natural World

Julie’s group of three-year-old children were in the classroom. Outside a thunderstorm with pounding rain was underway. Tommy couldn’t settle into an indoor activity. He approached the teacher and said in a pleading voice, Mrs. Powers, can’t we go outside to play? Julie responded, Let’s go look out the window and see. She took his hand, and they went to the window. Tommy saw the pouring rain and flash of lightning, sighed, and said, I guess not. Julie responded, We can go outside when it stops and look for puddles. Would you like to read a book about rain? Tommy agreed, and they walked to the book corner together. By the time the rain had stopped and the group could go outdoors, Tommy had a better understanding of rain. What does this story tell us?

•  Like most young children, Tommy loves to play outdoors. Many children must be coerced to come indoors from the playground; these are often the same children who dislike sedentary activities. This is a good reason to integrate outdoor experiences into many areas of your curriculum.

•  Nature gives us the chance to support inquiry. Julie could have just told Tommy they couldn’t go out because it was raining. Instead, she gave him support for finding the answer to his own question, Can’t we go outside? Inquiry is how children begin learning to use their senses to find answers to what they truly care about, rather than counting on adults for the answers. Nature provides many opportunities to develop inquiry skills.

•  Taking the time for impromptu nature education will help children develop self-regulation skills. Because Tommy could see the limits for himself, he was less likely to have a meltdown. As Tommy was invited to see the connection between his desires (playing outdoors) and the natural limits (thunder, lightning, and pouring rain), he could understand that this wasn’t an adult just saying no, and a power struggle was averted. The more children can gather their own data regarding limits, the greater sense of control they have. Tommy was ready to hear that the chance to play outdoors was in his future.

•  Nature education provides opportunities to stretch children’s interests. Tommy might not be a child who enjoys listening to books, but because he had an immediate need to understand thunderstorms, he was easily drawn into hearing a story.

THE VALUE OF NATURE EXPERIENCES

Is nature education the newest thing? Early childhood education (ECE) programs have focused on nature experiences for generations. The ECE field has recently refocused on nature experiences in response to research showing the importance of connection to nature and the loss of these experiences as programs have been pressured to meet external standards and prepare for kindergarten. The good news is you don’t have to choose! As you will see in this book, you can meet standards, prepare children for future learning, and meet your curriculum goals through nature experiences. Your program is special and your place in your community and in the world is unique. Using place-based education principles can help you and your children connect with nature in your own backyard and beyond. David Sobel (2004, 7) explains, Place-based education is the process of using the local community and environment as a starting point to teach concepts in language arts, mathematics, social studies, science, and other subjects across the curriculum. This starting point can lead to deeper understanding and inspire more questions about the natural world that help foster children’s explorations.

A Lifelong Gift

In Happiness and Education, Nel Noddings (2003, 240) states, Happiness is not best construed as a state earned or promised for future life. Happiness in the present is not incompatible with future happiness and it may even be instrumental for future happiness. Educators should therefore give attention to the quality of students’ present experience. She lays a foundation for creating happiness in the classroom, and this can start with you. Providing opportunities for children to find joy and happiness in nature is a lifelong gift that we can give to every child everywhere. The sense of awe and wonder that children find when deeply exploring in nature is unparalleled, and that type of happiness is a feeling we all strive for throughout our lives. Let’s give this to our children right now.

Spending time in nature, and even viewing nature from an indoor space, has been shown to improve the mental health, well-being, and behavior of children and adults (Bowler et al. 2010; Townsend and Weerasuriya 2010). Unstructured outdoor free play provides children with cognitive, social, and health benefits (Burdette and Whitaker 2005; Matsuoka 2008). Additionally, children with ADHD have demonstrated improved outcomes when spending time in nature (Faber Taylor and Kuo 2011).

As Richard Louv coined in 2005, nature-deficit disorder describes the conditions he noticed occurring in children and society from the loss of a relationship with nature. Louv (2005, 36) defines nature-deficit disorder as the human costs of alienation from nature, among them: diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses. The Children and Nature Network’s online research library deeply examines the positive outcomes of interactions with nature for children and families, including physical and mental health benefits, academic and cognitive benefits, and effects on conservation values, knowledge, and behaviors.

Nature Activities Provide Development Opportunities

The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) states, The development of children’s perceptual abilities may suffer when so much of their experience is through television, computers, books, worksheets, and media that require only two senses. The senses of smell, touch, and taste, and the sense of motion through space are powerful modes of learning (1998).

Children today spend more time in front of televisions, computers, and other screens than outdoors (American Academy of Pediatrics 2013). According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Children and adolescents spend a significant amount of time watching screens each day—including televisions, gaming consoles, computers, tablet devices, and smartphones. Children in the United States ages 8–18 spend on average 7.5 hours a day with media and technology screens (AACAP 2015). The National Recreation and Park Association adds, Children today spend less time outdoors than any other generation, devoting only four to seven minutes to unstructured outdoor play per day, while spending an average of seven and a half hours in front of electronic media (NRPA 2017).

Theorist John Dewey warned of human dependence on secondary experiences, especially in early childhood. He cautioned that those secondary experiences could depersonalize human life and lead to lack of connection with the world and others (Louv 2005). Secondary experiences like those through photos or the internet limit children’s role to that of a consumer of information and not an integral part of the dialogue of nature. Photographs, videos, and interactive 3-D simulators can give children a glimpse of spaces they may never experience, but they are not a substitute nor are they equivalent to time spent picking flowers, following a fox’s tracks through the woods, or planting a garden. Primary experiences in nature allow children to explore their part in the natural world, and that is how the relationship between children and nature grows and flourishes.

Many barriers, such as fear of violence, limited access, and busy schedules, can prevent children from spending much time outdoors. However, because researchers have discovered many benefits of outdoor nature play, a growing number of educators are recognizing the importance of experiences outdoors and are finding ways to include these experiences during the significant time periods that children spend at school. These outdoor experiences through educational settings may provide the ideal opportunity for experiential learning that fosters the development of cognitive, social, emotional, and physical skills. Outdoor experiences in school also help develop positive environmental attitudes that can help lead to sustainable behaviors, thus improving the health of the earth and the lives of people globally.

In 1965 Rachel Carson wrote, If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil (56).

These early experiences in and with nature can help us prepare citizens of the Earth with the connection, interest, and ability to care that is needed to be stewards of our home. As stated in the Oceans Exhibit at the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History, Society has choices to make. Doing nothing is a choice.

Adding Nature Experiences Incrementally

Working on a new focus for your curriculum can feel overwhelming. Find your comfort zone for how much to include nature experiences. Once you experience success, you are likely to add more.

Try adding a nature activity on occasion. You might start by looking at how to add a nature experience into each new curriculum topic you offer. You will find examples of activities throughout this book. Once you are comfortable adding some nature experiences, you might be ready to offer curriculum studies that are centered on nature topics. Eventually you may have nature education as the foundation of your curriculum. In each chapter, you will find information on adding a little or a lot of nature experiences for each potential topic.

Challenges to Incorporating Nature Experiences

Every program has access to nature experiences if you know where to look. In this book, we offer ideas for a wide range of ecosystems and school environments. The following illustrates examples of challenges you may encounter in a variety of settings and ways to overcome those challenges.

Licensing limitations

Some programs are limited by regional licensing standards. For example, some creatures, such as reptiles, birds, or amphibians, are not allowed in some classrooms, food preparation may not be allowed, and limitations on field trips may affect nature opportunities. In this book, we include ideas so you can offer nature experiences without breaking rules.

Urban areas

Many children living in urban areas lack access to nature for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the neighborhoods are unsafe, either from crime or pollution, and others lack resources and places for children to play outdoors. However, there are many examples in cities like New York, Chicago, Baltimore, and Minneapolis where vacant lots and building rooftops have been turned into places of refuge and play. The adults in these areas prioritized natural spaces and have worked to make them safe and accessible for young children and families.

Natural phenomena and severe weather

Earthquakes, tsunamis, tornados, hurricanes, wildfires, and other disasters may affect programs. If we don’t help children understand what each phenomenon is and how to be safe, they may fear nature. Schools should develop emergency action plans and practice drills to help children and adults prepare for emergencies. As climate change continues to reshape our environment, we have seen increases in severe weather across the country. During these times, finding developmentally appropriate curricular ideas to continue to build on experiences with nature is important. After a severe storm is also a wonderful time to engage children in working in and with their community to do cleanup, trail repair, and healing.

Desert environments

Seeing lesson plans for falling leaves can be frustrating if your environment does not include deciduous trees. The desert is alive with wonderful nature opportunities. In this book, you will find ideas involving weather changes, plants, animals, and minerals to make studying nature in desert environments exciting.

Coastal environments

Programs that are near the ocean have very different opportunities. We offer ideas for activities involving ocean safety, creatures of the ocean, plants, and minerals.

Benefits for Children with Behavioral Challenges

Nature experiences can support and inspire children who are experiencing behavior challenges. Children who are less interested in typical preschool skills-based activities, such as reading in a large group