Since last few months children and me have been working on our project of exploring nature and being outdoors. All the children have been enjoying the nature walks and have been interested in finding deer tracks and deer poop, chasing squirrels, watching birds and how birds are building nests, new blossoms, and leaves. The children have been interested in plants, going into a creek behind our house and enjoyed being outdoors in nature.
I thought of a project to make children aware of nature and appreciate preserving the environment for our own survival. Additionally, to give children the opportunity to make their own garden and physically get involved gardening. We planted a vegetable garden. Along with my guidance and help the children planned out the kind of plants they wanted to plant. They all agreed on planting peas, cucumber, tomatoes, bell peppers and I suggested zuccini, cilantro, mint and chillies. Children prepared the vegetable garden with me, planted vegetable plants. We discussed how to protect plants from deers and rabbits, and agreed to put fence around the vegetable garden. This was one of my student ,Ethan’s suggestion who is 3 ½ yrs old and his father plants vegetable garden and has put fence around his garden to protect from deer. Ethan’s prior experience and recommendations showed keen observation of his surroundings.The children have made a regular schedule of going to their garden and check on the plants.
I was excited to read Elizabeth Goodenough’s book, “A place for Play”, There is a sectionon pg.182, about the Edible Schoolyard project in Berkley, California. It also coincides with ouridea of vegetable garden project The Edible Schoolyard was the idea of Alice Waters of Chez Panisse. Alice water’s edible shoolyard was motivated by the need to improve children’s nutrition . Additionally, she helps children understand ecology by creating a garden and a teaching kitchen. She also to develops a healthy school lunch program of fresh servings from locally grown produce.
Similarly, I also recommend healthy eating in children from infancyVegetable gardens help children can learn about mother- nature and feel sense of accomplishment when they pick the vegetables from their garden. Secondly, gardening gives often sedentary children the opportunity to enjoy being in dirt, water and digging and taking out weeds and caring for their plants. During this learning process children recognize the elements we depend on for life; dirt, rocks, water, and plants. Similarly they incorporate science in their learning when; they need to identify which plants need support, which ones are wines, different leaf structures, and while differenciating between root plants and above-ground plants . They apply mathematics when they calculate distance among plants in rows, which fruits/vegetables grow in bunches, how tall are the plants etc. Planting gardens is a collective activity. As it is mentioned in “ A Place for Play”, “ It is rare in our culture for young people to be given the chance to create something tangible , to care for Earth, to choose the task they would like to do, and to learn to work together in a team.” Children in my group were deeply involved in this project and were excited to share their experiences with their parents. To get parents involved I invited them to
join us in our vegetable garden project and join the children in their outdoor play activity. Parents loved the idea and excitedly joined our play day. Children showed them their vegetable garden and what they have planted. Parents and children played outdoors together and enjoyed the lunch outdoors We did includ fresh vegetable salads in our lunch and fresh fruits ,along with vegetable pasta and dessert. This was the second part of the project and I wanted parents to enjoy what their children were learning from nature. Some of the parents brought floral and vegetable plants for children to plant in the vegetable garden. They brought marigolds to be planted around the vegetable garden and told children how marigolds keep the pesky deer away.
We are lucky to have very supportive parents who agreed with our project and are interested in joining us. In “Last Child in the Woods” by Richard Louv, there is a report by The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that, “ the number of overweight children between ages two and five increased by almost 36% from 1989 to 1999 and a 60% increase in overweight adult Americans since 1991 to 2000. The “World Health Organization warns that the sedentary lifestyle is also a global public health problem, inactivity is seen as a major risk factor in non-communicable diseases, which cause 60% of global deaths and 47% of burden of disease”. Success in the second part of our project, which was getting parents involved into children’s experiencing nature and vegetable garden project encouraged me to proceed further, and the children and I planned to invite parents/Grandparents for a nature walk to the park. We organized a potluck picnic in the Rochester park to enjoy nature and to go for a walk on the paint creek trail. It was a great experience for children as well as for adults. Interacting with children and nature and we asked all the adults to tell us a story of their childhood times when they used to play outdoors. The parents thought back into their childhood and realized how much fun it is to being outdoors. The Fathers helped children feed the ducks, while the mothers took care of babies. and taking them for walk in strollers every one enjoyed being outdoors in wooded area and interact with nature as well as with their children. It was interesting to watch Grand parentsenjoying nature with their grand children.The children and I played a tree corner game.I use to play this game with my brothers in my young days in woods, everyone picks a tree close enough and one person is in the middle who is to catch others while they switch the tree posts. If he gets the tree, then the person who lost his post comes in the middle.It is a fun and full of movement and excitement game.
Children were amazed by the tall trees.They loved hugging them and tried to climb up on tall trunks. The chilren explored the inside of the hollow trunks of trees. They loved going on walks and being in water stream. They did float their slippers in the water and catching them.
As I was observing children experiencing nature, learning and feeling relaxed and joyous being outdoors; it reminded me of the growing concept of Forest schools in England and Scotland. In an observational research project the “ Learning outdoors: the forest School approach” by Liz O’Brien, the Forest Schools provide regular contact with the woodlands for extended periods of time. This allows the children to become familiar with the natural environment. A report for the National Foundation for Educational Research (Dillon et al. 2005) suggests that learning outdoors can impact the child cognitively, affective??, interpersonal/social communication and physically and behaviorally. As it is mentioned in this study, “Learning outdoors in nature is very different experience from being indoors in a classroom environment I observed while our project, experiencing nature and outdoor play, was progressing.[what did you observe, that the classroom environment is different than outdoor? if so explain how you observed that]
Similarly, I also recommend healthy eating in children from infancyVegetable gardens help children can learn about mother- nature and feel sense of accomplishment when they pick the vegetables from their garden. Secondly, gardening gives often sedentary children the opportunity to enjoy being in dirt, water and digging and taking out weeds and caring for their plants. During this learning process children recognize the elements we depend on for life; dirt, rocks, water, and plants. Similarly they incorporate science in their learning when; they need to identify which plants need support, which ones are wines, different leaf structures, and while differenciating between root plants and above-ground plants . They apply mathematics when they calculate distance among plants in rows, which fruits/vegetables grow in bunches, how tall are the plants etc. Planting gardens is a collective activity. As it is mentioned in “ A Place for Play”, “ It is rare in our culture for young people to be given the chance to create something tangible , to care for Earth, to choose the task they would like to do, and to learn to work together in a team.” Children in my group were deeply involved in this project and were excited to share their experiences with their parents. To get parents involved I invited them to
join us in our vegetable garden project and join the children in their outdoor play activity. Parents loved the idea and excitedly joined our play day. Children showed them their vegetable garden and what they have planted. Parents and children played outdoors together and enjoyed the lunch outdoors We did includ fresh vegetable salads in our lunch and fresh fruits ,along with vegetable pasta and dessert. This was the second part of the project and I wanted parents to enjoy what their children were learning from nature. Some of the parents brought floral and vegetable plants for children to plant in the vegetable garden. They brought marigolds to be planted around the vegetable garden and told children how marigolds keep the pesky deer away.
We are lucky to have very supportive parents who agreed with our project and are interested in joining us. In “Last Child in the Woods” by Richard Louv, there is a report by The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that, “ the number of overweight children between ages two and five increased by almost 36% from 1989 to 1999 and a 60% increase in overweight adult Americans since 1991 to 2000. The “World Health Organization warns that the sedentary lifestyle is also a global public health problem, inactivity is seen as a major risk factor in non-communicable diseases, which cause 60% of global deaths and 47% of burden of disease”. Success in the second part of our project, which was getting parents involved into children’s experiencing nature and vegetable garden project encouraged me to proceed further, and the children and I planned to invite parents/Grandparents for a nature walk to the park. We organized a potluck picnic in the Rochester park to enjoy nature and to go for a walk on the paint creek trail. It was a great experience for children as well as for adults. Interacting with children and nature and we asked all the adults to tell us a story of their childhood times when they used to play outdoors. The parents thought back into their childhood and realized how much fun it is to being outdoors. The Fathers helped children feed the ducks, while the mothers took care of babies. and taking them for walk in strollers every one enjoyed being outdoors in wooded area and interact with nature as well as with their children. It was interesting to watch Grand parentsenjoying nature with their grand children.The children and I played a tree corner game.I use to play this game with my brothers in my young days in woods, everyone picks a tree close enough and one person is in the middle who is to catch others while they switch the tree posts. If he gets the tree, then the person who lost his post comes in the middle.It is a fun and full of movement and excitement game.
Children were amazed by the tall trees.They loved hugging them and tried to climb up on tall trunks. The chilren explored the inside of the hollow trunks of trees. They loved going on walks and being in water stream. They did float their slippers in the water and catching them.
As I was observing children experiencing nature, learning and feeling relaxed and joyous being outdoors; it reminded me of the growing concept of Forest schools in England and Scotland. In an observational research project the “ Learning outdoors: the forest School approach” by Liz O’Brien, the Forest Schools provide regular contact with the woodlands for extended periods of time. This allows the children to become familiar with the natural environment. A report for the National Foundation for Educational Research (Dillon et al. 2005) suggests that learning outdoors can impact the child cognitively, affective??, interpersonal/social communication and physically and behaviorally. As it is mentioned in this study, “Learning outdoors in nature is very different experience from being indoors in a classroom environment I observed while our project, experiencing nature and outdoor play, was progressing.[what did you observe, that the classroom environment is different than outdoor? if so explain how you observed that]
“Man’s heart, away from nature, becomes hard;[the Lakota] knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too".
-Luther Standing Bear (c.1868-1939)
trees can teach most any concept worth knowing :)
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