An Early Spring Day

I am lucky to live near some diverse natural areas. One of these is a bog which you can walk into via a boardwalk and see some interesting carnivorous plants. I went out there one day this spring with my friend and her children.

On the hike in, through the woods, I chose one or two plants to point out to the kids. I chose ones I knew were interesting and would be memorable for specific reasons. Take the example of white pine. The needles are much different from any other evergreen in the area, long and thin, so it would be easy for them to recognize. Also the kids could enjoy counting off the 5 needles per bunch that identify white pine from the other pines.

Counting needles with the children

I chose to use only one or maybe two trees as an example in order to give the kids a taste of tree identification without overwhelming them, or having them become bored with the idea. As we walked through the forest I was able to point to white pines and say "What kind of tree is this?". The children would run up to count bunches in order to be sure before informing me it was their new friend the white pine. They were so excited to know this and had such satisfaction in exhibiting their new skills, they will remember that and want to learn the next tree when we go hiking again.

On the boardwalk

Once we got to the bog I got to teach the kids about carnivorous plants and why some plants need to get their nutrients from food, like we do, rather than soil like other plants. As you can see it was still early spring with a lot of dormant plants, but we did get to see several lovely pitcher plants. The children really enjoyed it, they were so psyched about the nature walk they asked us to take them to another park before going home.

On our second adventure of the day we walked through the woods to a beach on the lake, which was beautiful and still slightly iced over. Again, I chose one vocabulary word to bring home. When the little lady pointed out a standing dead tree, I let her know she could call it a "snag" and how important it was for wildlife. Later on the hike she saw another, "What's this, it's a sn...what's the word?" After that first reminder she had it down and was pointing out every snag she found.

Then we found a big sheet of birch paper and made it the rest of the way back jumping over residual snowbanks!