4.25.2011

Meeting Summary from April 21st

Marnie Lammley came to speak to us to discuss different activities you could do to experience nature with your children. Here are some of her ideas:
-Get a free sheet of paint samples from a paint section of a home improvement store. Ask your kids to match the different greens to things they can find outside. You can use different shades of brown, blue, gray, yellow.
-Take a coffee filter and use markers or q tips dipped in paint to color the filter. Pinch it in the middle with a clothespin and you have a butterfly.
-Find insects or butterflies outside and glue them to a paper plate. Use a different plate for each specimen and they can have their own bug collection.
-Cut out pictures of birds in magazines or guides. Glue them to Popsicle sticks and put a clothespin on them. You can then position the birds in trees or wherever you would see that bird and let your kids try to identify them with a field guide. There are many field guides available for free at the game fish and parks office.
-Tell your children if they are lost in nature that they should hug a tree. The physical act of a hug is calming to children and this will also help them to stay put until they are found.
-Make binoculars or a telescope out of paper towel tubes or toilet paper tubes. They work very well for looking at objects in the distance. Kids can personalize them themselves.
-When going on a walk, put some masking tape sticky side out on your child's wrist like a bracelet. As you are walking, ask your child to put things they find from nature on the bracelet, like flowers or rocks or feathers or bugs. Then when you are done walking, you can talk about each thing you found.
-We were all given the opportunity to make some crafts: a bird feeder with pine cones, shortening, birdseed and twine; a pet rock with rocks, paints, googly eyes; and a candle made by pouring canning wax into a hole made in the sand (you can line the sand with shells or anything else you find outside before pouring the wax in).