Family Nature Journal
Option 2

"Yet, nature does not have to remain 'out there.' It is right here, beyond the window, just waiting to be noticed. The squirrel scrambling along the phone wire; gulls circling high overhead; silhouettes of trees; cloud formations; the chance butterfly on your porch geranium..." – Clare Walker Leslie, Drawn to Nature










Your home is your nature center.  This might take some getting used to and an imaginative leap or two, but it seems important to not have to wait for 'some other time' to get outside.  If there is one small problem with the outdoor learning movement as it is found in institutions, it might be that it has worked to overcompensate the lack of outdoor exposure by turning outdoor experience into something overly rigorous and task oriented, a school lesson with a list of outcomes. As outdoor learning becomes more comfortable with itself at all levels, and as administrative oversight begins to see that sometimes nothing is something, it seems it will be natural to see that mere unregulated "green time is better than screen time," and that simple time spent in observation, recognition, imagination, and wonder will fill in many of the missing spots in childrens' (and parents!) lives. But the scene does need to be set. If we transfer over to our own homes some of the things we tend to see and experience at nature centers and outdoor gardens, we can begin to see that every day at home is a potential nature center experience. When we go to the nature center around our cities there are a few things that we are introduced to immediately: usually the natural beauty of the surroundings; we are introduced to the history of the 'place;' and then we might be led on a tour around a forest or garden, asked to see certain things and take note of them. Activities might follow.  Much of this can be duplicated on our city or rural streets, it just takes a new vision to make the opportunity ever-present.

For example, at the UW Arboretum, we immediately are introduced to its long history and its pioneers of prairie, forest and marsh restoration. We learn that the land in this area had been prairie oak savannah pre-settlement, then turned to farmlands, which created disruption, which transformed the landscape. The idea behind restoration is to try to reintroduce native species and pull back non native species, so that there is a harmony again between land, growth and its care.  Take a little bit of time read about the history of your city and neighborhood.  There are always stories about founders,

development and allotted green spaces. Begin to think of and talk about your own home as part of this fabric that had been created on top of a previous landscape.  As you walk around the neighborhood, not only point out as many plants as possible, but think of lawns and gardens as restorations.  Call them that if it helps.  Along the edges of Lake Monona there are many patches of milkweed. Why is it a good idea to make sure all the milkweed doesn't get mowed? They are the sole source of Monarch butterfly habitat. Where you see milkweed, you may see an egg, an instar, eventually a full butterfly.  Once the story is revealed, the imagination begins to see that the city street is not about concrete first and nature just grows in around the edges, but the other way around: it is the lake, woods and parks first; houses came afterwards, beautiful, but also a change in the landscape, and we can become land restorationists ourselves, every day. The squirrel now has new meaning. The shade trees are native habitat. Where you learn these things is your own nature center, your home.

Family Nature Journal Option 2: Briefly talk about what your neighborhood began as. For many, it was Native American first, then settlement, then city, and hopefully a city plan that included parks and green spaces. Who are the parks named after?  Outside, take a water color postcard and draw on its front a sign of a park and write journal notes pointing out the nature around it, any observations that are happening around it, birds, squirrels, shadows, sky, etc.  Flip the card over and write about "why my house is a nature center. If I was in charge of taking care of the park, I would..."