Seasons South and North

Learning How To Observe

When we take children outdoors to gather things and then back inside to paint them; when we go outdoors to find things and bring them inside to build something with them, we are not teaching observation - the first and most essential skill of science and poetry. We are teaching technology or art. The former is applied science, the latter is the imitation of nature. None of these, neither science nor poetry, nor technology nor art will be a successful endeavor without a developed capacity for observation.

In understanding the human world and  its machines and machinations, we teach children to ask and find the answers to :

• Who?
• What? 
• Where? 
• When? 
• Why? 
• How?  

To understand nature and the physical world around us, we use our five senses:

•  Sight
• Hearing 
• Touch 
• Smell 
• Taste 

 In spite of all of our capacity to gather, store, and exchange information, it is an augmentation of knowledge, and no replacement for the knowledge we acquire first hand through our senses. If anything is disastrous about our children's modern existence of television, cinema, electronic games, the internet and all the rest of it, it is the failure to develop the use of their senses. Spatial concepts and the ability to calculate faster may be more developed, but the ability to recognize a variety of sounds, colours, flavours, odours, and textures -- the ability to participate in life -- is being lost.

Not only must we teach children to observe; we must teach them to observe honestly. Before a fact can be interpreted, it has to be observed with clarity. On seeing a tree in bloom with pink flowers, we must first see it for what it is, tall or short, healthy or sick, light pink or dark, with leaves or without, etc. before we can write a poem about it or paint it, or calculate its value as timber. If we do not observe, and clearly and honestly, our knowledge will be hollow and our decisions will be mistakes.

Our children have a right and a responsibility to know the world first hand. As more and more of them live lives indoors, they will not have days of free play outdoors in tall grasses or on a beach or in a wood. Increasing numbers of children will never have long hours outdoors of gazing, watching, seeing, idly staring, doing nothing at all but just looking at things such as clouds, bugs, birds, frogs, streams. They will not have the opportunity to learn naturally how to observe. We will have to teach them.

Learning To Observe Nature

This exercise will use four senses only. There will be no tasting!

You will need:

• a sheet of clear plastic, about 30cm  x 40cm, such as are often found in inexpensive picture frames
• an empty picture frame or a substitute cut from sturdy card

Taking these, go outdoors with the children. Find a quiet place to sit near some greenery. Lead the children as a group in the close observation of just one thing, such as a tree, shrub, bird, log, flower. Let them look at, touch, smell, listen to it. Ask questions based on the senses, e.g.:

• What do we see?
  
  •  What colour is it? 
  • Is it big or small? 
  • Is it fat or thin? 
  • What shape is it? 
  • How many branches or leaves or petals has it?  

•   What do we smell?
  
  •  Is it a sweet smell? 
  • A rancid smell? 
  • Is the smell strong or faint? 
  • Does it make your eyes water?  

• What do we hear? 
  
  •  A birdsong?  
  • Movement? 
  • Is it loud or soft? 
  • A tinkling? A rustling? A scratching? 

• What can we feel? 
  
  •  Is it rough or smooth? 
  • Soft or hard? 
  • Squishy? Gritty? 
  • Hot or cold? 
  • Wet or dry? 

As you go through this exercise, you will at the same time be greatly enlarging the children's vocabulary. Do this two or three times as a group, observing different things. Then, let each child try giving a full observation on his or her own. Encourage as much description and detail of true perceptions as possible. Encourage the use of the correct words for each perception. Lead the children away from comparison to other things they know. (e.g. "It smells like my dog" or "It looks like my toy.") Comparison and analogy come later. First, one must be able to observe.

To take the exercise further, hold up the plastic in front of something that has all ready been observed. This will have the effect of flattening the view of it as if it were a photograph. Ask the children how this separation from the object changes how they see, hear, smell, and feel it. Then, hold up the empty frame instead of the plastic. This has the effect of narrowing the focus and for some people helps them to observe better. Ask them again how the frame changes how they perceive the object.

Ideally, this should be done at least once a week. As the year progresses, the children's powers of observation will greatly improve, along with their vocabulary and their ability to concentrate. Besides that, it's fun.

N.B. For an example of wonderful powers of clear and honest observation, read a few passages of Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle. Though it is not about teaching, it is such a lesson in observation that I have put it in the list of books for teachers in the panel to the right.

©2009 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

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Sliding Through Seasons

In this month of autumn rains, spring rains, long rains, there is also snow in some places and green grass sprouting in others. Many readers have kindly sent in their observations of children at play this March, or their memories of their own play. Rather remarkably, nearly all focus on one favourite activity: sliding.

Ceyda writes: "When I was twelve, we lived in Karachi and behind our house were marshes and all sorts of mud during the spring rains....we had great fun running and sliding in that stuff...came out caked in mud."

Halisi writes from Kenya that children there, where the Long Rains are beginning, are "playing in the rain and mud."

Aurore in Switzerland says that there is still plenty of snow on the ground but in March it begins to melt and be more slippery. "Children sit on their jackets and slide down the hills of wet snow."

Catherine writes from California that "March is one of the few months when the grass is green" and recalls how much fun it was to slide down a hill in a large carton.

Sliding  is so much fun that children all over the world enjoy it. It is familiar to them across cultures, hemispheres and seasons. Here, we can make the joy of sliding into a way to reinforce the learning  of the different seasons in different hemispheres.

Play "Slides and Ladders Through Seasons"

Referring to the previous posts, "March Is Autumn, March Is Spring" and "The Season of the Long Rains", remind the children of the different seasons in different parts of the world. In parts of Africa, the four seasons are the long and short rains and the long and short dry seasons. In much of the temperate zones, the four seasons are winter, spring, summer, and autumn in the northern hemisphere, with  the order being summer, autumn, winter, spring in the southern hemisphere.

Download Slides and Ladders Through Seasons 

Print off enough copies for children to play the game. Alternatively, you could project it onto the wall or screen for the group to play together. To enhance the learning value, each time a player's marker lands on a season, he or she must call out a country, region, or continent where that season occurs.

(Basic playing rules: This is a simple game of luck. You will need a single die. Each child will need a marker or counter, such as a button or a large seed. They need to be of different colours so that the pieces do not become confused. Taking turns, each players rolls the die and moves along the numbered squares. If he or she lands on a square with a ladder, the marker moves to the top of the ladder. If the marker lands on a slide, the marker moves to the bottom of the slide. The first to reach the final square is the winner.)

Further Discussion

Encourage the children to share their adventures of sliding. Ask:

In which season would snow (grass sliding, mud sliding) sliding be possible? 

Where would that season occur?

Which kind of sliding would be the wettest?

Which the coldest?

Go out to the playground slides!

© 2009 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

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Bring Back Curiosity

The uninhibited curiosity of small children is a delight. They are wonderfully curious and do not seem to see themselves as outside of the natural world but in it. As they grow, they go from being curious about their toes to a time of catching lizards and toads, spiders and flies and butterflies, to see closer. From there, they should normally move to a time of wanting to know more.

Yet, for some years now, experts as reported in the press, have worried that this curiosity is being stifled in children. Whether the cause be a fear on the part of teachers of regulations and safety codes, or the loss of their own curiosity through overwork, or the excessive, petty-minded and monotonous testing of the children, all seem to agree that something important - curiosity - is being lost.

Here are a sampling of the articles:

http://www.newstatesman.com/200504180028

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1060054/Science-tests-killing-childrens-curiosity-report-warns.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/sep/23/teaching.schools

Furthermore, when we teach children to kill or eradicate every creature that comes near, we are also killing their curiosity. When, on the one hand, we fill our libraries with books about discovering nature, while on the other hand, we determinedly spray and poison the real creatures, what are we teaching? Would they not think that the books we give them about the rainforests and endangered species also contradict our true intention to destroy those very same things? In the adult world we live with the same contradiction daily, bombarded with advertisements using photos of wild animals to sell products, while the use of many of those products - and living the lifestyle that goes with them - is leading to the death of those animals. We are confused and we are teaching confusion to our children.

 It is not very hard to turn this around for young children, but we do have to end our own confusion. Without becoming polemical here, suffice to say that we must at least allow ourselves to be as curious as the children are, and we must allow the creatures that inspire the curiosity to live. (To get a start, read Rachel Carson's classic, The Sense of Wonder, in the side panel list: Books for Teaching the Seasons and Nature.) Like it or not, insects and other creatures do still enter our lives, homes, and schools regularly. Why not turn that to an advantage for allowing and encouraging curiosity?

In one of the school libraries where I once worked, we decided to add a miniature natural history collection in the corner of the library. In concept, it was an extension of the nature table, but focussed on a more scientific approach. With the approval of the school head, now, when creatures were discovered, we indulged our curiosity. Instead of killing or spraying, we trapped them, tried to identify them, then photographed them for our museum display and gave them their freedom.

Very quickly, we appreciated Linnaeus's classification system. We were in an English language school in Brazil. Most of the teachers were British and even the science teachers could not always identify what we had found. Whenever we caught or photographed something, we tried to find it in one of our insect or animal identification books, on one of the websites we used for identification (see the side panel for a list of good ones). If we could not, we asked neighbours, kitchen staff, gardeners, anyone who might know what it was. We were told the name in Portuguese, of course. To find the name in English, we went first to a book in Portuguese, found the Latin, with which we could then go to a comparable book in English and find the name in our language, which we then wrote on the identification card. (I write her about animals, but we also had plants and rocks.)

We had a growing display of ant farms, insect shells, cocoons waiting for butterflies to emerge, a wounded bird we nursed back to health and released and, our biggest find, a opossum that the smaller children had cornered in the playground early one morning. We built him a box and added branches and food for him. he lived in the library for a few days until it was clear beyond hope that he would never like our company. The older children and a science teacher had a day out taking him to a less occupied part of town and releasing him.

Everything in the display was clearly labeled in Latin, English and Portuguese. The teachers were all very enthusiastic and tailored some of their lessons to fit with what was in the collection. We made an effort to ascertain the basic facts about each creature that came to us:

• Species name
• Habitat 
• Food 
• Habits and behaviour 
• Whether endangered or not and why 

The children were excited, were always on the lookout for more to add to our collection. They truly tried to find out more about each creature and were proud when they could answer a puzzling question about one.  It was such a puzzle that took us from curiosity to amazement one day.

We had found an enormous caterpillar, longer and larger than my thumb, on the school's front drive. We promptly put it in a box with twigs, leaves, earth, and a tad of water, hoping it would form a cocoon. We asked everyone and checked all of our books, but could not identify it. Soon, our caterpillar burrowed under the earth in the box, so we knew it was a moth species. We waited, hoping that when it emerged, we would then be able to learn its name. When it emerged, it was massive, wider than my palm and a myriad of lovely browns. Yet we still could not find it in our books. We photographed it as its wings were drying and watched it fly away. 

With a group of seven-year-olds, we took our photos to the Entomology Department of the University of São Paulo, determined to find an answer. As we waited in the large entry for a biologist-librarian to bring us some books, the children stared and pointed upward, mouths open in astonishment. Displayed on the wall was the massive preserved carcass of a spider. The body was more than a meter in length and the legs would have spread to more than two meters across. Beneath it was a sign in Portuguese that said: "Don't ask! Yes, it is real. Found in the Amazon region in the 1930s."

None of us will ever forget it. I have kept in touch with my colleagues at that school and have learned that more than one natural scientist was born that day.

Encourage Curiosity About Nature

Make your own collection 

• It is surprisingly easy to find glass or plastic cases, low tables, bug boxes, etc.  
• Use the nature identification websites on the panel to the left, as well as books 
• Put the relevant books on display, with a marker to the pages showing your exhibits; children love being able to relate pictures in books to reality
•  Place a number of inexpensive, plastic magnifying glasses on strings connected to the display tables, encouraging study
•   When things get too excited, give an alternative activity to those who have to wait their turn
• Never harm the creatures 
• Always return them to the wild after examining and photographing them 
• Involved the children in every aspect, from discovery to capture, to photographing, to identifying, to release 
• Work closely with other teachers to help make it a school-wide project 
• Take the children to visit a natural history collection near you, or visit one online ; discuss those exhibits to discover how to improve your own.

  

©2009 Anne Morddel 

Seasons South and North

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Logging In the Rainforests

Logging of old growth trees in all forests has gone on for centuries. People have always seemed to feel that whatever they encountered was there for their exploitation.  Whole forests have gone. Few remain in Europe. The cutting continues apace. The massive Sequoias of North America are occasionally still being cut.  The tropical rainforests are being cut for wood as well as burned for farmland. 

Children learn this as they learn about rainforests. Unfortunately, the knowledge of what some adults are doing that their teachers tell them is wrong can often make them feel helpless. How can children stop the logging and burning? They cannot, obviously. Yet in our teaching, we make them feel how urgent the issue is. What can they do to make a difference? How can we show them the way?

A Wood Conservation Exercise

• Wood and paper come from trees when they are dead. Oxygen and stable soil come from trees when they are alive.  
• We need air and we need the soil not to wash away in the rain. 
• We like wooden furniture, decking and panels and we like luxurious papers.
• We can reduce our use of wood.  
• We cannot reduce our use of air.
• We need to keep alive trees and to plant more. 
• We need to use wood less.  

Ask the children to name at least 5 things made of wood. 

Discuss if they really need those things and, if they do, could they be made of other materials.

Ask them to look around their homes and think of what wooden things are really not necessary.

With older children, ask them to find out what type of wood the objects they have selected are made of: oak, teak, pine, etc. Then ask them to find a picture of that type of tree alive and fully grown. Have them compare and discuss the wooden object and the tree.

An example:

It is now becoming popular to have garden furniture and decking made of the Brazilian wood called ipê (Tabebuia chrysotricha). There are no ipê plantations. The trees are being cut by the hundreds in the rainforest. Here is some furniture made from ipê:

Here is what the ipê tree looks like :

What a heartbreaking and senseless reduction, eh? Do we really need that garden chair? Do we need it more than we need air? Ask the children if the furniture might be made of iron, perhaps. Or perhaps they do not need a chair in the garden at all. Perhaps they could lie on their tummies in the grass and see and smell nature better than in any chair.

Ask them to try. Ask them to think about making do with less paper and less wood. Let us show them the way by making do with less ourselves.

©2009 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

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Rainforest Fog

Both tropical and temperate rainforests have a lot of fog. In temperate rainforests it can be particularly thick as it comes in off the sea and settles in among the leaves and branches, dripping incessantly and obscuring all. In tropical rainforests, the fog comes from the changes in temperature between night and day.

In both cases, it important for retaining the moisture. All kinds of small animals and insects at all heights drink from the water held in leaves and pockets of plants. During seasons of no rain, the fog of the temperate rainforests provides the only moisture for plants. Plants such as bromeliads in the tropical rainforest and the mosses in the temperate rainforest, which have no roots in the ground, gain much needed moisture from the fog.

Fog is created when a cooling produces condensation. In the warm tropical rainforests, the most common, but not the only, type of fog is radiation fog: as the sun sets, the ground cools and produces condensation - fog - in the warmer air above it.

In the temperate rainforests, the fog comes from the ocean, where cold air has passed over warmer water, causing the condensation.

An Activity About Fog

Make Your Own Fog

There are a few ways to make fog, some of them involving dry ice, which is quite dangerous. This is the safest method to use around young children, but still requires CAUTION, as hot water is used. This is an experiment that the children will NOT perform, but will observe an adult doing.

This fog, or condensation will be produced in the same way that ocean fog is, with colder air affecting hot water.

You will need: 

a 4 liter glass jar or bottle

a kitchen glove or mitt if the bottle has no handle

a kettle full of water

500 grams of ice cubes

a sieve that can rest across the top of the bottle or jar

To make the fog :

Boil the water

Pour it into the bottle or jar and let it sit for a full minute

Using the mitt to protect your hands, carefully pour out all but about 3 centimeters of the hot water

Place the sieve over the top of the bottle

Fill the sieve with the ice cubes.

Fog will be created as the vapour of the hot water at the bottom of the bottle rises and contacts the cold air around the ice cubes and begins condensation.

N.B.  As with even an experiment as simple as this one, it is always advisable to perform the entire experiment one time on your own, without the class. 

Just for Fun

Have the children try to draw fog.

©2009 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

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Two Kinds of Rainforests

We hear so much about the rainforests these days, especially the Amazon rainforest. It is the largest that remains and the best known but there are more rainforests than the Amazon's. They exist in both hemispheres and on all continents except Antarctica.  Some have been more damaged or reduced than others - though all are at risk. It can be confusing for a child (and for an adult!) to be told that gorillas (Gorilla gorilla), orang-utans (Pongo pygmaeus), or golden-lion tamarins (Leontopithecus rosalia) are all from the rainforest but none from the Amazon rainforest.  (They are from rainforests in Africa, Borneo and South America, respectively.)  Perhaps it will help to begin now an occasional series on rainforests in the hope of bringing some clarification.

There are two kinds of rainforests on our planet: tropical and temperate. Both are vital and beautiful and what remains of both is threatened with total extinction.

Tropical rainforests are those we hear most about in the press. They occur near the Equator, in the tropical regions, roughly between the Latitudes 23°N and 23°S. These rainforests are in Central and South America, southern Mexico, the Pacific Islands, western Africa, Madagascar, and southeast Asia. They receive between 1250 and 6600 mm of rain each year. They are dense with life, having thousands of different species, many not yet described. (By way of comparison, there are about 700 species of birds in North America, while there are more than 1000 in just the Bolivian region of the Amazon rainforest.) Tropical rainforests produce about 40% of the earth's oxygen, and some 25% of medicines used in the developed world come from rainforest plants. Tropical rainforests are warm, with average temperatures between 20° and 34°C.  Below is a tropical rainforest.

Temperate rainforests usually occur near oceans, and are in the temperate zones, roughly between the Latitudes 26° and 66° north and south of the Equator. These rainforests  are found in the northwestern region of North America, the southern tip of South America, western Europe - where just a few small patches remain - Asia and Australia. They receive an average of 1400 mm of rain per year.  The giant redwood trees are from temperate rainforests. Some of these have an age estimated to be greater than 2000 years. The temperate rainforests are colder, with an average temperature from 4° to 12°C. Below is a temperate rainforest.

Both types of rainforests have mists and fogs, and sometimes they are very thick. Both types of rainforests, as with all forests, have been and are still heavily logged. They are also burnt and cleared to gain grazing and farming land.

Here is a chart to make it clearer:

An Activity to Learn the Two Kinds of Rainforest

Colour a Map of the Two Rainforests

Download this map. 

Download Tropical and Temperate Rainforests 

The striped areas are rainforests. Explain the Equator and the tropical regions to the children. Give each child two different colours, one for tropical rainforests and one for temperate rainforests. Ask the children to try to colour the striped regions accordingly.

©2009 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

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The Season of the Long Rains

Until now, I have written about seasons in the southern and northern hemispheres that are clearly opposed, and have said nothing about that vast part of our planet that is equatorial. It is a region where the seasons are not marked by changes from hot to cold but from wet to dry.

Mary Muhenda writes from Uganda about the season of the Long Rains, which is just beginning: 

"Uganda has four seasons: the Long Rains, the Long Dry Season, the Short Rains, and the Short Dry Season." The Long Rains begin in February or March and last until May. The name is not because the season is long (it is actually shorter than the Short Rains) but because each afternoon when it rains, it rains for a long, long time.

There are few sights as beautiful as the coming of the Long Rains -- Masika in Swahili -- in Africa. One stands in the dry, sunny heat and can gaze far away across the flat grasslands, where vast, dark clouds are gathered, heavy and low. The lightning flashes and the rain pours down in wide bands, all at a distance. Close by, the sky is blue, the land is parched, its breathlessness turning from despair to anticipation as, over the next few days, the dark cloud that never seems to empty draws closer. The air becomes moist. One or two plump, lone drops fall from the sky. Every plant and creature strains toward the moisture like Tantalus. Finally, the huge cloud is above and the rain shoots down out of it to an earth so dry that the dust bounces under the beating drops for the first days of the rains. There is a surge of joy in all of nature striving upward to meet the falling surge of warm rain. Flowers bloom, trees seem to fatten, birds sing again, people dance.

All becomes mud. After the initial joyous gratitude, people set to work planting their crops of "sorghum, maize, peas and beans," Mary writes. Now "the countryside is very green and lovely". All plants grow quickly, not just the crops, and weeding is a daily requirement. While farmers and families are tramping through the mud to plant and weed, animals are celebrating.

Away from the cities, the animals have their own way with the mud that is now everywhere in a variety of colours, but especially brick red. Elephants (Loxondonta) take mud baths. Black rhinos (Diceros bicornis) indulge themselves by wallowing in the mud for hours at sunset.

                 

Not in the beginning of the season, when the dust is still dancing under the thundering raindrops, but when the earth is truly wetted, the African bullfrogs (Pyxicephalus adspersus) emerge from the holes in which they have waited out the dry season and begin their loud and sombre chorus.

The Long Rains will last for months. Every afternoon and into the evening, it will rain heavily for hours. People will stop celebrating the rains and grow tired of them so that, when everything begins to dry out in May, they will celebrate the coming of the new season: the Short Dry Season.

How To Celebrate the Long Rains

Get Muddy! Wallow in the Mud Like a Black Rhino!!

Tell the parents the day before that the children need to come in old clothes. At the end of the day, fill some plastic tubs with mud and let the children plunge their arms in it up to their elbows, smearing streaks on their faces, making mud pies, enjoying the naughty squelching sounds and the obscene thrill of sensuality. No?

The current issue of Exchange has an article by Joan Almon entitled "The Fear of Play" which discusses just why no one would follow the above instructions, though there is absolutely nothing wrong with them. You can purchase the article here:

https://secure.ccie.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=5018642 

Michael Rosen, the Children's Laureate  has spoken out often, if not in praise of mud, at least very eloquently making the case for children's play. In preparing this post, I was stunned to find that one magazine considered it necessary to give a recipe for making mud. How can that be? How can anyone be so cut off from the natural world as to need a recipe for making mud? Here it is, with no secret ingredients:

http://www.craftzine-digital.com/craft/vol03/?pg=143

Get a Little Muddy, Like a Little Black Rhino!

Make copies of the rhino mask template below on card and give one to each child to cut out. Give each child a small cup of mud to smear on the mask. When it is dry, put string or an elastic band through the holes in the tabs and the child can wear a muddy rhino mask.

Download Rhino mask 4 

Pretend to Get Muddy!

Create the masks as above and give each child a grey crayon to colour it.

Have an African Bullfrog Chorus!

Scroll or play through the frogs in the game on this page to get to the African Bullfrog and play his call for the class:

http://research.calacademy.org/research/library/biodiv/kids_page/frogs/frogs2.html

Divide the children into two groups and have them try to outdo one another imitating the bullfrog's calls. Have them sing their bullfrog call in a round.

Additionally, play "Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog" by the Creedence Clearwater Revival 

here, on YouTube:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtYnCmw2CWE

Teach the children the chorus:

Joy to the world, all the boys and girls

All the fishes in the deep blue seas

Joy to you and me

Now, add in the chorus of  the bullfrog call. Still singing, go out and weed the garden you planted recently and think of people in East Africa doing the same in the rain.

Discuss rains

In the post "March Is Autumn; March Is Spring", the rains of Brazil and Britain in March were discussed. Now, the Long Rains of East Africa are an addition to March's rainy reputation.

Measure and Compare Rainfall

For children aged 8 and up, here is a great lesson and activity for measuring rainfall from NASA:

http://scool.larc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/view_lessonplan.cgi?id=12

Enjoy the rain!

©2009 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

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What Is A Weed? What Is A Flower?

In our gardens and yards, we teach our children that weeds are bad and flowers are good. By doing so we do them and nature a terrible disservice. There is a specific definition for flower : "that part of a plant comprising a group of reproductive organs and its envelopes".  There is no such scientific clarity for a weed: "a herbaceous plant not valued for use or beauty". A flower may or may not be pretty but it has a clear function for the plant. To call something a weed is basically to say that one does not like that plant. 

Most people tend to say that what grows naturally on their patch of ground are "weeds" and what they have planted themselves are "flowers". (How that encapsulates the essence of  humanity's battle against nature!) We nurture what they want and kill or pull up what they do not want.  Too often, what we tend to plant is something from another part of the world, something we have admired and want to have, even if our climate and soil are nothing like that plant's natural environment. Too often, the weeds we poison and pull up are food for the insects, birds, and creatures around us. Sometimes they can eat what we plant, but not often, and people do not like it when they do. Sometimes, they can move on to where native plants still exist, but we then have less of nature around us and fewer animals can survive on the reduced food source. Sometimes they are poisoned by what we import and they eat.  

In the northern hemisphere, if gardeners finally succeed in getting rid of every last stinging nettle (Urtica dioica), they will also get rid of the beautiful peacock butterfly (Inochis io), whose caterpillars eat nettles. 

   images of peacock butterfly and nettles from Wikipedia   

In South America, if every clump of  boring green with tiny, insignificant flowers is removed......

.........then the creature that needs it in order to survive will also be removed. Permanently.

Our habit of despising the home-grown and desiring the exotic in our gardens does ill to the environment in other ways as well. Native plants need little care, soil changes, or extra water, while exotic or foreign plants usually need extra water and fertilizers. This is when we live in a time of increasing water shortage and soil pollution and need to conserve water and keep the soil healthy.

We often read about the numerous plants in the rainforest that are being destroyed before they can have been fully identified and their properties discovered. Thus, despising what is local and native in favour of what is exotic, foreign, and maybe profitable, has meant that plants of potential medical value have been lost. The little blue flower (Stachytarpheta elatior) shown above is a perfect example. It is native to Brazil. Farmers consider it a serious nuisance because it grows easily and very densely and they kill it whenever they can. It is a food source for the Mourning Rose butterfly (Papilio anchisiades) shown above. It is also considered to be of medicinal value; its leaves are used to make a tea to treat hepatitis.

We teach children to cherish or at least appreciate nature while at the same time we destroy it. What is more, by destroying what is native, that which is their own environment, we devalue their world to them and teach them that only the exotic and cultivated is valuable. How can we then ask them to preserve nature? How to clarify this and give them a clearer message and understanding?

Start a Native/Non-Native or South/North Garden

Gardening and discovering how plants grow is all ready a part of the Early Years curriculum, but the activity can be greatly enhanced by using it to teach about the importance of native species. 

Preparation - You will be creating a garden that will have two distinct halves. Plan to plant some seeds of local native plants. Then, look for seeds or seedlings of exotic plants from the hemisphere opposite to yours.  To find seeds and seedlings, try mail-order seed companies as well as garden shops and markets. CAUTION - be sure to select only those plants of which no part is poisonous or an allergen. (See "101 Kid-Friendly Plants : Fun Plants and Family Garden Projects" in the list of gardening books in the panel to the right.)

Location - Are you fortunate enough to have space outdoors for a real garden? Wonderful! One way to make it much easier and more enjoyable for small children is to garden is to do so on raised beds of hay. With hay, it is possible to put earth on top and plant into that. The hay serves as a mulch to protect the seedlings from other plants swamping them. As it decomposes, it enriches the soil organically. No digging or tilling is required and raised beds are just the right height for little gardeners. Best of all, when the hay is delivered, it is great fun to jump on it and stamp it into place. WARNING - Some children may be allergic to hay and may have to miss out on the jumping part. 

If you do not have a plot for your class, two window boxes will do. Even two pots will do. Label one native and the other non-native. For the natives to thrive, they should be as close to the real environment as possible, so do not put them in a dark corner or on top of the heater or air conditioner!

Gardening - Plant your seeds. Care for them. Learn about your plants. Get someone from one of the local garden clubs who specializes in native species of plants to come and give a talk to the class. Observe your plants. What insects or birds or other animals use them for food or housing?  How much care do the native plants need? How much care do the non-natives need? How much water do they need? Which ones thrive? Do the local insects like any of the non-natives? They may well do. (Remember, one of Europe's most popular shrubs, the "butterfly bush", or buddleia, is native to Asia.) 

Discuss - If a plant becomes covered with mites or a fungus, find out more about it. The fungus lives off of the plant and leads to its death and decomposition. Is that its function in nature? Is there a parasite of the fungus? Or of the mites? Try to help the children see that nature is interconnectedness. Like that old song about the bones ("the knee bone's connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone's connected to the hip bone," and so on) the earth, the water, the sun, the plant, the things that feed off the plant and are in turn food for others, all are interconnected. 

By learning that interconnectedness, they will begin to learn to appreciate each part of nature in its own place. With that appreciation, they will be better equipped to live within and preserve nature.

© 2009 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

Unless otherwise noted, all pictures courtesy of www. photobucket.com

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March Is Autumn, March Is Spring

March is a dramatic month in terms of weather. In parts of Europe and North America, it usually arrives with wind and rain and the first displays of crocuses and daffodils. It is the very beginning of spring. One of the most well-known of all weather proverbs is :

"If March comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb; if March comes in like a lamb, it will go out like a lion."

The meaning being that if the month begins with stormy weather, it will end with sunshine; if it begins with warm, calm weather, it will end with storms. Whatever the order, March is certain to be blustery and wet at some point. William Wordsworth (1770-1850) described March in Britain in his classic poem:

Written in March

The Cock is crowing,

The stream is flowing,

The small birds twitter,

The lake doth glitter

The green field sleeps in the sun;

The oldest and youngest

Are at work with the strongest;

The cattle are grazing,

Their heads never raising;

They are forty feeding like one!

Like an army defeated

The snow hath retreated,

And now doth fare ill

On the top of the bare hill;

The plowboy is whooping - anon - anon

There's joy in the mountains;

There's life in the fountains;

Small clouds are sailing,

Blue sky prevailing;

The rain is over and gone!

In the southern hemisphere, March is autumn, the end of summer, yet in many places also wet. In the rainforest regions of South America, summer is a time of incessant warm rain, culminating in March. In autumn, the last of the big rainstorms pelt down to an already sodden land, then some time during the month, finally stop. So, in many parts of the world, whether it is autumn or spring, March can be relied upon to be wet. Surely the greatest poem about wet March in South America is the lyrics to the song by 

Antonio Carlos Jobim (1927-1994):

Aguas de Março

(Waters of March)

It's a stick, it's a stone,

It's the end of the road,

It's the nub of the stump,

It's a little alone.

It's a sliver of glass,

It's life, it's the sun,

It's night, it's death,

It's a lasso, it's a fish hook.

It's the peroba-do-campo*

It's the knot in the wood,

Cainga, Candeia**

It's the Matita Pereira***

It's the wind in the woods,

The tumble down the bank,

It's the profound mystery

It's the "want" or "don't want".

It's the wind blowing,

It's the bottom of the hill,

It's the beam, it's the void,

It's the barn-raising party.****

It's the raining rain,

It's the river bank talking

Of the Waters of March,

It's the end of field work.

It's the foot, it's the ground,

It's the beat of marching down the road,

It's the bird in the hand,

It's a slingshot's stone.

It's a bird in the sky

And a bird on the ground,

It's the brook, it's the spring, 

It's the piece of bread.

It's the bottom of the well,

It's the end of the road,

It's the look of disgust,

It's a little alone.

It's a thorn, it's a nail,

It's a telling, it's a tale, 

It's a point, it's a dot, 

It's a sprinkled drop.

It's the fish, it's the gesture,

It's a shining silver,

It's the morning light,

It's the roof tiles arriving.

It's the firewood, it's the day

It's the end of bitterness,

It's the glass of rum, 

It's the sliver on the road.

It's the project for the house,

It's the person in bed,

It's the car that's stuck,

It's the mud, it's the mud.

It's a river crossing, it's a bridge,

It's a toad, it's a frog,

It's a remnant of the forest

In the morning light.

It's the Waters of March

Closing the summer,

It's the promise of life

Within your heart.

It's a snake, it's a stick,

It's John, it's Joe,

It's a thorn in the hand,

It's a cut in the foot.

It's a river crossing, it's a bridge,

And a toad, and a frog,

It's a beautiful horizon,

It's a miserable cold.

It's the Waters of March

Closing the summer,

And the promise of life 

Within your heart.

(my free translation)

*    The peroba-do-campo (Aspidosperma tormentosum) is a semi-deciduous tree that grows throughout Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay.

**     Cainga  (Moldenhawera floribunda) is a tree of the Atlantic Rainforest with beautiful bright yellow flowers.

    Candeia (Piptocarpha rotundifolia) is a small, deciduous tree that grows throughout Brazil.

***    The Matita Pereira is the Striped Cuckoo (Tapera naevia) which can be found across 85% of South America. The Brazilian folkloric character, Saci-Pererê, can turn himself into this bird at will.

**** The festa da cumeira is a party to help a person who has built the framework for his house or barn and is ready to thatch or tile the roof. It is similar to the richtfest in Germany or the barn-raising in North America.

Things To Do With Poems About March

Hear the Wordsworth poem read aloud:

http://classicpoetryaloud.podomatic.com

Hear the most well-known interpreter of the Waters of March, Elis Regina,  sing the song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRqI5R6L7ow

Write a March Poem

For the very young, while it is important to hear and perhaps even memorize Wordsworth's poem, it is a bit too much to expect them to to produce a formal poem, but how joyously they would be able to create an impressionistic poem or song such as Jobim's lyrics. As a group activity, have the children call out their strongest impressions of what they have observed outdoors this month while you write them on a long band of brown paper. Have them colour in the borders and then hang the masterpiece on the wall. Alternatively, each child can write two or three observations on a piece of paper, adding drawings. Then, tape them all together in a long band to hang on the wall. Have everyone try to sing them along with the easy chant of the song.

If you play guitar, here is the fingering for playing the song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUX9S9OuG0Q

N.B. "Aguas de Março" has been recorded by over 80 artists and used in many advertisements. It is quite possible that some of the children may know the tune.

©2009 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

Unless otherwise noted, photos from www.photobucket.com

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