Seasons South and North

Seasons in the Soil

 When I was a child, my friends and I used to spend hours chatting and absent-mindedly picking up a handful of soil and letting it filter through our fingers and back to the ground. Over and over again, we allowed ourselves the idle sensuality of feeling loam flow over our fingers. It was a beautiful rich sensation, as if velvet has been crumbled.

Now I know that there was a universe of life, hundreds and thousands of tiny creatures in each handful. It has been estimated that the number of creatures in a single acre of healthy soil exceeds that of all the people living today so, more than 6 billion. In an acre!  Some of those microscopic creatures we hardly know anything about and there are some that we understand quite well. Perhaps my scooping hand went near one of the many larger creatures that make their home underground, such as a toad or a mole or a snake. 

 In truth, most of those millions who live in the earth live between the soils, in tunnels and air pockets, burrows and dens. Even the smallest creatures live in tiny spaces between the soils. All of them, even those deep down, have their responses to the seasons. They will rise toward warmth, go back down to cooler regions when the surface is too hot, rise for for food, go back down again when the surface freezes and it is comparatively warmer below. When the rains come, they may drown by the millions, as their tunnels and pockets are filled with water. If the soil is covered with concrete or tarmac, seasons, water and air are cut off and they all die.

In some parts of the northern hemisphere, farmers refer to the soil as "sleeping" during the winter, when it seems less alive. They speak of the earth "awakening" in the spring, when it warms and the life comes closer to the surface.  When every creature in it has been killed and nothing can grow in it, they say the soil has "died". Children need to know this feeling of soil that is healthy and alive, soil that is sleeping or awakening.  If you have a place where they can garden, allow them the extra time to play with the soil, to learn its feel. Help them to try to find some of the creatures that live in it.

Soil on the Nature Table 

For the hyperactive in your group, by all means, invest in an ant farm to sit on the nature table. From the garden supply shop, get a small amount of composting worms to keep on the table and feed and discuss. Even the squirmiest child will stop his or her own squirming to watch these creatures' movements.

For a Craft activity - have the children draw worms and cut them out. Place a bit of brown felt shaped into mounds like the earth on the nature table and place the children's worms under the mounds. Move the insects toward the surface on warmer days.

Some books about the soil and its creatures:

Life in the Soil

This is a serious read, and a bit heavy in places, but excellent for a full understanding of the latest knowledge about what creatures live in the ground.

Living Earth

This is an older book, and an easier read. It is still quite useful as a basic starter on the subject.

Life in a Bucket of Soil

This is a Dover book, clean, simple and clear, with good drawings. An older child could read it on his or her own.

Microlife That Lives in Soil

A children's non-fiction book, with photographs of microscopic animals, drawings, and a lively layout.

Let's Look at Animals Underground

A gimmicky book that actually works very, very well. Illustrations and text on white pages explain the animals that live underground. See-through pages backed by black allow for a child to use a special "torch" to see the underground world. 

The Soil We Live On

This is a book from the 1960s, and its geography is North American, but it has clear explanations and some very fun experiments.

©2009 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

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Book Review - Garden and Wood

                                                          


Buy Garden                                                                               Buy Wood

Evans has published a series of four books called Sparklers - Out and About, written by Katie Dicker. They are "designed for young children ready to find out more about the world around them. The books are designed to support and extend the early years curriculum." Sounds a bit dull, but the books are just the opposite.

We have two of the four: Garden and Wood, and they are charming. Illustrated with  high quality and colourful photographs to which speech bubbles, flowers for page numbers, and coloured strips for wording have been added. Some pages give facts, while others pose a question:

•  "How tall is your sunflower?", 
• "What time of year do frogs appear?"
• "How many pine cones can you collect?"
• "What different bark textures can you find?"  

Clearly, the emphasis here is on encouraging thinking and enquiry, and not just on the memorization of facts. Unusually for such books, every single one of the children actually looks happy (even though, looking at the photo credits, they seem to have been taken all over the world). The close-up shots of the animals will please young children who so enjoy photographs of real animals.

Both books commendably have a table of contents and an index. In spite of each book being only 24 pages long, it is very helpful to have these to be able to begin to teach children how to use them. 

These are excellent and attractive early non-fiction books.

©2009 Anne Morddel

Seasons South and North

Eco Schools

Now is a good time to start preparing for next term's nature activities and lessons. There is quite a lot in existence to be of help to teachers and librarians. One of the most useful is the Eco-Schools programme. 

Eco-Schools is an international programme --  in countries throughout Europe, South and North America, Asia and Africa --  to help children become involved in helping their schools to address environmental issues. This is particularly valuable as it gives children the sense that something can be done, thus alleviating their sense of helplessness. The work done is truly important, for it aims to make each school operate in a more ecological manner.

The website explains their activities :

"The Eco-Schools programme involves seven steps that any school can adopt. Based on the elements of an environmental management programme, the process involves a wide range of stakeholders, but it is the pupils who play the most important role.

"The seven steps include the establishment of an Eco-Schools Committee to organize and direct the activities of the school. Once a Committee is established an Environmental Review is done and an Action Plan established to set achievable targets and deadlines for improving the school’s environmental performance. To ensure that progress is made and that achievements are celebrated, Monitoring and Evaluation are done. This also ensures that environmental care and education is an ongoing process. Certain themes are studied in the classroom through Curriculum Work, and the whole school should be involved in practical initiatives. The step of Informing and Involving brings the local community and Local Agenda 21 into the process. Schools are encouraged to make outside contacts and ties to enhance their learning experience and to inform the wider public about their activities. And each school develops its own Eco-code, outlining the school’s values and objectives and what the students are striving toward.

After a period of participation, an evaluation of the success of these initiatives and the methodology is undertaken, and the whole Eco-Schools programme for each school is assessed. Successful schools are awarded with the Eco-Schools Green Flag."

I have looked at a number of the different sites in different countries. Some, such as those in France and the UK, offer quite a lot of free materials to download, newsletters, and case studies. Others are still in the developmental stage. Go through a few and use what they have to get your school registered as a part of the scheme or at least to use the materials to start being greener.

Eco-Schools Websites

www.eco-schools.org

The main website for the international organisation. Here, under Countries, you can find links to the individual, nation's eco-schools sites, some of which follow.

www.ecoschoolsscotland.org

Having joined with others, they have produced a number of good materials that can be downloaded.

www.eco-schools.org.uk

The newsletter here is excellent, so do sign up.

www.eco-ecole.org

This is the French eco-schools site. It has a number of very good downloads, if you can read French. There are activities and lessons that are quite creative.

www.lotc.org.uk

This is NOT an eco-schools site, but that of Learning Outside the Classroom. It has many pages of very good ideas for activities outside of the classroom, not all of them pertaining to nature.

©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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