Little things for a big, big earth

Earth Day is upon us and it's a cool, rainy day. Great for the earth and the plants, but not so great for playing outside without rain jackets and mud boots. That's ok because we've been celebrating all week!

I believe in, and adhere to, the place-based pedagogy that focuses on the here-and-now before the long-ago-and-far-away.  As David Sobel said in Beyond Ecophobia:  "What's important is that children have an opportunity to bond with the natural world, to learn to love it and feel comfortable in it, before being asked to heal its wounds." The best way to bond with that world is to connect with the small patch of it outside their own door, in their schoolyard, and in the local parks. So we do just that, not only to celebrate Earth Day, but as a part of our daily life.

Yesterday we went to one of our favorite local parks with our preschool nature club. We brought a bag and filled it (along with a couple more bags that others brought) with garbage along the trail. The fallen trees and huge boulders along the trail are an outdoor jungle gym. The long, shallow "cave" with its mud floor and dripping ceiling is mysterious. The crevasse with the inexplicable brick wall is cold and spider-ific. The steep drop-off into the gorge is dizzyingly beautiful.

At home we built a birdfeeder out of popsicle sticks, filled all of the birdfeeders, scrubbed out the bird bath, and put scraps of sisal rope in the suet feeder for birds to use in their nests. Then we took a walk through our own woods and picked up all the trash we found. 

While we were out there the kids decided to play the food web game (that they learned on Wild Kratts).  They found a patch of soft green moss and decided to start the game there. Now we needed to find something that would eat them as moss. After a bit of a search we found a slug under the rocks of our fire pit. So slugs they became! They decided to hunt for a robin to eat them next, which we found on the hill of the back yard. Higher order predators are difficult to come by, so they decided to call it a day and go in the house to let our cats eat them. 

I'd call that a successful Earth Day.