**ARCHIVED POST **
Take heart fellow nature lovers … some parents and teachers do want their charges along with themselves to be in touch with the natural world. Here follows two examples of children and parents/teachers in nature.
Each year Goodman Elementary in the Arlington Independent School District sends all the third grade students out into the wood at Molly Hollar Wildscape. The event is called Walk on the Wildside (WOW) and is wildly anticipated by the students each year. So you may have in your mind scores of third graders running with abandon through the wood. Not so! This is organized chaos planned for weeks in advance by a team that includes school personnel and volunteers from nature minded organizations–Arlington Conservation Council, regional Master Naturalist and Master Gardener chapters and Native Plant Society of Texas members.
[table “” not found /]The wildscape is a remnant of the Eastern Cross Timbers and over the years has been turned into a teaching model of that ecosystem by these volunteer groups. Improved paths wander through the forest; on WOW day the paths become pathways to knowledge. Learning stations are set up at intervals dedicated to topics derived from Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) and aligned with third grade curriculum.
My station was dedicated to flower parts. Another was dedicated to erosion, another to butterfly metamorphosis, another to seed balls and finally a station explaining the “cast iron” forest. Children took apart flowers to learn the parts, poured water over vegetated and non-vegetated mini-prairies to measure erosion, got their hands muddy making seed balls, observed caterpillar to butterfly stages in the life cycle of an insect and heard the story of the forest. A bunch of very happy students returned to the indoors ready to build on their experiences and to pester their parents to take them back to the “cast iron” forest.
The second example, Prairie Fest, is truly education by osmosis. There is no set agenda. There is no set plan. What is available is “stealth” learning. Prairie Fest takes place on a remaining bit of Fort Worth prairie surrounded by suburbs and Interstate 30. Its official name is Tandy Hills Natural Area and is part of the Fort Worth Parks system. Don and Debra Young founded the event nearly a decade ago in response to attempts by gas drilling operators to establish drilling sites in the park. A “coalition of the willing” came together to protest the drilling and, as a result, the plan to drill was stopped and Prairie Fest was founded.
Building on this success, the Friends of Tandy Hills Natural Area continued Prairie Fest using proceeds from vendor fees to educate all attendees on the value of keeping the prairie intact. To this day, the last Saturday in April sees the entrance to the Tandy Hills transformed into something like an old fashioned fair, with “green” vendors hawking their wares, NGOs giving out information, food and beer vendors feeding the hungry, bands playing on the solar powered stage while those with the notion danced, high tech kites flying above and children playing with other children just newly met.
[table “” not found /]The best part of Prairie Fest is just beyond the chaos of the ring of vendors and down a short path to the real thing … the prairie! Suddenly things get a lot quieter. Here is where nature takes over and, with the help of the educators like Heather Foote from Prairie Keepers and Master Naturalists, reveals and beguiles the urban dweller with an ancient story. Moms and dads with kids in tow walk the trails with knowledgeable teachers who point out native plants such as milkweed while telling the story of the dependence of the Monarch butterfly larvae on this plant. While waiting their turn for a hike, children can make seed balls or tree “cookies.” Children sit at the feet of elders who pass on their knowledge of the prairie. Others pick up a passport to begin a self-guided walk through geological time via interpretive placards accurately spaced along a trail representing each epoch. Learning, learning, learning … dedicated to keep that which they love.
**ARCHIVED POST**
**ARCHIVED POST LINKS & PICTURES MAY NOT WORK**
**ARCHIVED POST AUTHOR: Dawn Hancock
