I am a fan of Charlotte Mason’s philosophy of education and really like her views on the importance of nature studies. She argues for every day interaction with nature, to understand and familiarize children with their surroundings. I really like the idea of my children being as comfortable outdoors as they are inside – and channeling their experiences into being good stewards for nature. While I am personally comfortable with the ocean and ocean creatures. I am not super comfortable with forests and, particularly, bugs. Charlotte’s Nature Studies will double as education for the boys and as ideally will pave the path for my increasing comfort as well. Right now, I am at best mistrustful and at worst disgusted by creepy crawlies in forests. While I love and appreciate birds and trees (at a distance), having an ant, for example, climb on me really does creep me out.
So, I trudged up to Target and got the kids and myself some sketch pads, magnifying glasses and colored pencils. I also dug up our binoculars and old digital camera and we were ready! We biked to our closest hiking area (get some exercise in, chi ching!) and then hiked for 30 minutes. The experience was definitely positive although we did run into three Daddy Longlegs spiders attacking an earthworm –which made my stomach turn– but the boys were unfazed. One of the boys took pictures of everything, which I will not post here because, believe me, it was gross. The other boy entertained himself by using the binoculars but the wrong way – and refused to look into them the right way -so I just let him enjoy the moment unbothered. We walked for a while, called out interesting bugs or plants and watched the river once we got to the end of the hike. I sketched a big maple leaf in my pad but the boys weren’t hugely interested in sketching.
As I was sitting down to sketch, a huge bug with pincers started climbing on my thigh and after I shook it off, I hastily stood up. Guess this “fall in love with the forest” will take me longer after all.
The boys were happy with our little adventure and I think they will be game for the next one!
