What does “Going on a nature walk” mean?

The weather has been beautiful lately and I’ve been taking the students out for nature walks. When I take groups of children out into the woods I like to give the experience some structure, but also allow for moments of serendipity.  Before each walk I decide on a theme or a task for us to focus on. A few weeks ago students looked for signs of spring; this week students drew pictures of all the wildflowers we encountered. Next week the focus may be on birds. But, if we stumble across something really cool, I throw the theme out the window and go with the flow. Last week I brought a group of first graders out into the woods behind the campus and handed out paintchips from the hardware store in various shades of green and brown. I asked students to find something in the woods that matched the paintchip. As the children were searching, they stumbled upon the old farm dump. We found old glass bottles, rusting milk pails and cooking pots. This was much more interesting to the students than the paintchips so I put those away and we went off exploring! We found old china dinner plates and the occasional spoon. I guessed that these objects were somewhere between 40 -100 years old. It felt like we were on an archaeological dig and our imaginations were tickled. This discovery also prompted discussions about how people handled their trash in the past and why we handle ours the way we do now.

On every walk we talk about the right way to behave out in nature. We follow the “leave only footprints, take only pictures” philosophy. This means that we leave flowers for other people to discover. We try to leave things the same way we found them. If we come across birds or animals we speak softly and walk slowly.  If we find trash we pick it up and bring it back with us.

The fun thing about nature walks is that everyone contributes knowledge. I could identify skunk cabbage, but it was Roberto who knew why it was called skunk cabbage (ohh the smell!). Harrison spotted the white wildflowers and it was Oliver who knew that they were Bloodroot flowers. Colby was the first to hear the woodpecker; Cesca was the one who spotted it and saw that it had red feathers. The walks have a nice sense of collegiality.