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World Wetlands Day 2012: Part 2

Aransas NWR Gator in the Wetland (c)Beth Chase/TheNatureSchool all rights reserved

February 2nd is World Wetlands Day. The theme this year is Wetland Tourism: A Great Experience. Perhaps you have visited some famous wetlands and can describe your own experience, perhaps not. You don’t have to travel far to find wetlands, very likely […]

Connecting to nature is not about scale

“What mattered to my father (Edward Kennedy) was not the scale of an accomplishment, but that we did our share to make the world better,” Kara Kennedy.

Kara Kennedy died today. I know this because of an NPR headline that I saw my iGoogle page. Were it not for that fact I would […]

World Wetlands Day 2011

February 2nd is always World Wetlands Day. It was Wednesday of last week.

Wetlands hold a special place in my heart. My first introduction to a wetland came when I was in 5th grade. I had just moved, that fall, from Arizona to a small town north of Boston. In the spring my 5th grade […]

What’s in a name?

Image Mark Aert from FreePhoto.com

Okay, so language may not be the only tool to build connection but I think it is one of the most powerful ones. In his book, To Have or To Be, psychiatrist Erich Fromm puts forth the premise that language colors our whole perception of […]

14 Christmas Gifts for the Budding Naturalist

FreePhoto.com Image by Simon Howden

Shopping for the nature lover is easy. Gifts to help the nature lover, especially a budding one, can be simple and inexpensive. Gifts like these don’t usually require batteries or cables. The object of the game is to keep is simple. This is about connecting […]

Doing science part 3: creating curious teens.

FreePhoto.com image by Dynamite Imagery

Teenagers are a jaded lot. They know everything and nothing. They are social creatures, and their primary focus is building raport with peers while learning how to separate from adults and do their own thing. It isn’t that they aren’t interested in anything. It’s […]

Doing science

FreePhoto.com image by: graur razvan ionut

I have said this before, we live in an over structured world, here in the upscale western world. This lesson has been brought home to me in a personal way lately via my classroom. At the start of the year and in […]

For halloween, take a bat walk…

FreeDigitalPhots.com image by Simon Howden

Halloween is coming in a couple of weeks and the Moon is waxing to full by next Sunday. This a great time to get out in the evening, in the cool fall air, and look for those animals that come out in the night. One of my favorite […]

Gardening vs Landscaping: a thought ramble

One of the things that I like about gardening is that you don’t have to get it right. Gardening is not the same as landscaping. It isn’t about creating the perfectly groomed look. Gardening is about creating something beautiful. Or useful. Or both. All gardeners have a style. Some of us plant for food. Some […]

Why unstructured play is good for the brain and 10 things to do.

Anyone who reads this blog know that I am a big advocate of unstructuring experiences. I advocate this because I believe that it is just good for people to slow down and interact in low tech ways. It isn’t that I don’t think that technology has its place it’s that I think that we have […]