Last week I gave my four year old neighbor a small handheld magnifying glass which was an immediate hit with her. We walked around the garden looking at EVERYTHING.
We found empty locust shells, butterfly chrysali, bees, and all manner of other bugs and every find spurred a flood of questions:
“Why did it lose its shell?”
“How does the butterfly get out of that chrysalis?”
“What do bees eat?”
These kinds of questions engage your children in the wonders of nature, and your Ecosystem Garden is a great place to spark their curiosity.
The best part about teaching children about nature and wildlife in your garden is that it’s right outside your door. When children learn to respect and care about the wildlife that is so close to home, they can learn that we can do good things to help them, but sometimes the things that we do are not helpful to wildlife and can really hurt them.
It’s a very sad fact that most children know more about lions and elephants in Africa, or polar bears in the Arctic than they do about the wildlife in their own backyards.
But we can help to change this by bringing children into our gardens, as Michelle Clay has done by designing her Ecosystem Garden with her son Gabe in mind.
Do you share your wildlife garden with the children in your life? Please tell us all about it by leaving a comment.
© 2009 – 2011, Carole Sevilla Brown. All rights reserved. This article is the property of EcosystemGardening.com If you are reading this at another site, please report that to us
About Carole Sevilla Brown
My first nature garden was a wonderful place with lots of things just the right size for my kids. It was a small garden, but I packed in a large diversity of miniature things for us to appreciate.
Thanks for the reminder. I’ll have to write about it some time.
.-= Alison Kerr´s last post ..Planning a Nature Garden =-.
I love to garden with my kids–and explore the backyard with them and their friends. There’s always something new to discover! I also helped to create a garden at my children’s elementary school–one of the most rewarding volunteer experiences of my life. Cheers to connecting children with nature!
Wonderful post, Carole! It really is so simple, yet so important, to open a childs eyes to the wonders of nature.
I love this post, CB!
Within a year of moving here (1984), I started removing lawn and planting wildflowers. My daughter (born 1985) grew up with wildflowers, butterflies, gooseberries and mulberries, and critters like raccoons, ‘possums, and squirrels.
Now my daughter works for a park district, and my daughter-in-law (she’s 31:) roams the yard on visits looking for bugs… and friends bring their kids to wander through the prairie and woods:)
So I think it worked:) BTW, in the last few minutes, I saw several Monarchs, 3 Grosbeaks, 2 Cardinals, and a Goldfinch…