Our First Two Days Were Great

Okay, Day One was definitely better than today, but they were both WAY better than pretty much anything we did last year. I had a migraine all day today, but we still managed to be pretty dang productive. Yippee!

Today included among other things our first Nature Study session. We hiked a very short trail in the pouring rain after lunch. This is a concept that is central to the Charlotte Mason (CM) methodology. As some of you may know, or can infer, this is something that is also near and dear to my heart. I like to be outside and I especially like the kids to be outside. Without me. And lock the door behind ya! Ha! I kid!

Actually, this is an area of my life where I can FINALLY use that college degree (that I'm still paying off - true story) and it feels fantastic and rewarding and whole. My degree is officially in "Recreation, Parks, and Leisure Services Administration", with an emphasis in "Outdoor and Experiential Education". I think. It might be "Experiential Recreation. " Anyhoodle, my whole theory is that people do not get out and enjoy the wilderness, the great outdoors, mother nature, God's green earth - whatever you want to call it, there is a serious lack of it in many lives today, primarily kids' lives. Wait, technically that's not true. Unfortunately, the kids are the only ones we are likely to reach since not many 33-year-old computer addicts are heading out for their first camping, hunting, or fishing trip with their similarly like-minded and nature-deprived buddies.

So the general movement focuses on reaching kids before they graduate from high school. I mean, as tomorrow's leaders, if they develop a meaningful, well-balanced (not to one extreme or the other) connection to the out-of-doors, that can only be good, right?

Once while I was still in school (yeah, I crammed four years into nine so I was in college for a while), a group of us Rec Majors entertained several busloads of middle school students from inner city Detroit. The kids came up on a field trip to "experience the natural world" and as up-and-coming educators of all things earthy, we were selected to formulate programs and activities for these wide-eyed kiddos to give them a meaningful, tangent natural experience.

Bah! Ginormous flop!

The kids wouldn't get off the pavement. They were afraid of the bugs, the dirt, the sounds that the birds made. It was like they were in a foreign land. Seriously, big, husky, burly African-American guys screaming like little girls about having to walk directly on the grass or (gasp) a well-marked, dirt-and-wood-chipped trail. We ended up doing all the group activities in the parking lot.

Here's a way more official wiki article on this subject, but that was my first-hand experience and it was instrumental in my current thoughts on the topic.

Our personal session today was nothing like the asphalt fiasco.

My girls, aged 7 and 4, were off the trail, chasing spawned-out nasty salmon, looking for bears, and drawing pictures of ravens and fiddlehead ferns.

Success!