I vowed that I would not saddle myself with the unhealthy
pressure of perfectly-crafted summer experiences drawn straight from the boards
of Pinterest. I refused early on, for
example, to serve food to my children that had been carefully crafted to look like animals of any sort!
In order to fill the hours that
stretched before us, however, and seeing such
alluring ideas on my “Fun for the Kids” Pinterest board, I decided at the
beginning of the summer to write down one project per week that we would try to
do. Just one per week. I didn’t think that was requiring too much of
myself, and I didn’t feel as though it fell into dangerous “dog-and-pony show”
territory.
I planned to do a nature scavenger hunt with the girls during the last week of June…sometime in between summer
thunderstorms, and the high winds that were downing trees and power lines
across our local communities. On
Wednesday morning when I wasn’t sure what we were going to do with the day, and
the two days prior had been filled with less than exemplary bickering and
plenty of cries of “I’m bored!” and “I’m hungry!” that were driving me to
distraction, I determined that it was the perfect day for our hunt.
Lest you think it took hours of painstaking effort to prepare for, I will set you straight on
the matter: While the girls watched a
morning cartoon, I hopped on the computer, typed “nature scavenger hunt” into
Yahoo, and came up with lots of lists created by lots of other people of lots
of things a person might look for out in nature. I typed up a quick list of my own in Microsoft
Word, imported some clip art I found when clicking on “images” related to my
earlier search, and had my handout printed within about ten
minutes. Easy-peasy.
We grabbed hats, tennis shoes, lists, pencils, and
magnifying glasses (sparking a pre-scavenger hunt squabble that almost derailed
our plan for the morning), sprayed ourselves with my DIY insect repellent, and
headed out to see what we could find.
The girls took their lists quite seriously. I made a clear point from the start that we
were working together, not competitively, and that if one person saw an item,
they should clearly point it out to the rest of us so we could see it and check
it off our lists as well.
Over and over again, the girls identified unusually-shaped
leaves, smooth rocks, ants, and, of course, blades of grass. We found a very large mushroom in one of the
yards on our street, and both girls wanted their photo taken with it. Later, they were fascinated to find mushrooms
growing out from the bark of one of the trees in the park up the road.
We noticed lots of low-hanging branches,
debated the size necessary to qualify as “a very large stick,” and paid more
attention to holes in tree trunks than we ever had before. We stared up at the clouds to make sure they
were indeed moving by, and not just standing still. The girls were dismayed to
see as much trash as they did along the way.
We were headed toward a creek up the road, but my older
daughter heard rushing water in one of the drains along the way. My younger daughter wanted to check off
“animal eating” once she saw a squirrel, but we didn’t technically see any
eating going on until we saw some birds busy near the park.
We enjoyed the experience of seeing the
trees, which clearly qualified as something bigger than us. They also supplied us with something brown,
something rough, and moss, though we had much of this checked off before we hit
the park.
My favorite part was picking
out birdsong, and having the girls quiet their own chatter to listen. They continued to pick out birds singing the
rest of the walk.
Due to the season, I wasn’t sure how well we would do with
acorns, pinecones, or trees with blossoms, but we had these checked off by the
time we got home. We had to look in our
own backyard to find ferns (which are just about the only things I manage to
grow successfully in my garden!).
Since
we didn’t do any digging, we had to leave “a worm” blank until we head outside
to play in the mud next time, and we didn’t find a feather on this walk (though
we saw one at the zoo just a couple of days later).
I think the experience was a total hit! And I don’t know if it was just a coincidence
or not, but the girls played together nicely for the rest of the day,
completely reversing the trend of the two previous, excruciating days.
A scavenger hunt is such a great way to get kids (and
grown-ups!) to notice their surroundings and really see the beauty of the natural world God has created. Seeing nature interrupted by human garbage is
a pretty significant lesson in itself.
Getting outside, enjoying the fresh air and sunshine, spending time by
the rushing water, and working together on a fun task all contributed to making
this a perfect, low-prep summertime activity.
Side note: As we
walked, I jotted down a bunch of other things I saw along the way (garage,
puddle, basketball hoop, skylights, lamppost, window shutters, parked car,
flag, fire hydrant, chimney), and figured I would create a “Neighborhood
Scavenger Hunt” for later in the summer.
It will take less than five minutes to type up, and we’ll have another
fun experience in the bag!
How do YOU remind yourself and your children to stop and notice the beauty of creation once in awhile?
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