Joseph Bharat Cornell

Sharing Nature with Children by Joseph Cornell. Epiphany Lutheran Oviedo Library Section 8A: Life Skills, Family Activities. This is the 20th Anniversary Edition of this classic parents’ and teachers’ Nature Awareness Guidebook. It’s fantastic!
First: gather a bunch of kids of elementary to middle school age at VBS, a family reunion, camp, or on the street where you live. If it’s a big group, have more than one adult. Second: troop kids to a safe natural area – woods, prairie, show more park, creek. Third: select one or more activities in this book and watch the fun begin. Section 1 of this book, Close-up With Nature, gives activities for tuning in to the environment with sighted kids leading blindfolded kids on nature trails, and looking at the world in new ways. Section 2, How Much Can You See?, teaches children how to focus attention on things they generally overlook. Sections 3-8 offer myriad activities to encourage discovery, spotting and attracting animals, journeying to the heart of nature, and finally, outdoor adventures like watching a sunset or going on a night hike. Section 5 offers incredible games to play with kids such as “Wildmen in the Alders” or the “Sleeping Miser.” These woodsy games offer kids a bit scary fun while still staying totally safe and respecting one another’s fun.
Activities are grouped into four types using animal names: Otter (energizing and playful), Crow (attentive and observational), Bear (calm and experiential), and Dolphin (reflective and sharing).
Nature can play a big role in our lives. Many of my formative natural experiences took place at a 3-day family reunion at a Pennsylvania hunting lodge every Labor Day. My grandfather, a knowledgeable woodsman, would take a group of us cousins on hikes through the forest to a nearby falls and would point out how an oak sapling would be splitting a rock as it forced its way upward to the light, or how the hemlocks in the area were dying off from a particular disease. Hikes up trails with names like “The Boulevard” or “Rough and Tumble,” carving a hiking stick, singing around the campfire, KP for feeding 25 people, plinking tin cans with a .22 rifle (they called me Annie Oakley because I was a good shot!), slopping around in the freezing cold creek by the cabin – these are memories childhoods can be made of. The fact that they were intergenerational was a special joy and taught us to value all ages and abilities.
I added to these experiences as a long-time Girl Scout. This formed my vision as an artist and also led my two brothers to become foresters for the US government. (NOTHING you ever do for a child is wasted!)
This book goes far beyond simple identification of trees and animals to a much richer tactile and spiritual level, something we often lack in today’s concrete-covered indoor world. This develops our stewardship. While the earth is ours to use, it is also ours to understand, hold, conserve and replenish. God’s creation is delicate but it has great restorative power too. If we learn about it and if we care, we can make a huge difference in maintaining and restoring nature. Our lives and the lives of our future generations depend upon it.
So what are you waiting for? Get a gaggle of kids together and tune them in to the beauty, grandeur, wonder, and sheer joy of connecting with the natural world. From “This is my Father’s World, we sing, “....All nature sings and around me rings the music of the spheres!” I love that phrase, don’t you? It’s cosmic! show less

What took me so long to read this slim but powerful collection of hands on ideas? Sigh. Wonderful. Tried many of them out on the grands this past week, such as: Hold up your finger when you hear a bird song. Another finger for a different bird. Oh, my, is sharpened our listening all week. I have had this book forever, kind of lost on the shelf, always meaning to read it. I'm so glad I finally did.

John Muir's remarkable adventures and attunement with nature are told in his own words, edited for a young audience. His joyous enthusiasm for nature comes through powerfully. The book includes "explore more" activities.

This book is filled wth great ideas on giving children memorable experiences in Nature. I myself am a nature docent and I know from experience that if you try to lecture to children out in nature you just have a lot of kids not listening. If you give them an experience you will give them something that they will always refer back to for the rest of their life. I highly recommend the methods used in this book.