Share the Outdoors With Your Kids
When spring blooms in your neighborhood, get out and soak up the season.
Finally, it's spring! The snow is melting, the soil is warming up, babbling brooks and streams are lively and full, and birds and butterflies are on the move. At the seashore, the waves have kicked up some interesting rocks; the thawing earth has done the same in your backyard and in the woods. The days grow longer and there's more time to play outside. Everyone needs sturdy shoes or boots, a hat, sunscreen, binoculars, and water. Okay, now you're ready to get outdoors!
Take a Day Trip
There's probably a botanical garden or nature preserve nearby that you've never been to before. Visit its Web site and see what activities are scheduled for spring. Plan to participate in one that sounds interesting, and put the date on your calendar to make sure it happens. Ask a friend to join you! Luisa Santiago and her Big Sister Margery Singer planted seeds in small pots at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden in New York; the garden donated the seedlings to senior citizens. If you take a walk in the woods, watch for baby animals but don't get too close to a mother and her young. Admire wildflowers, but don't pick them, so others can enjoy them too. During your visit, or even over time in your backyard or neighborhood, play springtime bingo. Make a card listing some of the birds and plants your child might spot (use pictures for smaller kids) and then mark them off as you encounter them.
Or try this fishy field trip: visit a hatchery. That's a place where fish are raised to stock ponds and restore native species to the waterways where they used to flourish. Yearlings (older fish six to nine inches long) are stocked in the spring.
You can even go on a nature walk on a city street! City naturalists, be on the lookout for the goldfinch, blue jay, robin, wood thrush, Canada goose, mallard duck, woodpecker, hawk, gull, squirrel, dogs, and the ubiquitous pigeon. Make a checklist to keep track of what you see.
Closer to Home
Shake off the winter cobwebs and have a party for your friends and their dogs; dogs are always ready to celebrate. Set up a small obstacle course — the kind you see in dog agility shows — and have each child run her dog through its paces on a leash. Or have relay races in the driveway. (Put boxes, bikes, or garbage cans across the end of the driveway so no one drives in.) Have kids create and bestow prize ribbons in various categories, so each dog gets recognized. Categories can include cutest, best behaved, liveliest, most laidback, most mature; kids can think up more accolades on their own. As a parting gift, each person-and-pet team goes home with some dog biscuits in a plastic cleanup bag.
For a more soothing project, make a go-to-sleep recording. Get up at dawn on a weekend morning and help your child record the bird and nature sounds in your backyard or out on your terrace. Kids can listen to their sound clips at bedtime or even while they're doing homework.
When you're doing yardwork, give your preschooler child-size tools so he can work alongside you and his older siblings. Jakob Flaten, 2, likes to use his mini rake and shovel when he and his dad, Thomas, work in their Minnesota garden. He also has a pretend lawnmower so he can "go over" the places that Daddy mowed the day before. And be sure to try one of our backyard projects.
