nature kid

Outdoors Family Challenge: Day 1 – Use Your Senses

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

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Welcome to the Outdoors Family Challenge! This is a seven day challenge to help get you and your kids outside, living more sustainably, and connecting more with nature and each other. If you would like automatic updates each morning, sign up for the email list, follow check out the archives on the blog, or like my Facebook page.

Each morning, I’ll post a prompt for you to do and then the afternoon or evening, I’ll post about our experiences.

We encourage you to post about your experience on your blog and social media using the hashtag #outdoorsfamilychallenge. (It would be even better if you could include a link to my blog or Facebook page so other people can find out how to participate!). At the end of the week, I’ll be giving away a copy of Richard Louv’s Vitamin N to a random participant that uses the hashtag.

If you can’t do the activity that day, that’s okay! Do it the next day and don’t worry about following it exactly.

For even more outdoors fun, check out the Children and Nature Network’s Vitamin N Challenge.  Jen Mendez at PERMIE KIDs,  Sandi Schwartz at Happy Science Mom, and Aditi Wardhan Singh at Silver Linings are also participating in the Challenge, so be sure to check out their posts as well!

We can’t wait to see your photos and read about your experiences!

Day 1 Challenge: Use your senses to take in nature.

Spend 15 minutes (or more) outside with your kids, just paying attention to what is going on around you. Encourage your kids to use all five senses. Sit on the ground, if possible.

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Join the Outdoors Family Challenge!

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 6 Comments

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Do you want to get outside more with your family? Do you want to connect more with nature, your neighbors, and your kids? Then my Outdoors Family Challenge is for you!

Each morning from September 19-25, I’ll be posting one challenge action you can do with your kids. You can sign up for an email series, follow me on Facebook, or check the blog each morning to get prompts.

After you’ve done the activity, I encourage you to post about your experience on your social media using the hashtag #outdoorsfamilychallenge. At the end of the week, I’ll pick a random participant to recieve a copy of the book Vitamin N.

In the evening, I’ll share our family’s experience on the blog and Facebook. In addition, three more bloggers will be joining me in the fun: Jen Mendez at PERMIE KIDs,  Sandi Schwartz at Happy Science Mom, and Aditi Wardhan Singh at Silver Linings (who will be doing it later). This is also part of the Children and Nature Network’s Vitamin N Challenge to encourage kids to get outside more.

I hope  that you’ll join us for the Outdoors Family Challenge!

Growing Through the Seasons

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Growing Through the Seasons

My years are measured in seasons now, not months or years. Each brings a flurry of activity and opportunity for growth.

Fall:

Roaming the local pumpkin patch, we find the most perfect bumpy, little pumpkin for our little boy. Around campfires and hay bales, we breathe in the cooling air.

The leaves shift colors and drift down. As much as my two-year-old loves jumping on the bed, he’s never jumped in leaves before. We start with a slow-motion fall, easing our way down with giggles and flailing. After a few jumps, he piles the leaves into the wheelbarrow by the armful.

The week before, we had stripped the garden, pulling out monstrous tomato plants and prickly squash. Now, we empty the composter, scraping the sides of the dark sludge and shreds of newspaper caught there. We break down the straw bale that held our Jack o’lantern, layering it in with the compost and leaves. The pile nearly comes up to my son’s head.

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Science Adventures: How Animals Create and Use Seashells

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

Text: "Science Adventures: How Animals Create and Use Seashells" Photo of half of a ribbed, white seashell on white sand in Cape Cod.

This post explores the biology and ecology of seashells at the beach, including the animals who use them and how they create them. It’s part of a series I’m doing on using everyday situations to help young kids explore science – particularly ecology and biology – more in depth. 

The opportunity
As the summer wraps up, many families head out to the beach. While you’re there, use the opportunity to learn about seashells and the creatures that once lived in them.

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8 Ways to Encourage Exploration in Your Kids

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 8 Comments

Want your kids to embrace life and all of its forms of adventure? These eight principles for parenting can help you encourage exploration. 

8 Ways to Encourage Exploration in Your Kids (Photo: Young white boy in a bucket hat standing in the sand in front of a mountain)

Watching my three-year-old scale the “rock-climbing” wall at the playground, I bite my tongue. Of course, I don’t want him to fall. But neither do I want to discourage him from trying this new piece of equipment.

In theory, I want my kids to explore their world enthusiastically. They should feel safe enough to climb high, able to assess risk well enough to know what’s too high, and gutsy enough to pick themselves back up when they fall. But as all parents know, it’s a difficult balance.

Embracing these eight principles to encourage exploration in our parenting has made my children more willing to try new things. It’s also helped them appreciate a wide diversity of people and experiences.

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Science Adventures: PokemonGo and Field Biologists Catching Wildlife

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

Science Adventures PokemonGo and Field Biology

This is a series I’m doing using everyday situations to help kids explore science – particularly ecology and biology – more in depth.

The opportunity
PokemonGo, which is massively popular, is based on the idea of capturing wild animals and fighting each other for “research.” As a trained ecologist, I call shenanigans on the scientific validity of this method. But this fun game can help spark conversations about how real wildlife biologists study animals, including trapping them.

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Science Adventures: Wild Baby Animals

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 5 Comments

Text: "Science Adventures: Wild Baby Animals; We'll Eat You Up, We Love You So." Photo of three baby bunnies huddled under a bright pink playground slide.

This is a new series I’ll be doing using everyday situations to help kids explore science – particularly ecology and biology – more in depth.

The opportunity
Baby bunnies are nesting under the slide at my son’s preschool.

The scientific context
Finding baby animals in the wild provides a great opportunity to teach kids about animal behavior and life cycles. Babies are adorable and wild animals are inheritantly engaging.

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A Failing Garden and Thriving Family

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

Text: "A Failing Garden and Thriving Family; We'll Eat You Up, We Love You So." Photo of a garden with a few very small plants growing in it, surrounded by a fence and mulched with straw and leaves.

My garden is sad. Or at least I’m sad about it. But a combination of bad luck and slight neglect is reminding me where my attention needs to be right now.

Photo of groundhog and groundhog baby in a yard with green grass and a turtle-shaped toddler pool behind them.

My garden is feeding a fellow mommy!

I’ve planted corn, broccoli, melon, beans, peas, basil and tomatoes so far. The May rains of Biblical proportions washed away our broccoli seedlings and corn seeds. The first round of bean sprouts failed, along with the melon sprouts. A hungry animal stripped the leaves from the second round of bean sprouts, along with the vast majority of my pea sprouts. (Possibly our resident groundhog – she did that to the sweet potatoes last year.) Hungry birds looking for worms dislodged the sweet potato and few sprouts that remained.

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Resources for Family Biking and Biking with Kids

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

The Best Resources for Family Biking and Biking with Kids (Photo: Group of families with their bikes)

 

My son and his cherry-red bike loops around the park, over and over again. There’s not really anything exciting about the park, just following a narrow path along some grass, ducking behind the building with the bathrooms, twisting through the playground, and cruising by the pavilion. But he’s riding it as if it’s the Tour de France, pedaling his heart out with the joy of biking.

While we haven’t quite graduated to the road, I love how clearly he is in love with biking. As a kid who loved biking with my parents and a mom who finds freedom on the bike, few things could make me happier.

But I haven’t built his love of biking by myself. I’ve definitely had some help from the family biking community, a world-wide group of parents who love to bike and want to pass it on to their kids. Whether you want to know the best way to carry your kid on your bike or the best bike to purchase for your kid, here are some great places to get started:

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