I’m here with more thoughts on the book Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv, joining in Nicole’s book study.  Be sure to visit her at Journey to Excellence for her thoughts on these chapters and the big changes her family is making.

Chapters 18 through 20 in the book discuss ushering in the “fourth frontier” and reconnecting not just ourselves but our culture with nature.  These chapters have very big, far-reaching goals that really involve a restructuring of how people live.  The author’s point is that we can connect our kids with nature right now, but we need to make changes to our culture or the child-nature gap will continue to widen.  I agree, but changes in population distribution sounds too orchestrated to me.  I enjoy living in a rural area.  If we were moving I would be interested in towns with a big connection to nature.  But can you force those interests on the population as a whole?

I’ll admit this: he loses me a bit in these conversations.  I tend to think small and change what I am in control of, versus getting involved in larger organizations.  I pulled my kids out of school instead of working to change the school system.  I was very excited to read the ideas for reconnecting myself and my children with nature that are within my immediate control–things I can implement on my own right now.  But when the author talks of sweeping changes in the structure of towns and cities and businesses I feel more overwhelmed than able to help.  Clearly there are movers and shakers who get involved in politics and organizations that make sweeping changes, and I’m grateful for them and benefit from the work that they do…but I’m not one of them.

In the discussions of cities he talks of making nature corridors, not just isolated parks that don’t look natural at all.  The discussion of allowing movement and genetic diversity did hit home for us:  we’ve been studying monarch butterflies and their amazing migration.  They need milkweed plants as they migrate north from Mexico in the fall.  If they don’t have milkweed plants to lay their eggs on in the southeast, we won’t have monarch butterflies in the summer in the northeast.  My plan of action is growing my own milkweed patch, doing my small part.  But I do hope the movers and shakers, like the Monarch Watch organization, are successful in protecting these amazing creatures.

Another small part I have been learning about for a while now as a gardener is using native plants that are less resource intensive.  I live in a manicured neighborhood and am one of the very few that doesn’t spray my lawn with chemicals.  It shows–my lawn is probably 50% clover and dandelions and other “weeds” BUT I haven’t suffered from the grub damage (grubs eat grass roots, not weed roots) of my neighbors with perfect lawns.  I also have one of the greenest lawns right now because my weeds are surviving the drought much better than the grass of my neighbors.  The reason I don’t spray: my kids and dog can play on it anytime without fear of chemical exposure.

In short, these chapters had interesting ideas, but didn’t give me ideas for implementation in my daily life.  There are just three chapters left in the book.  Join us for the last installment in this book study later this week or early next week.

I really wanted to raise caterpillars into butterflies for the kids to watch.  I really wanted them to be monarch caterpillars.  We’d done it years ago and the amazing process is still etched in my mind but even my 10 year old’s memory of it is fuzzy.  The caterpillar is striking and not hairy (my son got hives from a hairy caterpillar last year so both my kids now refuse to touch any caterpillars with hair), the chrysalis is like a jewel, and the butterfly is beautiful.  The problem:  I couldn’t justify the $26 in shipping charges to order monarch caterpillars.

I was determined and, after looking at countless images online felt I could recognize milkweed–the only food monarch caterpillars will eat.   This was one of those times when my husband just shook his head, because he knows I get an idea in my head and can’t let it go.  He chuckled as I looked into roadside wildflowers on our walks and in the car.  I took my family on some crazy back-road drives until I found a country road with tons of milkweed…and I went searching.  Here’s me up to my waist in a field of milkweed, searching for teeny-tiny caterpillars.  I would have been happy with eggs, too, but since they’re the size of the head of a pin I decided that just might be impossible.  My family cheered me on from inside the bug-free car as I battled the mosquitos.

Finally–success!  Two monarch caterpillars came home with us.  The smallest one (dubbed “Little Guy”) was so tiny he was still whitish with a dark head.  “Big Guy” was already getting the striped pattern characteristic of monarch caterpillars.  We set them up right in the middle of our kitchen island.  Yup, we’re homeschoolers.

It was amazing how fast they grew!  We had several opportunities to watch them molt.  We were in awe of how much they could consume in a day, and how much frass (new vocabulary word for my son to avoid the common word for it) they could make.

I found that keeping the stems in a small jar of water kept the leaves fresh enough to last a few days, since I had to drive to get leaves for them.  One morning I woke up to this and had to go get more leaves before everyone was even out of bed!

Finally the moment we’d been waiting for:  Big Guy moved to the top of the container, attached himself and hung upside down in a “J” shape.  We watched with excitement but ended up missing the moment of transformation into a chrysalis!

When it was Little Guy’s turn a couple days later my kids were determined not to miss it.  I was afraid it would happen in the night and they didn’t want to go to bed.  Mr. Tech Support (my husband) saved the day.  He reminded me that the fancy camera he bought me can do time lapse photography, so we set it up to take photos all night long just in case.  (Okay, maybe we’re crazy…but the kids were excited and I wanted them to sleep!)

The caterpillar was still hanging in a J-shape the next morning so we set ourselves up to provide constant surveillance.  I decided to keep the camera set up taking time lapse because it was really neat now that I’d figured out how to do it.  (In fact, I may be taking time lapse photos of everything from science experiments to the cat napping.  It’s fun!)

We made sure one of us had our eyes on it the whole time.  Finally my daughter yelled and we witnessed the amazing transformation of this black, yellow, and white caterpillar with legs and antennae to a pale green chrysalis with a completely different shape.  If you are interested here is my first amateur attempt at time-lapse photography:

We were amazed at the transformation, and how much the early pupae moved about to shed the old skin and attain its final form.  Initially you could see the ridges from the caterpillar’s body and some striping, but the color changed and the chrysalis became more opaque.  By the end it was a smooth, lovely shade of green.  My favorite part are the markings that look like drops of gold paint.  Truly amazing.

As we’ve been mesmerized by this process we’ve learned a lot about monarchs and butterflies in general using these resources:

• Real Science Odyssey Life Level One:  Our new science curriculum had a unit on insects with specific labs about caterpillars and butterflies, so we did the corresponding lessons and journal pages.  It meant working out of order but we had to work with nature on this one!
• Go-Along books:- It’s a Butterfly’s Lifeby Irene Kelly:  This book has great information on all kinds of butterflies with beautiful drawings, and also fun facts about defense mechanisms and frass (both of particular interest to a six-year-old boy).- The Magic School Bus and the Butterfly Bunch: A good book for covering the life cycle of butterflies.- National Geographic Kids Great Migrations: Butterflies by Laura Marsh:  This book has terrific photographs to illustrate the migration of monarch butterflies, a truly amazing feat.
• Magic School Bus episode “The Butterfly and the Bog Beast” (on our Bugs, Bugs, Bugs! DVD):  The Magic School Bus show is a favorite around here.  This episode gives great information on how butterflies are tough little creatures with many defenses.
• We used just about everything Barb put out for the Outdoor Hour Challenge on monarch butterflies.  I highly recommend the You Tube vidoes on monarch migration–it really is an amazing journey!  We enjoyed all of the links under “suggested resources to view or print” from learner.org.  They have easy-to-understand information on monarchs and their annual cycle, and the link about wings was information we hadn’t read elsewhere.   The corresponding information from the Handbook of Nature Study led to some microscope fun:  we pulled out our pocket microscopes after I found these unfortunate guys in our garage.  We’d read how the wings are covered with scales arranged in perfect rows, so it was wonderful to see for ourselves.  It was also neat to read about the actions of the antennae when the caterpillar is frightened, something we’d observed when we spoke too loudly near the top of their glass container.

So now we anxiously await our butterflies.  We think of Big Guy and Little Guy just under that green covering, preparing to become creatures that can fly.  The transformation takes 10-14 days.  This has been an amazing study, and for our family reinforced the wonders of God’s creation.  I’ll be sure to update with photos when our butterflies emerge!

***Updated: Here is the post on our Monarch butterflies emerging and being released into nature!***

I’m submitting this to Barb’s Outdoor Hour Challenge Blog Carnival.  Be sure to visit her site for nature study ideas, and watch for her blog carnival to see all the amazing summer nature study happening.

I’m here with my thoughts on Chapters 15-17 of the book Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv.  I’m participating in a book study hosted by Nicole of Journey to Excellence, be sure to visit her to read her thoughts on these chapters.

Chapter 15 discusses activities that offer a reason and focus for being in nature.  Birding and nature journaling were two that we have enjoyed so far.  Bird watching is one that my children and I had the pleasure of trying this past winter when we participated in the Great Backyard Bird Count.  We prepared by learning about the birds in our area, then over the weekend of the GBBC we enjoyed our roles as scientists tallying birds and submitting our numbers to Cornell University.  It occurs in the dead of winter here in Maine and it was great to have a nature-related activity to focus on.  Nature journaling is another new-to-us activity mentioned in the book, and we’re all enjoying that through the recommendations of (once again) Barb at the Handbook of Nature Study blog.  We often use her notebooking pages for some direction on what to draw.  I have found that drawing an item really helps my children pay attention to the details.

At the beginning of Chapter 16 when I read the statement that teachers should free kids from classrooms I said to myself–that’s my whole philosophy behind homeschooling!  Not just so they can experience nature, but the world and its people and places. Then on page 211 there was a quote from a teacher:  “This isn’t memorizing information for a test…this experience becomes part of you.”  Hello!  Again, this is the core of homeschooling for me.  For me, school was about memorizing information for a test and then promptly forgetting it!  I hope to show my kids a different experience.

This chapter discusses many hands-on nature programs and the success of the students in them.  I was thrilled because many of the ideas mentioned are happening somewhere in our home right now–square foot gardening in the backyard, caterpillars growing fat on the kitchen counter, and tadpoles just beginning to get their legs on the deck.  This is what science is all about for us at the elementary level:  things that the kids can see and touch and be amazed at.

The last quote again hit me as a comment on homeschooling in general:  “An environment-based education movement–at all levels of education–will help students realize that school isn’t supposed to be a polite form of incarceration, but a portal to the wider world.”

Chapter 17 talks about summer camps being a way to make nature more accessible to kids, and a lot of that discussion wasn’t really relevant for me.  For our family, camping together at state parks provides the beneficial experiences and works for us while my kids are fairly young.  We aren’t staying in a fancy camper with a bathroom, air-conditioning and television.  It’s a pop-up with no plumbing, wooded campsites, and sleeping with the windows open.

I was interested in the author’s discussion of schools spending so much money on soon-to-be-obsolete electronics when they should spend it on natural areas where teachers can take their students to learn with all five senses.  Case in point:  our town just built a gigantic new high school surrounded by huge parking lots and athletic turf and running tracks.  There is no natural area to spend time in, the library is smaller than before, and yet students will receive iPads to use.  I also found out the other day that our middle school children have no recess at all.  None.  Parents were surprised that I thought this was sad!  It didn’t seem to bother them that 12 year old kids don’t have time for recess or even 15 minutes of fresh air.

These chapters mark the end of the section of the book with ways to connect your children with nature at home and through their education.  The next section is dedicated to ushering in what the author calls the “Fourth Frontier:” reconnecting our society as a whole with nature.