Tiny Blessing: Baby-led Environmental Education on a Suburban Sidewalk

It all began with this stick, seen from an adult's perspective, and that of an 11 month old. Last week I visited with my grandson and, while waiting for his next treatment, we went outside to explore the world for a little while. He is now walking with the help of a larger person's fingers and, as a result, is able to bend forward and examine the ground as he moves along. 

As we maneuvered down the short sidewalk in front of his house, this tiny piece of wood caught his eye. He briefly pondered it from above and after some thought, sat down on the ground to more fully take it in. He picked it up and felt its texture, turning it over and over in his little hands. He dropped it and watched it bounce, his brow furrowed in concentration. He tossed it and watched how far it would travel and then reached for it and began his hands-on observations all over again. 

When satisfied that he had learned what he wanted to know about the stick, we took a few steps more before coming to a partially dried mulberry leaf laying on the sidewalk. He took notice and stepped on it. Hearing its crunch, he paused and thoughtfully stepped on it again, presumably to discover if it would, indeed, crunch a second time. When it did, he promptly sat down for further exploration. He held the leaf and peered at it, turning it over in his hands before beginning its dismemberment. He tore it into pieces and, after looking each piece over carefully and manipulating it with all 10 fingers, he proceed to shred each of them into smaller and smaller bits. 

Once again, his examination complete, he was ready to move on, perhaps by now intentionally on the alert for the next new thing. We did not have long to walk before he spotted it, and down he went again beside a dried Crimon King Norway maple leaf, satisfyingly crunchy and close at hand. After thoroughly investigating its makeup, he noticed another couple of small pieces of wood, picked them up and concentrated on dropping and watching them land, over and over and over. I could almost picture a tiny clipboard inside his head, as he recorded velocity, travel time and point of landing and doing whatever calculations might be called for in such an experiment.

Though we were outside for 20 minutes or more, I refrained from talking as much as possible. I wanted this time to be his time,time for him to get to know his sidewalk and whatever he found there on his own terms. I was confident that his curiosity would be motivation enough to move him towards exploration and intrigue, but even I was surprised by the intensity of his deliberations. Too often we bombard children with facts and call it environmental education, thinking that the more we teach them, the more they will know. But real knowledge and a thirst for learning grows from familiarity and love of subject and those can only be gained through experience. Sitting on a sidewalk, surrounded by sticks, leaves, dirt and such, is an ideal way to begin a life long relationship with the earth and all it contains.  Who knows what we will discover on our next outing?