Wild Lawn

This might be pretty radical, depending on your neighborhood, but mark off a square foot or so section of your lawn and DON’T mow or cut it until next spring! With your child, watch what happens over time in your small piece of the planet. Please report back to us, if you want, some of the things you observe. For the lawn-less, find a local school grounds, park or ‘forgotten’ area in your neighborhood and find a patch of green that might always be missed by the mowers and do the same kind of observation over time.

Here’s two more activities, just for good measure:

Drop small pieces of food in various spots out-of-doors. Go back after 10 minutes, 1 hour, 3 hours and see who else has discovered them.

This one might be difficult. Get yourself and your child up at 4:50am (yes, not a misprint!) and go wandering a bit in your nearby nature place. The chorus of birds will already be cranking up by 5am, so let yourselves take a walk guided by following the many bird calls. The different calls can act as ‘trail markers’ for your walk, but every once in a while sit down, maybe back against back, close eyes, and listen.