Teaching Children to Love Nature with Two Amazing Authors

It seems that we, as a society, have to work hard to teach children to love nature. So many kids seem to have so little interaction with it, and the problem gets worse with every decade. Technology has, with one hand, given us freedom and ease but with the other it has stolen much more.

Interaction with flora and fauna seems to be mostly through television and a trip to the Natural History Museum once a year.

This is going to make me sound like a grandma (hey wait! I am a grandma!) but I grew up in a time of comparative freedom. In the 1960s we were free to roam woods and waterways, ride our bikes, and explore our surroundings as long as we were back in the house by the time the streetlights came on. I grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and the last words any of us heard from our parents were, "Be home when the streetlights come on or you'll be grounded!"

Kids today have fewer of the freedoms of that more innocent time. They know more about technology than I ever will. I wonder though, have they ever tasted honeysuckle, or squished fresh, warm blackberries in their mouths? Have they chewed wild wood sorrel? Have they caught crayfish, with the icy creek water splashing over their toes? Have they cracked hickory nuts with two rocks and made a wild lunch with what they found themselves?

Sadly, most have not.

Our family is so blessed to live on a creek. Even though we are only twenty minutes from downtown Dallas, our little two acre farm is alive with life. We have seen:

- Fox

- Bobcat

- Coyote

- Beaver

- Birds of all sorts (including a huge owl the size of a fire hydrant. We call him Jeeves.)

- Raccoons

- Squirrel

- Opossum

- Skunk

- Rabbits

- Turtles

- Snakes

- Geckos

The list could go on. It seems every few months we will discover some other animal that is sharing our space.