Posts tagged ‘environmental education’
Maple Syrup Magic at MacKenzie: A feast for the senses
John tastes maple sap right from the spial at Maple Syrup Fest on April 2, 2011.
What could be better than tasting maple sap right from the tree? Not much.
What are the chances that John will forget where maple syrup comes from? Not likely.
Doing, tasting, touching, seeing, anything that activates the senses, increases the odds that kids – and adults – will retain knowledge. It also doesn’t hurt that it’s fun.
Maple Syrup Fest at MacKenzie Environmental Education Center is a feast for the senses. We started with a pancake breakfast and then enjoyed a horse-drawn wagon ride. The horses were shedding so hair blew back on us as we rode along. We tasted sap right from the tree and then saw how it’s boiled down to make the yummy syrup we ate at breakfast.
Cougars once roamed in Wisconsin. They have been extirpated.
The kids climbed the fire tower where they felt a cold breeze and got a good view. Finally, kids saw a lot of wildlife. Mackenzie has a Wisconsin Wildlife exhibit where the kids saw white-tailed deer, fox, otter, cougar, bobcat, eagle, hawks and more. Where else can you see a bobcat and a cougar?
Today will reach 80 degrees marking the end of maple syrup time. It’s a magical time of year to savor the end of winter and to soak up the sights, sounds, tastes and smells of the spring.
Diane Schwartz is the Outdoor Education Specialist at the Goodman Community Center in Madison, WI. She takes kids and their families on monthly outings. The next trip is April 16th at the Arboretum. As always, register for this blog now and receive a free 11-page bubble activity guide. Thank you for reading.
Maple Syrup Time: But will kids eat it?
Sap drips from a tree. It takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup.
March is maple syrup month.
It’s a magical time of year. Sap only runs when night temps fall below freezing and days are in the 40s. Once it gets too warm – usually by mid April – the season is over.
This weekend I’m heading up to MacKenzie Environmental Education Center in Poynette with a group of 35 kids and parents for their annual Maple Syrup Festival. We’ll eat a mess of pancakes with real maple syrup and take in the maple syrup making exhibits.
The kids will love the real syrup, right?
Sounds crazy, but some years ago, I treated some kids to real maple syrup and they didn’t like it. This blew my mind. How could the kids prefer the artificial hyper-sweet syrup to the lighter, earthy sweetness of the real deal? Easy. Kids are just used to the fake stuff. It’s sweeter and gooier. I grew up on Aunt Jemima and truth is most families can’t afford to buy real maple syrup anyway. Perhaps Nature Deficit Disorder applies to food too…call it Nature Palette Disorder.
I will find out on Saturday what a new batch of kids think.
What real foods do your kids reject in favor of the processed variety. Think Velveeta and Oscar Meyer wieners.
Diane Schwartz is busy getting ready for this trip and enjoying the perfect Maple Syrup making weather. Subscribe to this blog now and receive a free 11-page Bubble Activity Guide.
Earth Day at 40: Where do Kids fit in?
Celebrating success is a good thing and the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day proved a big cause for celebration. Earth Day at 40: Valuing Wisconsin’s Environmental Traditions, Past, Present and Future, sponsored by the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at UW-Madison, honored Gaylord Nelson, a Wisconsin native and the founder of Earth Day, and the many Wisconsin citizens who played a part in making Earth Day a success. It was fascinating to learn about the history of earth day and great to see old friends and classmates from my grad school days at UW-Madison.
But where do kids fit into this event? Since this was more of a historical and policy focused event, I had to look and listen to find the connections. There were a few covert statements made about kids, but no seminars explicitly about kids .
None-the-less, I heard many inspiring stories at the conference.
John Francis gave a talk about the 17 years that he chose not to speak and the 22 years he chose not to use motorized transportation in protest of an oil spill in San Francisco. He’s developing a K-12 curriculum called Planetlines for kids. You can read more about him at www.planetwalker.org.
I also heard from Tia Nelson, Gaylord Nelson’s daughter. She’s an environmental activist and said she was going to a teach-in at the Governor’s Mansion with 4th Graders for Earth Day. She mentioned that her dad was passionate about education and helped pass the Environmental Education Act that ensured national leadership for K-12 environmental education efforts.
I saw a former professor, Bud Jordahl, a member of the Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame (www.wchf.org). He was influential in that first Earth Day and worked closely with Gaylord Nelson in the 1960s. His accomplishments are many and you can read about them at www.wchf.org. I’m grateful that he completely supports getting kids outside.
I learned that the first “E-day” in Madison in 1970 was organized in part by former Mayor Paul Soglin and many other young people (Soglin was just 26). It’s important to remember what a few dedicated young people can do.
To encourage more diversity in the environmental movement — I saw just two African-American and a handful of other minorities at the conference — The Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies has just launched a community scholars program to encourage under represented students to pursue environmental careers. I look forward to seeing the fruits of that labor in years to come.
So, for conference with little talk about kids, I still came away inspired and ready to do more work.
Hopefully, some of my students will become environmentalists or at the very least conscientious citizens and park users. My job is to get kids outside so that they know the places that are worth preserving. That’s the message of Earth Day… to care for the planet and protect it. That starts at home with local parks and natural areas. While all my students know about Earth Day, it’s another thing to get them connected to the earth in meaningful ways. My job is to help them make those connections by taking them to beautiful places. Hopefully, they’ll fall in love with these places and keep coming back.
It’s that simple. People protect what they love.
What are you doing this Earth Day to encourage kids to love the planet? Write and let me know.
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