The Gift of Nature at Seedlings

Share the wonderful world of the miracles of nature with your children.  

Let your child discover the natural world by absorbing sounds, colours, textures, smells and tastes through his senses.  Children need to interact with nature and what better opportunity for exploring their world while at the same time developing their brains through movement and outdoor exploration? 

Don raincoats and wellies and let your children experience the rain and the snow.  Make a snowman and have snow fights.  Let them splash in the puddles and walk in the rain.

With technology seeming to be taking over our lives, children are spending less time outdoors.  We tend to be terrified of exposing our children to germs early in life.  Yet by doing this, we build up the child’s immunities and we help him fight off allergies and other diseases.  Our homes are like hospitals.  We use spray bottles for cleaning and sanitizing and bleach has become so much a part of our ultra-sterile spaces. We need practice fighting germs.  It is known that children brought up in the country and on farms suffer less from allergies and other problems city children are exposed to.

Young children will be fascinated by the tiniest animal we can hardly see.  Give them a magnifying glass and a microscope. They are spellbound by the colours of beautiful butterflies, moths and dragonflies. Create a nature table in your home where they can bring interesting objects from nature to study. Help them to care for plants and animals.  Grow plants like beans, sunflowers and avocados inside.  

Read real stories about animals and their characteristics.  Children find aspects like hibernation fascinating.  Show them pictures and discuss the life cycle of the butterfly, the frog, the bird, the flower (use a real flower to point out the stamens, pistil, calix and petals). Talk about the seasons – the blossoms in Spring and the vibrant Autumn colours. Create an awareness of trees.  Children are able to remember the sometimes complicated names of trees and flowers just as they easily as they can those complicated dinosaur names. Don’t protect them from difficult words!

Kathy Bennett

Montessori Partnership Tutor