Nurture kids’ curiosity for nature

BELLINGHAM – You don’t have to be a scientist. And you don’t have to bury yourself in books or spend hours on the Internet to nurture your child’s curiosity about the natural world.

So what should you do to encourage your budding naturalist?

First, go outside with your kids, say naturalists and other experts who work with children.

Where outside? Anywhere.

“It doesn’t have to be pristine wilderness. It doesn’t even have to be a park. Especially in this area, there’s so much urban wildlife,” says Stephanie Raymond, education coordinator for People for Puget Sound, a Seattle-based environmental education and advocacy group.

Holly Roger, a naturalist at Tennant Lake Interpretive Center in Ferndale, Wash., agrees, saying of parents: “They do not need to be the resource. I think some parents are intimidated (because) they don’t know anything about nature.”

So what if you don’t know much. What’s important, Roger says, is what you and your kids find the answers together.

Here are other ways to encourage your Darwin-in-the-

making, courtesy of Raymond, Roger, and Sandra Palm, director of the Marine Life Center in Bellingham:

•Allow your children to spend unstructured time outside. Let them use their imagination, play and interact with the elements without having a game plan, says Roger, a Bellingham resident with a son who’s almost 3.

•Relax. Let them get dirty.

•If you want them to have an appreciation for nature, you have to as well – that includes spiders and other critters that give you the willies.

“If parents show respect and curiosity, rather than fear and violence, for nature, their children are more likely to follow their example,” Rogers explains. “It is very fun to check out that weird bug on the rosebush and figure out what it is together.”

•Don’t load them down with facts. During outings at the interpretive center, Roger and fellow naturalist Jim Edwards work to keep “a child’s sense of wonder or magic intact for as long as possible,” she says.

“We have a plant called marsh cinquefoil, which has leaves that turn silvery when dunked under the water. It never fails to impress the kids. … Do I tell them that the silver lining is caused by a thin air bubble trapped by the hairy leaves? Only if they are old enough. We usually just introduce it by saying it’s a magic plant; it turns silver.”

•Get them to think. Because kids sometimes lose interest in a plant or creature after learning a name, Roger encourages them to go beyond the “What’s that” question. She asks them: “What would you call it?” or “Why do you think it is that color?”

•During car outings, turn off the DVD player in your automobile and tune your children to the outside world. Instruct them to point out a deciduous tree, a coniferous one, or three types of birds, says Raymond, who has a 7-year-old daughter.

•Encourage them to use all their senses to observe the natural world, Palm says, not just their eyes.

•Take your young ones to interpretive centers, aquariums and other places with programs about the world around them.

Bolster their outdoor adventures with kid-friendly Web sites and field guides. Roger likes the Golden Field Guides for families with young children. “They are cheap, small, have great pictures, contain cool natural history bits and explain concepts in understandable ways.”