Marvelous Mayhem

"...admit that the waters around you have grown/ If you don't get out soon, you'll be soaked to the bone/ For the times they are rapidly changing..."  ~Bob Dylan

Time for an optimist post!  Recently I have heard a great deal of dismay over how little time kids these days spend outdoors and how much time they spend bonding with their technology.
     "What will the next generation be like?" we ask with asperity.  By I have a secret to share with you: the times mat have changed but children haven't.  Give a kid a pile of mud, and he or she will go home filthy.

Consumer, producer, or decomposer?

Last week I assisted with a field trip for 5th graders.  Hypothetically our goal was to observe how many consumers vs. producers vs. decomposers were in a local riparian zone.  What actually transpired was that the kids turned over logs, poked the high-running creek with useless nets, and discovered a very dead garter snake.
   "Can you smell the decomposition?!"  I cried, faithfully trying to tie the adventure back in to curriculum.  (I certainly could smell it any rate.)  It was a hopeless task.  I am pretty sure that the only message the kids took away from me was that I was no fun at all because I would not let them throw the snake in the river.  My motives were: 1. It seemed disrespectful and 2. I wanted the other groups to be able to find the delightfully disgusting snake as well.  What I told the kids was #2 plus "something might eat the snake if we leave it here."  (Minus bugs and bacteria, I actually sincerely doubt that.) Motivated by the joy of watching a rotten carcass swept along in a fast current, possibly even to fall apart, the kids did not find my reasons convincing, but since I was nominally in charge, they let the soggy thing be.
 
Later in the day, a class got rained on.  It was only a light drizzle when their teacher asked if they minded getting wet and would he have angry parents calling if he sent them home that way.  A rousing chorus of no's convinced him to let them stay.  No one was shivering, and as it was the last class of the day, we figured they could dry off as soon as they got home.   Well, about 10 minutes into our mini hike, it started to pour.  Journal-less and invigorated by the storm, the kids ran around poking things with the biggest sticks I would let them carry and shrieking at every centipede I managed to unearth to try and draw their attention back to the food chain.  Of course I and my co-worker/boss both cut our hikes short at that point, but it was a fruitless effort to keep them dry by then.  The downpour had drenched our classes within 30 seconds of starting.   Dripping and bedraggled, I made them chant as we walked back to their teacher.
 "When I get home: when I get home. I will put on dry clothes: I will put on dry clothes. I will drink a warm drink....."
No one kid in the whole class, not even the girl who admitted she wasn't going home: she was going to a friend's house, complained about the wet.  We hurried them back to school without a wrap-up discussion, and I'm not sure they learned much text-book knowledge about the riparian zone, but I do not doubt that it was a memorable field trip.

There have always been kids who would rather be inside than out.  Back in the day, they just occupied themselves with books or dolls or whatever instead of ipods or TV.  (I have plenty of thoughts about books or dolls vs. an ipod, but this is not the place to get in to all that.)  Conversely, there have always been kids fascinated by the natural world and being outdoors.  Some kids of course, like some cats, are both indoor and outdoor kids.  Based on my observations of the last 5 years, there are still plenty of kids who need no more than a stick and some dirt to keep them occupied and happy.  They just need the opportunity to realize that this type of play is an option.