If your child is keen on exploring this summer, what materials do you need for your vacation or for your home?
Nature exploration doesn’t need to be heavy on the material end of things. Not to be too trite, but the most important things you need to bring outside are your eyes, your ears, and your fingers. Sometimes your tongue and teeth help too, but you’ll bring them along. Listening for birds, watching for animal tracks, and looking under logs all require very few materials.
If your child plans to capture animals for a short time to observe them, an old margarine container is perfect for this. It is waterproof and can be used in a stream, a pond, a beach, or a forest environment. A good complement to this is a terrarium. An old aquarium makes a good terrarium and so do clear salad containers, as long as both have secure netting on top. Release any animals within a day or two and return them to their original location.
To collect animals, a pooter is a useful object. It consists of a tube and a container. The child sucks on part of the tube and draws the insect into the container gently, without touching it. Of course, the insect needs to be small enough to fit! If you are going pond-dipping, a long-handled pond net is also useful. Make sure that you clean it out thoroughly before you leave the pond, just in case there are critters hiding inside.
A pair of binoculars is fun for bird watching, and a hand-held magnifying glass is good for close-ups. A bug box with a magnifier on top makes it easier to see animals. There are bux boxes that you can hang around your neck and boxes that have multiple levels of magnification if you want to get fancy.
No matter what equipment you bring with you, the most important thing you can bring to a forest, stream, or beach is respect. Make sure that you return everything to its place and handle all animals gently, if at all. Observing animals in their natural environment is even more intriguing than taking them home!
Image courtesy of Lockheed at stock exchange.