It’s a new year, and we have a new Bear Creek Explorer! I’ve felt that someone was missing, despite how great this group has been. Today we welcomed Juniper, which brings our count to six. In my experience, six is the perfect number of kids for outdoor adventures, and it fills up the van except […]
Each year, when the rains return, mystical fungal fruitbodies cover the the Bear Creek Wilderness and turn an ordinary walk in the woods into a series of joyful exclamations of discovery. One rainy day, earlier in the fall, the Bear Creek Explorers and I spent the morning wandering off trail and documenting as best we
Mushrooms Everywhere Read More »
I’m a bit behind on these weekly blogs- tomorrow we head into the woods for week 6 and this post is about week 4. As I write this, on election day, we’ve past the mid-point of fall and on cue the weather has turned chilly and wet. The days are markedly shorter and these photos
I started out our third week together by giving the BCE research team each their own field notebooks. They reminded me the week before that they wanted journals for sit-spot time, and although I want to make sure we work together to keep the official BCW field notebook up to date with all our data
Research Questions Read More »
We had big plans for the Bear Creek Explorers’ second week together: explore Bear Creek! But first, we checked the rain gauge and started our field notebook entry for the day. As a group, we decided to rotate through who does the actual writing in the book, with the youngest starting us off with the
It was hard to believe last Wednesday morning that the day had finally arrived. After a year of discussing, planning, website building, marketing, buying a new van, emails, phone calls, liability forms, insurance payments, billing, and bookkeeping- at last, I had a group of kids who wanted to join me for weekly full-day adventures in
Bear Creek Explorers Begins Again Read More »
We’ve passed the midpoint of summer and suddenly there’s a flurry of activity as we look towards fall and consider our options for the year ahead. I told myself a year ago that I’d give my all to this small business, aimed at connecting young people with nature, for a full year and then take
It’s a busy time of year with many counting down the days until summer, and most not looking to take on anything new. But here in the heart of spring, we’re already starting to plan for next fall. By reaching out today, I hope to plant some seeds whose harvest will be enriching nature connections
An article I wrote was featured in Clearing, a place-based environmental education magazine. This issue focuses on student-initiated field-based scientific inquiry and I wrote an article titled, “A Natural Fit: Homeschooling and the Establishment of a Student Research Forest.” Check it out!
After our first week at LCC, we had a location change to the beautiful Mount Pisgah Arboretum. Although it was logistical challenges that triggered the change, it turned out to be a wonderful opportunity to spend some gorgeous fall days in a more natural setting. A couple times a deer or two would walk casually
Compass Course Complete! Read More »
