“We have a garden! With flowers and butterflies!” The third graders beam as they describe their wildlife garden during my author visit to St. John the Baptist (SJB) School in Maryland. I thought about their enthusiasm and the dedicated teachers and parent volunteer, Mary Phillips, I met that day as I researched and wrote Jo MacDonald Had a Garden. How best to convey a child’s joy in digging and planting while offering teachers and parents helpful information on starting and/or teaching with a school or backyard garden? These days, schools, such as SJB, can be the venues best positioned for nurturing a child’s wonder in the natural world. I grew up with a dad who shared his curiosity about nature with his seven kids and umpteen grandkids and showed us how to garden. (He’s the model for Old MacDonald, Jo's grandfather, in my book, which is an eco-friendly riff on the popular song "Old MacDonald Had a Farm.") But in today’s fast-paced, busy world and with diminishing green spaces, these “growing experiences” and "life lessons" may be missing from childhood. Happily, SJB seems to be part of a national trend, with an increasing number of schools adding an “outdoor classroom” to the traditional learning environment. At the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), Senior Coordinator Nicole Rousmaniere, who manages school programs, shared recent statistics. More than 4200 schools have started schoolyard habitats that help sustain regional wildlife, she says, with an additional 300 to 400 being added yearly. Rousmaniere emphasizes that commitment rather than size is the key to an effective “green education” from school gardens. Small can be powerful. Having children plant and care for native plants in containers or in a little patch beside a school can foster lessons in biology and stewardship. . . ]]> – by Mary Quattlebaum

“We have a garden! With flowers and butterflies!” The third graders beam as they describe their wildlife garden during my author visit to St. John the Baptist (SJB) School in Maryland.

I thought about their enthusiasm and the dedicated teachers and parent volunteer, Mary Phillips, I met that day as I researched and wrote Jo MacDonald Had a Garden. How best to convey a child’s joy in digging and planting while offering teachers and parents helpful information on starting and/or teaching with a school or backyard garden?

These days, schools, such as SJB, can be the venues best positioned for nurturing a child’s wonder in the natural world. I grew up with a dad who shared his curiosity about nature with his seven kids and umpteen grandkids and showed us how to garden. (He’s the model for Old MacDonald, Jo’s grandfather, in my book, which is an eco-friendly riff on the popular song “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.”)

But in today’s fast-paced, busy world and with diminishing green spaces, these “growing experiences” and “life lessons” may be missing from childhood.

Happily, SJB seems to be part of a national trend, with an increasing number of schools adding an “outdoor classroom” to the traditional learning environment. At the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), Senior Coordinator Nicole Rousmaniere, who manages school programs, shared recent statistics. More than 4200 schools have started schoolyard habitats that help sustain regional wildlife, she says, with an additional 300 to 400 being added yearly.

Rousmaniere emphasizes that commitment rather than size is the key to an effective “green education” from school gardens. Small can be powerful. Having children plant and care for native plants in containers or in a little patch beside a school can foster lessons in biology and stewardship. Indoor “green” activities pique youngsters’ interest in learning and doing even more. (Dawn Publications has such activities in the Downloadable Activities section of their website and in the back of all their children’s books, including Jo MacDonald Had a Garden.)

“Kids love a garden, but you’ve got to start them young,” says William Moss, a master gardener and horticultural educator. Advocating for school and small-space gardening, Moss writes the popular Moss in the City blog for the National Gardening Association, hosts HGTV’s Dig In and is a greening contributor to The Early Show on CBS.

Just about any subject can be taught through a garden, says Moss, including science, math, natural history, geography, nutrition, reading and writing.

A garden offers hands-on and experiential learning, says Phillips, the parent volunteer who helped SJB’s science teacher to create the school garden three years ago. Phillips has seen teachers use the garden to teach units on pollination, history, the food chain and the ozone. Her blog www.theabundantbackyard.com showcases student art inspired by the garden and by the art teacher’s lessons on Georgia O’Keefe’s flower paintings. An added bonus, says Phillips, is that the garden, in addition to enriching academic studies and creative expression, also stimulates the brain, enhances sensory awareness and gets kids outdoors for some exercise.

I thought of all these points so beautifully articulated by Moss, Phillips and Rousmaniere as I researched and wrote Jo MacDonald Had a Garden. My hope, along with illustrator Laura Bryant’s, was not only to playfully introduce youngsters to wiggling worms, fluttering birds and growing plants but to make it easy for teachers and parents to build on basic lessons.

School gardens can be the start of a learning experience that grows over a lifetime. As NWF’s Rousmaniere points out, just as schools teach the 3 R’s, so, too, they might provide a setting that connects children with and increases their knowledge about the natural world. One of the most important lessons to learn young is stewardship, says Rousmaniere, the idea that we are all caretakers of the earth and its wild inhabitants.

Resources for Starting and Learning from a School Garden

William Moss, horticultural educator: www.wemoss.org
National Gardening Association: www.kidsgardening.org
National Wildlife Federation: www.nwf.org
Mary Phillips, school garden advocate: www.theabundantbackyard.com

After making books that connect children and nature for 33 years—Sharing Nature with Children was published in 1979—Dawn is on the cusp of a huge advance as we publish our first-ever app. Based on the book Over in the Ocean, this is a "book-app" that teachers and parents in particular, are going to love. "Dawn has entered a brave new era!" my wife and co-publisher, Muffy Weaver, exclaimed when the app made its debut on Apple’s App Store. But perhaps the most encouraging thing of all is the response of teachers when they actually saw it on the iPad. "As a mother and educator, this App is a treasure!" exclaimed Mrs. MJ Broker in an App Store comment, citing "teachable moments" in reading, math, and science. I previewed the app with two particularly experienced educators, Sandy McDivitt and Carol Malnor. Sandy, now retired, was until recently the Executive Director of the 650-student Forest Charter School in Nevada City, California, a school that features "personalized learning." Carol is the former Director of Online Learning at Performance Learning Systems, as well as a long-time teacher and an author. "The great thing about this app is that it uses multiple senses," Sandy said. "For decades there was an almost-exclusive focus on visual skills, but this app stimulates auditory learning skills as children listen to the author either reading or singing. And it has an important tactile, physical movement as well as students play the counting game." Studies show that more learning occurs when more senses are involved. Carol pointed out that the app provides “focused engagement,” an especially good thing for “squirmers”—children who just can’t sit still to read, or even when they are being read to. . . .]]> – by Glenn Hovemann

After making books that connect children and nature for 33 years—Sharing Nature with Children was published in 1979—Dawn is on the cusp of a huge advance as we publish our first-ever app. Based on the book Over in the Ocean, this is a “book-app” that teachers and parents in particular, are going to love.

“Dawn has entered a brave new era!” my wife and co-publisher, Muffy Weaver, exclaimed when the app made its debut on Apple’s App Store. But perhaps the most encouraging thing of all is the response of teachers when they actually saw it on the iPad. “As a mother and educator, this App is a treasure!” exclaimed Mrs. MJ Broker in an App Store comment, citing “teachable moments” in reading, math, and science.

I previewed the app with two particularly experienced educators, Sandy McDivitt and Carol Malnor. Sandy, now retired, was until recently the Executive Director of the 650-student Forest Charter School in Nevada City, California, a school that features “personalized learning.” Carol is the former Director of Online Learning at Performance Learning Systems, as well as a long-time teacher and an author.

“The great thing about this app is that it uses multiple senses,” Sandy said. “For decades there was an almost-exclusive focus on visual skills, but this app stimulates auditory learning skills as children listen to the author either reading or singing. And it has an important tactile, physical movement as well as students play the counting game.” Studies show that more learning occurs when more senses are involved.

Carol pointed out that the app provides “focused engagement,” an especially good thing for “squirmers”—children who just can’t sit still to read, or even when they are being read to.

“Brain-compatible activities,” Carol said, “are those that are (a) meaningful, (b) useful, (c) fun, and (d) either interesting or something with which there is an emotional connection. It’s meaningful because the fishy facts are informative, presented interestingly, and are visually appealing. It’s useful because after children count and learn about the animals, they use what they have learned at the end, in the counting game. It’s fun—that’s for sure!—having the pufferfish puff or the octopus squirt ink when the screen is touched. And there’s an emotional connection because the app is all about mothers and babies, which is something that kids really care about. This app pretty much has it all.”

“In addition,” Carol said, “the app provides variety and choice—two more important components in successful learning—when the child selects among three options, read to me, read to myself, or sing to me.

“I personally think, as an educator, that apps are going to revolutionize the way that we think and learn,” she said. “With iPads and similar devices we can find avenues for children to explore whatever interest they have. I’m excited for learners!”

Many of Dawn’s books lend themselves to fun, educational apps or ebooks. This is just the beginning. Of course, we picked an outstanding book by an outstanding author and illustrator to be the first project. Marianne Berkes’ talents as an author really shine, and Jeanette Canyon’s polymer clay art is just outrageous. And fortunately, our developer, Malachi Bazan (see Artist of the Month at right) has just the right aptitude and attitude for the job. He’s the one who made it all happen.

See more about the features included in Over in the Ocean App

Buy the Over in the Ocean App from the iTunes Store
 

Busy teachers love ready-made lessons that are meaningful for students and easy to do. That’s why I was delighted to share a lesson for Molly's Organic Farm with kindergarten/first grade teacher Jenn Sheffo. Like many teachers, Jenn has her hands full with school, family, and extra activities for her two young children. The day I went into Jenn’s class she was teaching a unit entitled “Our Backyard: Organic Farming & Local Sustainability.” Students were learning how plants grow, how to observe nature, and which bugs and other critters hide nearby. Molly's Organic Farm was a perfect fit for Jenn’s unit because Molly, a homeless little cat, discovers those same things during her explorations of an organic farm. Easily printing off the Sense-sational lesson from Dawn Publication’s website, Jenn grabbed her copy of the book and was ready to go. I loved being a fly on the wall as I watched the children’s reactions while Jenn read the story. With the lines, “Little girl giggles; Molly wiggles,” the class erupted in giggles too. And when they saw the colorful market day illustration, students shared their own experiences of shopping at a local farmer’s market. Molly’s Organic Farm is rich in sensory words, so the focus of the lesson was to review the five senses, an important science standard for grades K-2. Referring to the list of sensory words provided in the lesson plan, Jenn read a word from the story and students did a corresponding motion for one of the senses. For example, when students heard the word “whoosh” they cupped their hands behind their ears to indicate hearing, and for “silky” they wiggled their fingers to indicate the sense of touch. For the sense of seeing, they pretended to look through binoculars; and they pointed to their noses for the sense of smell. Sticking out their tongues for the sense of taste was especially fun when Jenn said “sipping!” Listening to Jenn read the book and watching children do the activity gave me a feeling of coming full circle—it was just the classroom experience I imagined while I was writing Molly’s Organic Farm. ]]> – by Carol L. Malnor

Busy teachers love ready-made lessons that are meaningful for students and easy to do. That’s why I was delighted to share a lesson for Molly’s Organic Farm with kindergarten/first grade teacher Jenn Sheffo. Like many teachers, Jenn has her hands full with school, family, and extra activities for her two young children. The day I went into Jenn’s class she was teaching a unit entitled “Our Backyard: Organic Farming & Local Sustainability.” Students were learning how plants grow, how to observe nature, and which bugs and other critters hide nearby. Molly’s Organic Farm was a perfect fit for Jenn’s unit because Molly, a homeless little cat, discovers those same things during her explorations of an organic farm.

Easily printing off the Sense-sational lesson from Dawn Publication’s website, Jenn grabbed her copy of the book and was ready to go. I loved being a fly on the wall as I watched the children’s reactions while Jenn read the story. With the lines, “Little girl giggles; Molly wiggles,” the class erupted in giggles too. And when they saw the colorful market day illustration, students shared their own experiences of shopping at a local farmer’s market.

Molly’s Organic Farm is rich in sensory words, so the focus of the lesson was to review the five senses, an important science standard for grades K-2. Referring to the list of sensory words provided in the lesson plan, Jenn read a word from the story and students did a corresponding motion for one of the senses. For example, when students heard the word “whoosh” they cupped their hands behind their ears to indicate hearing, and for “silky” they wiggled their fingers to indicate the sense of touch. For the sense of seeing, they pretended to look through binoculars; and they pointed to their noses for the sense of smell. Sticking out their tongues for the sense of taste was especially fun when Jenn said “sipping!” Listening to Jenn read the book and watching children do the activity gave me a feeling of coming full circle—it was just the classroom experience I imagined while I was writing Molly’s Organic Farm.

As an author and former classroom teacher I have always appreciated Dawn Publications books because they include an educational element along with the story. The downloadable activities available online take that educational experience one step further. Check out more downloadable activities for Molly’s Organic Farm and many other books under the Teachers/Librarians link. You’re sure to find an activity that is perfect for your students.

The stars are our ancestors! That’s the main message of my picture book trilogy for children, and now also the newly-released movie Journey of the Universe, which aired on PBS stations nationwide in December. The movie is a documentary exploring the human connection to Earth and the cosmos, produced by Yale historian of religions Mary Evelyn Tucker and narrated by the mathematical cosmologist and story teller extraordinaire Brian Swimme. Together, the movie and the picture books offer a wonderful parallel message. The movie does for adults what the Universe trilogy does for children—and the child in all of us. It evokes a sense of profound wonder for our universe and the energy that poured forth over billions of years to create the universe we know today. In the movie Dr. Swimme walks through an open air market on the Mediterranean Island of Samos, colorful vegetables are piled high on every table. He picks up a beet. “Every carbon atom in this beet was fused inside a star.” Soon we see a colorful meal of vegetables from the market sliding into an outdoor oven . . . the carbon atoms about to become part of the humans who eat them. “Journey of the Universe” is about seeing everything anew, “ablaze with cosmic creativity,” inside the spectacular 13.7 billion-year story of the universe. In the story for children, I used the storytelling technique of becoming the universe itself and telling “my” story, my “autobiography.” Illustrator Dana Andersen powerfully and evocatively brings the story to life (see Artist of the Month). As told in Born with a Bang: The Universe Tells Our Cosmic Story: “Like you, I started as a tiny speck. About 13 billion years ago, or so, I was smaller than a piece of dust under your bed. It’s hard to imagine that I started out so small. But I did. . . . Like you, I couldn’t stay small. I was bursting with wild and dazzling dreams . . .” My life as a universe, I explained, was one of both chaos and creativity. Time after time I nearly perished, but somehow I turned disaster into opportunity and created even more interesting, complex forms. ]]> – by Jennifer Morgan

The stars are our ancestors! That’s the main message of my picture book trilogy for children, and now also the newly-released movie Journey of the Universe, which aired on PBS stations nationwide in December. The movie is a documentary exploring the human connection to Earth and the cosmos, produced by Yale historian of religions Mary Evelyn Tucker and narrated by the mathematical cosmologist and story teller extraordinaire Brian Swimme.

Together, the movie and the picture books offer a wonderful parallel message. The movie does for adults what the Universe trilogy does for children—and the child in all of us. It evokes a sense of profound wonder for our universe and the energy that poured forth over billions of years to create the universe we know today.

In the movie Dr. Swimme walks through an open air market on the Mediterranean Island of Samos, colorful vegetables are piled high on every table. He picks up a beet. “Every carbon atom in this beet was fused inside a star.” Soon we see a colorful meal of vegetables from the market sliding into an outdoor oven . . . the carbon atoms about to become part of the humans who eat them. “Journey of the Universe” is about seeing everything anew, “ablaze with cosmic creativity,” inside the spectacular 13.7 billion-year story of the universe.

In the story for children, I used the storytelling technique of becoming the universe itself and telling “my” story, my “autobiography.” Illustrator Dana Andersen powerfully and evocatively brings the story to life (see Artist of the Month). As told in Born with a Bang: The Universe Tells Our Cosmic Story: “Like you, I started as a tiny speck. About 13 billion years ago, or so, I was smaller than a piece of dust under your bed. It’s hard to imagine that I started out so small. But I did. . . . Like you, I couldn’t stay small. I was bursting with wild and dazzling dreams . . .” My life as a universe, I explained, was one of both chaos and creativity. Time after time I nearly perished, but somehow I turned disaster into opportunity and created even more interesting, complex forms.

Born with a Bang ends with the formation of the Earth, “a burning red ball of molten stardust.” The second book, From Lava to Life: The Universe Tells Our Earth Story picks up my experience of how hot oceans and naked earth became the home of bacteria . . . jellyfish . . . flowers . . . dinosaurs! The second book ends when a huge meteor smacks into Earth and every single dinosaur sinks into extinction. Mammals Who Morph: The Universe Tells Our Evolution Story takes the tale from there with the amazing story of mammals.

Dr. Swimme tells the story through amazing photography. “What gave birth to all this beauty?” he asks. “What was the creativity that brought this about?” Charged with wonder, he challenges us to open our eyes and see unbroken ancestral relationships through deep time—all the way back to the very beginning—and to see the self-organizing capacity of the universe that gave birth to . . . us.

Life was not an accident, Swimme asserts. It naturally came forth out of the patterning within matter—a “life-generating universe.” It was bound to happen, he says. He quotes the famous quantum physicist Freeman Dyson who said, “The more I study the universe, the more I see that the universe must have known we were coming.”

With amazing images, Swimme explains how energy poured forth, swirled, and transformed into more complex forms with deepening interiority, or awareness. When life emerged, a huge leap in complexity and subjectivity took place. Life could now make the distinction between “self” and “other” . . . and could learn, adapt, and make decisions. Swimme emphasizes that everything has its roots in what came before—and that awareness is no exception. He traces the lineage of awareness back to the self-organizing capacity of the universe itself.

And in what mysterious and amazing ways the universe organized itself! For example, life can only exist within a narrow temperature band. Over the last 4 billion years since life began on earth, the sun’s temperature has increased by 25%, but earth found a way to lower its temperature, thus keeping a climate conducive to life. How? By taking carbon out of the atmosphere. “Is all of this being organized so life can flourish?” Swimme asks.

Another example: earth’s atmosphere is 21% oxygen—very unusual for planets. Why? Because life itself has been pouring oxygen into the atmosphere. Earth and life are inextricably entwined. Earth is not merely a platform on which life happens. There’s an intimate partnership between life and the ocean, land, and atmosphere.

The trend toward increasing awareness occurred simultaneously in many different kinds of life. One of the most remarkable examples is the evolution of the eye, which happened independently many times over. Trilobites first developed a calcite eye. The human water-based eye evolved on a completely different track.

As humans evolved, symbolic consciousness emerged . . . and set in motion self-amplifying loops that further increased consciousness. Humans have gained such a high degree of self-determination, or “centration,” to use Swimme’s term, that human consciousness is now shaping the earth . . . in many ways irreversibly, changing life’s dynamics and the quality of the air, climate, rivers, oceans, and DNA.

What is the way forward with the crises we face today? In Mammals Who Morph, at the end of my trilogy, I evoked a sense of wonder in my young audience. “Crises can unleash my cosmic creative powers. Today, my creative powers also live inside of you. You may not know where you’re headed. But you’re part of something much bigger than humans and that’s why you too have exactly the powers you need—the powers of imagination, love and decision making. . . . Our adventure has only just begun.”

Likewise in the movie, Swimme says that the compass to guide us is our sense of “wonder” that will inspire a wholehearted, conscious partnership of humans with the earth. That sense of wonder has a firm foundation in understanding where we come from and the incredible creative powers of the universe that we’re part of. By following “wonder” we align ourselves with the “grain of cosmic evolution” and see our place in the journey of the universe. It’s a journey in which we belong, have always belonged, and in which we have a special role to play right now.

Science has given us a deep-time story of a self-organizing universe so remarkable that it demands our contemplation. As I have seen time and time again, children are eager for this story. It is being used is used in classrooms around the world. Our origin story, in all its depth, complexity, and wonder, is a great gift to the next generation.

Ms. Morgan’s Universe Story Trilogy was endorsed by Brian Swimme, as well as such luminaries as Thomas Berry, Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman, astronaut Edgar Mitchell, Neil de Grasse Tyson (Director, Rose Center, Hayden Planetarium, AMNH), and numerous others. For over ten years she has been giving programs and storytellings for teachers, students ranging from elementary to college age, and religious groups, and leading retreats in the New Cosmology. Ms. Morgan has a B.A. degree in theology, University of San Francisco, and an M.B.A., Rutgers University. For more information go to www.universestories.com.

-- by Brian “Fox” Ellis

OK, let’s start with the worst case scenario: Several years ago I was presenting a day long pre-conference workshop for the Michigan Science Teachers Association. Always trying to encourage teachers to take their students outside, we escaped from the stuffy conference center to go for a hike, but the only patch of nature we could find in downtown Detroit was a rectangular hole in the pavement about 2’ x 3’ with the dead stump of a former tree and gravel…. Yet in this mini-oasis we found a rich community of pill bugs, ants, a centipede, two different kinds of moss, some lichens, a fungus and the gravel was filled with the fossils of an ancient sea bed, truly a teachable moment. We studied the world from the point of view of an ant. We drew pictures of the different mosses, comparing and contrasting their forms. And we wrote stories about a day in the life of a pill bug. It still ranks as one of the best nature hikes ever and a great model for these inner-city teachers to look for nature wherever you find it!

Whatever the season, whatever the weather, the wild world is waiting to offer your students a chance for real learning; even if you are just circling the building, take your class outside and let them immerse themselves in a sense of wonder.

A fall leaf collecting trip, a wintery exploration of animal tracks, spring flowers and summer insect safaris, there is always something going on out of doors. Follow A Drop Around the World on a rainy day and see where the rivulets on the playground lead you. Or follow the energy cycles on a sunny day and Pass the Energy Please.

One of my favorite nature quotations comes from the Japanese conservationist Tanaka Shozu who said, “The question of rivers is not a question of rivers, but of the human heart.”

I wanted to touch the hearts of my middle school students with the beauty of nature as well as inspire them to take care of the local environment. I found the perfect spot for a nature experience less than an hour away from our school campus in the Sierra Nevada.

First stop was a shady woodland nature trail. The path twisted and turned as it followed Rock Creek through the pines, oaks, and big leaf maples. I had the students spread out along the trail, leaving about 10-12 feet between one another. They sat in silence for 10 minutes (a long time for some 13-year-olds!) and then wrote a one sentence description of their surroundings. Some wrote about what they saw—green leaves, sparkling sunlight, giant trees reaching into the sky. Others wrote about what they heard—singing birds, and the bubbling creek rushing over rocks, while others focused on how they felt—peaceful, quiet, and calm.

I collected the papers, and we took a short hike to totally different part of the forest—an area that had been recently clearcut of all trees. Tree stumps dotted a barren hillside. Without a canopy of leaves providing shade, the sun blazed down on us. Once again I had the kids spread out, sit by themselves, and write one sentence about the area. Words like desolate, destroyed, dead, sad, emptiness filled their papers.

Gathering in a circle, I collected these papers and read them aloud as if each sentence was a line in a poem. Then I read aloud the “poem” they had written from the nature trail. What a stark contrast in words and feelings!

I didn’t need to give a lecture on the importance of taking care of the forest. The kids “got it” through their direct experience in nature. Their hearts were touched. Their minds were opened. Back in the classroom we explored the hows and whys of forest management, but nothing they learned from our studies came close to having the impact of their personal experience. Experience truly is the BEST teacher.

I was fortunate in that I was able to arrange an all-day field trip. But you can create a high-impact nature experience without traveling far—just step outside the classroom door and try out one of these ideas: