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Catch a Falling Leaf: Meeting Our Other Mother — Mother Nature

by Roslyn Duffy
September/October 2008
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Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/catch-a-falling-leaf-meeting-our-other-mother--mother-nature/5018366/

�" Situation �"

The Pre-K teacher explained that today they were going to do a ‘visualization.’ They would close their eyes and imagine pictures in their minds. The children settled onto their mats as soft background music began to play.

“Imagine you are lying on a warm beach,” their teacher said. “You can feel the soft, sun-warmed sand beneath your hands. Beside you is a large, blue lake. Its water makes a bubbly sound on the rocks and shore grasses rub together with a whispery noise. Then a pair of ducks fly overhead, quacking loudly.”

That evening one of the children asked, “Mommy, how big is a beach?”

And another asked, “What is a lake, Daddy?”

A third child wondered how ducks could fly, since the ones at the zoo only floated in their pond.


�" Solution �"

The confusion of these children may seem extreme, like some futuristic science fiction tale �" but how many children experience nature in their daily lives? For many children and adults, daily contact with the natural world is rare. Seventy-year-old Margaret said, “I never had a plastic toy,” and yet few parents today are likely to have childhood memories of climbing trees, catching frogs, or stirring up tasty mud ...

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