Mothers Hubbard & Nature

June is not a month so generously peppered with birthdays of individuals famous enough to cause holidays in their honor, as are many other months

. It is a month, however, when a vast host of Nature lovers of school age desert their books and go to the open for first hand experiences. I have just been reading the classic Mother Hubbard to a four-year-old boy and wondered why Mother Nature and her cupboard full of interesting things shouldn't be just as interestingly presented as the story about the dog that had to go without a bone.

I can't help but feel that many children who have gone to their teachers for Mother Nature's secrets have found a program as bare of first hand experiences as was Mother Hubbard's cupboard of bones. We might put the situation somewhat as follows: Old Mother Nature went to the teacher to get a poor boy some help, When she got there the program was bare, So the boy had to just help himself.

In June, certainly, we find many boys helping themselves to valuable Nature experiences that they could not get in their school program. Frequently, even Nature teachers can't keep up with the youngsters and so try to steer them off into other channels, not realizing the unique value, which lies in learning from the immediate environment. I once listened to a Nature leader talk to a group of children out of doors for a half hour about something miles away while meadowlarks sang throughout the performance unnoticed. The lesson given was good for its type but I felt that some rare opportunities were being passed up.

I don't feel that there are many children who, with the beginning of vacation, will not, if given the chance, begin to learn from Nature either through kites, parachutes, toads or some sort of pet. We might express this again in the terms of Mother Hubbard substituting for that worthy dame Mother Nature who again took the boy and, She went to the brook to show him a trout, And when she got there he was pulling one out, She went to the spruce tree to get him some gum, And when she got there he was just finding some. She went to the "garden to show him a worm, And when she got there he was watching one squirm.

If any of you feel like it, you might like to put in a little time in June watching some youngster go to Mother Nature on his own and see if you can't write better couplets than those I have suggested above. This may be worth more to you than you think because we adults can learn much from children. Mrs. Comstock very aptly says that if anyone feels that he is growing old he should take the first child he finds, sit down with that child beside the nearest living thing and let that child show the adult something that he never saw before.

by: David Bunch

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