Family Science

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 This lesson begins with a story of child and mentor discovery as they explore the nature of moths. 

 Lola introduced me to the skill of “noticing” things. She said that to understand nature, one had to learn to be peaceful. I wouldn’t have to run around chasing nature, because the qualities of patience, external silence and internal quietness would attract nature to me. To learn from nature, it was critical to just “be” there and not “do” anything.      ...      By watching nature, we were able to design an experiment that helped us to see the hidden. Before we did our experiment, these insects were invisible to me.

 A rock from the playground opens up a whole new world. 

Lola took a Fig Newton Cookie from her lunch bag. As she pushed the ends of the cookie towards its middle, she told me that compression of plate against plate gives birth to new landscapes. “Notice how cracks formed and how the cookie buckled and bulged. This is a model of a convergent boundary. The cookie made ‘mountains’ at the bulge and made the cracks (called faults) where it buckled. This is an example of when two continental plates crash into each other forming mountains like Mount Everest.”, she explained.       ...     Many might think the playground rock I found was merely an ordinary piece of granite. For me, I learned there is nothing ordinary in nature if one is ready to learn the story behind it.  

As the sweeping choruses of frogs and crickets, mixed with refrain of the red-winged black birds, grew around me that warm spring day,  Lola opened my mind and heart to the music in the garden through the blending of observation and appreciation that characterizes the best of science. These approaches resonate with my growing love for nature that is forever continuing and deepening.