You're Never Too Little for the Natural Science Section

photo by Silvia Darie

On Saturday, May 15, a group of families met Silvia Darie and me at the Placerita Canyon Nature Center for a walk organized by the Little Hikers Section of the Sierra Club. It was a perfect day, warm and sunny, with lots of spring flowers and tadpoles, and the outing was planned for young attention spans with several different activities.

As we gathered on the nature center patio, a docent showed us a Great-Horned Owl, one that has been injured and can't be released, so is kept at the nature center on exhibit. The docent held the owl perched on her arm protected by a leather glove and restrained by a short leather leash. As the owl looked around the area, the children were fascinated to watch the owl's pupils expand and shrink according to the surrounding light.

Our first walk was to some sites of historic interest - first a tiny cabin built by Frank Walker in 1920 for his large family, then some oil-drilling equipment used by Walker in one of the first local oil fields. We walked farther to the location of the first gold discovery in California, in 1842 under a spreading oak tree now called 'The Oak of the Golden Dream,' as, so the story goes, someone fell asleep under the tree, dreamed about gold, and then woke up to find a nugget! The Walker Ranch was also used for cattle-ranching and movie production. For our elementary school children, this was a great lesson in California history, touching on almost all the main topics in our state's economy.

Then we followed the Canyon Trail along the stream, pointing out some of the common plants, in particular the Coast Live Oaks that provided acorns, the main food source for the California Native Americans. A couple of fourth graders explained the labor-intensive process to prepare the acorns for food. We identified and tasted some Black Mustard plants, nonnatives that arrived with the Europeans, and we took a few flowers back to put on our lunch sandwiches. (It's ok to pick nonnatives, and we were careful to warn the children not to eat any plants until an adult says it's safe.)

The high point of the walk came when we arrived at a bend in the stream and found hundreds of tadpoles. After a few parents cried, 'Don't get muddy! Don't get your shoes wet!' the children were crouched along the water's edge, happily getting wet and muddy as they watched the tadpoles wriggling around. Again a little education - these were tree frog tadpoles that would soon begin to develop lungs and legs to enable them to live on land.

We walked back to the picnic tables for lunch and then the final activity, an indoor animal show. The room was packed with kids and parents. The kids got to see a rattlesnake in his terrarium, and count the rattles. They were shown the difference between this dangerous snake and the harmless gopher snake, as the handler easily petted the gopher snake. The owl made another appearance. There was also a tarantula and a hawk. The kids were excited!

This was a great adventure for the children to learn and have fun in an outdoor setting. These children are our future naturalists and environmentalists and are lucky to be among the few children today that are learning in a natural setting rather than from computers. In his book, Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv points out that children today know more about global warming and the plight of polar bears than they do about the plants and animals in their own neighborhoods. If you'd like to introduce children to our local natural world, contact Silvia Darie of the Little Hikers Section or Ginny Heringer of the Natural Science Section. And check us out at our website. Sign up on our listserve for updates. We welcome your participation in these activities.