Little Green Thumbs

Or perhaps I should say "little muddy thumbs"....

My twins and I have spent a lot of the last week or so working and playing in the garden: planting seeds and annuals, adding compost to the soil, mulching, making glorious mudheaps with the garden hose.

What better toddler activity could there be than gardening? Fresh air, freedom, beauty, dirt; the chance to make things grow and begin to divine something about the mystery of life. Given the chance, children respond powerfully and viscerally to the first signs of spring, to the magic of sprouting seeds and blossoming flowers.

You don't need a garden to share this magic with your child. Until recently, we lived in a seventh-story one-bedroom apartment in the frenzied midst of Midtown Manhattan; I'm sorry to say I didn't grow a thing with my kids last year.

Now I know that even if you have no natural light whatsoever, you can get a packet of watercress seeds and sprout them on some damp cotton balls in a dark, cool cupboard. If you have one window that gets decent light, you can try sprouting sunflower seeds or growing radishes or herbs. So what if your plant doesn't grow to maturity: The main delight for kids comes in that first unfurling of the initial shoot, the spreading of the first seed leaves.

If you're lucky enough to have some outdoor space, you can plant things in containers, or if you're really lucky, plant right in the ground. If you want the experience to be rich and satisfying for your child, let go of any Martha Stewart aspirations: Your basic three-year-old, however good-intentioned, will end up mangling the tender sunflower seedlings, drowning the crocuses with the hose, trampling the pansies, and squishing the hostas.

That's OK. (OK, it's not, but try to grit your teeth and accept a measure of gleeful kiddie destruction.) The most important thing for your child to get out of preschool-age gardening is a sense of joyful connection to the natural world, and an incipient sense of how human activity affects nature. If you actually grow some pretty flowers or some tasty vegetables, consider it a major bonus.

READING
I haven't yet found any really great fiction books for small kids that center on plants, gardening, and the like (readers, please share any suggestions). But there are a lot of great nonfiction books out there, which help give kids the vocabulary and concepts to make sense of what they're doing when they dig in the garden dirt:
Plant (EYE KNOW) by DK Publishing. This series of preschool books is filled with flaps, cut-outs, and similar gimmicks -- but all in the service of clear, concise, interesting information about the natural world. We've been reading this one out in the backyard in between bouts of gardening; we also got our instructions for growing watercress from here.
The Moonflower by Peter and Jean Loewer. I don't think I've ever actually seen a moonflower, but thanks to this beautiful, lyrical book, we've got moonflower seeds sprouting on our windowsill and hawkmoths have become regular characters in my three-year-olds' play monologues.
From Seed to Sunflower by Dr. Gerald Legg. Less poetic and more pedestrian than the wonder-filled moonflower tome, but this book offers detailed images and descriptions of germination, pollination, and other key concepts.
From Seed to Pumpkin by Wendy Pfeffer. Another solid introduction to how plants grow.

And for ideas about what to grow with your kids, and how, check out these two books:
What Shall I Grow? by Ray Gibson. This Usborne Activities book offers lots of ideas of gardening projects you can do even if you don't have a garden.
Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots: Gardening Together with Children by Sharon Lovejoy. If you have a yard where you can garden, consider trying one of the amazing projects in this wonderful book, like growing a playhouse made of sunflowers or planting a flowery maze.

"Why?"

Most small children go through a phase where they ask "why?" about every last thing, but I really wasn't prepared for the hurricane force of two incessant, insistent little questioners.

The "why?" thing hit us suddenly, and hard, while we were travelling over the past three weeks.

Desmond has taken the lead. He'll generally start with solid, interesting questions -- say, "Why is that truck carrying pipes?" But, especially when he's tired, the questions will often become, um, a little less penetrating: "Why is that car green?" "Why does that car have wheels?" "Why is there a man in the car?" The queries come in long staccato bursts, one after the next -- mainly from Desmond, but with Nini chiming in frequently.

Sometimes, when Desmond gets excited, the questions come so fast he can hardly articulate them. When we were riding a cable car in San Francisco last week, he got so worked up that his inquiries about the brakeman and the grip and the bell and the tracks and the hills eventually degenerated into nothing more than the repeated word "why? why? why? why? why?!"

Of course, I'm delighted to have such inquisitive little children. But oh, can it get irritating. Even the most saintly, patient parent -- which I am decidedly not -- must tire of so many questions.

I've come to realize, though, that not all the questions are the same. Desmond doesn't actually expect a response every time he asks "why?" -- even he seems to know, at some level, that some of his queries are just idle chatter.

And at a certain point I figured out what was going on with the most irritating thing of all, his habit of asking the same question over and over again, well after I had given two or three increasingly detailed answers. In a slight fit of pique, I turned the question around and asked him: Des, why do you think the man is putting gas in his car?

He was delighted to be asked -- so much so, it was as if he was asking to be asked.

I've avoided, for the most part, the practice of quizzing my kids to test their knowledge -- I'm persuaded by John Holt's argument that such quizzing is often pointless or even harmful. But I'm realizing that my kids are also eager for ways to show what they know and to describe things in their own words.

So now when the "whys" come in big, long bursts, I'm learning to turn it from an interrogation into a conversation -- and finding that we all get more out of the exchange that way.

READING
How Children Fail by John Holt
This unschooling classic details the many ways that traditional educational techniques can unintentionally drain away children's self-confidence and joy in learning. Remember being bored and peeved by stupid worksheets and quizzes when you were in school? Read this book for great insights into how not to subject your own kids to the same mind-numbing stupidities.

13 Great Nature Activities for the Very Young

We're paying a week's visit to Virginia, where spring is already beginning. My daughter and I found a clump of daffodils that were starting to bloom, and spent a long and lovely time just looking at them and touching them. Nini was especially interested in running her fingers over the buds and talking about how they soon would bloom.

In my opinion, the best nature experiences for toddlers and preschoolers are the simplest. Small children intuitively grasp the magic of the natural world, if given a real, unhurried chance to explore it; you need only gently steer them toward its wonders.

Some ideas:

1. Find some ants. Watch them crawl.
2. Find dandelions. Rub your fingers on the flowers until your finger turn bright yellow.
3. Find dandelions that have gone to seed. Blow the seeds into the wind.
4. Same as above, but wave them around like magic wands.
5. Go to a stream. Pick up some small rocks and throw them in the water ("Plunk!").
6. Go to a stream. Throw a stick or piece of grass in the water and watch it float away.
7. Find some pine cones. Rub them together like percussion instruments.
8. Find some moss. Feel the texture, observe the color.
   
9. Lift up a big rock and see who scuttles away from underneath.
10. Pick up some dry leaves and crumple them in your hands.
11. Find a pine tree and feel the needles. Break a needle in half and smell it.
12. Find some sticks. Poke and scratch the ground.
13. Lie on your back. Look up at the trees, and the sky, and the clouds.

READING
Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv
Utterly on-target, this lyrical (though somewhat disorganized) book details the increasing alienation of many children from the natural world and outlines the many benefits -- psychological, ecological, medical, and more -- from nurturing kids' relationships to the outdoors.

Painting

The first couple of times I tried letting my kids paint, it was something of a disaster. On the least successful occasion, when they were 1 1/2, I convinced myself that setting them up with a bunch of tempera paints in the bathtub would be a good idea; somehow I also thought it was prudent not to put the bathmat in. Slimy creatures were soon slipping and falling all over the place, paint-covered and weeping to get out.

Nowadays, my nearly three-year-olds love to paint, and can usually be trusted not to slime the universe when they do. I've been finding that the more frequently they paint, the more they seem to enjoy and get out of it, with each day's session somehow building into the next.

With kids' activities, I've learned, there's a good reason why the classics are the classics: Simple pursuits like painting don't just stimulate the imagination; they provide satisfying tactile pleasures and an outlet for complex emotions that toddlers can't yet articulate. More narrowly channeled activities, like toys that can be played with in only one way, don't address the range of toddler needs and desires the way open-ended ones do.

Are the kids also learning about color and form and gesture when they paint? Sure -- but that's not the point of it, at least not in my book. When you try to load too much "learning" into an activity for small children, you risk robbing it of its magic. Far better, I think, to leave it freeform and let your kids make of it what they will. They will almost certainly surprise you.

TIPS
Doing it yourself? You can buy a mountain of high-quality supplies for a fraction of the cost of preschool tuition (unless, of course, you live in some extraordinary place far, far from Brooklyn where preschool is actually affordable). This is not a place to skimp, in my book: It's a drag to feel like you're rationing paint when your kids are reveling in the sloppy satisfactions of excess. Try buying washable tempera (or washable glitter paint!) from an economical source like Discount School Supply. You might also want to invest in a big roll of butcher paper or a ream of 18" x 24" paper.

READING
First Art: Art Experiences for Toddlers and Twos by MaryAnn F. Kohl
A must-have guide to art activities for the very young, with a great overview of why "it's the process, not the product" when doing art with small children.
The Color Kittens by Margaret Wise Brown
Brown (author of Goodnight Moon) is at her dreamiest and most psychedelic in this sweet, beautiful tale of two kittens and their quest to create the color green.
Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh
Another color-mixing tale, featuring a trio of mice who explore color as they outsmart a cat.
The Crocodile's True Colors by Eva Montanari
Truth be told, I find this book to be irritatingly didactic, but I'm including it here because my twins love it. A group of African animals learn about various styles of art as each paints its own fearful portrait of a crocodile. Cool illustrations, and before you know it your two-year-old will (sigh) be talking about "futurism" and "expressionism."

Puddle Stomping

With temperatures climbing up into the mid-40s, I went with the kids and our friends R. and R. to Fort Greene Park today, to seek out some good slush, puddles, and mud.

The kids, of course, had a marvelous time. The day was warm, the puddles were big, there were lots of sticks around to drag through the mud.

Most of us have happy childhood memories of doing just this sort of thing: delighting in the mucky pleasures of early springtime, splashing joyfully in backed-up gutters after a heavy summer rain, floating homemade boats down some random drainage ditch.

Maybe it's just because I live in New York City, but in all the time I've spent out splashing with my kids in the nearly two years since they learned to walk, I have never -- never -- seen another parent doing the same. Adults unaccompanied by small children are always stopping to share stories of their own childhood puddle stomping; parents accompanied by small children, however, nearly always hurry past, giving me a dirty look while they fend off requests from their kids to join in my muddy little monsters' fun.

What gives? Playing in puddles and mud and muck is one of the inalienable rights of childhood. It clearly satisfies some deep need to connect with the watery world; it's an activity in which small children invariably lose themselves, finding a kind of peace and joy that we should foster. It should be on every parent's spring to-do list.

TIPS
Two words: Wool socks! Wool keeps you warmer when wet than any other substance. (Wet cotton sucks heat away from the body, a fine trait in summertime but really bad in cool-to-cold weather.) Unfortunately, it's not that easy to find wool socks in wee sizes, and they can be pricey, but I think it's well worth the expense. Try a Google or Froogle search for "toddler wool socks."

READING
Mud by Mary Lynn Ray
A kid-pleasing ode to the "gooey, gloppy, mucky, magnificent mud" of early springtime.