One Easy Way to Teach Kids About Nature

A few years ago, I had a native pollinator garden installed on one side of the front yard. It’s a small garden but our living room window looks out on it and we get to see a lot of cool things, like butterflies, grasshoppers on the windowsill, praying mantises, many types of birds, squirrels, etc. It’s almost like having a museum exhibit in the home- there is always something to see!

If you can set up a small pollinator garden outside an easily accessible window, I highly recommend it for teaching kids about nature, especially since you don’t have to wait for good weather or make time to go outside. They can see things every day! My daughter is 4 years old and she can identify many local plants and animals because of her daily trips to the living room window.

* What is a pollinator? Bees, butterflies, beetles, birds and any other creature that helps pollinate flowers (directly or indirectly).

Your window garden doesn’t have to be anything fancy either; a few key plants in containers will do if you can’t put plants in the ground. It’s best to select native plants because those will attract the critters that live in your area (as well as providing food and habitat for them), but other common plants are okay too. Work with what you’ve got and what you can afford (financially and emotionally). 

 Some plant ideas:

 – Butterfly weed or other types of small milkweed: attracts Monarch butterflies. They lay their eggs on the plants and you can watch the caterpillars grow week by week. The caterpillars then crawl away and form a chrysalis (cocoon). They later emerge as beautiful butterflies.

– Black Eyed Susan: attracts bees, butterflies, and finches (goldfinches love the dry seed heads).

– Dill, Parsley and Carrot: attracts the black swallowtail butterfly, which completes its life cycle on these plants (hello, caterpillars!).

– Veronica speedwell: attracts bees, especially chunky bumblebees.

– Tickseed: bees love it!

– Sunflower: attracts bees and birds 

If you don’t use pesticides or herbicides, over time you will see praying mantises, grasshoppers, fireflies, and other critters. Of course, you can also add a small bird feeder and see who comes by to check it out, but don’t put the bird feeder in areas where there are lots of caterpillars because the birds might eat them. I usually only feed birds from about February to April anyway to get them through the winter and then I take down the feeders and let them survive off the bugs in the garden (hopefully not too many caterpillars).

It seems so simple but this is important knowledge. You may find yourself learning a lot in the process of teaching your kids about nature. And with dwindling native wildlife populations in urban and suburban areas, we should all do what we can to help. It can be as easy as setting out the right plants. Isn’t that amazing? Let’s get our kids excited and educated about nature!