This article was written in March, when I discussed with my friends that the vegetable market, supermarket, and community green belt are actually the best resources for enlightening the baby nature and understanding animals and plants.
The article was almost written, the epidemic in Shanghai was closed - vegetables have simply become the lifeblood of all the people in Shanghai.
Now that I look back on it myself, I am also full of emotions - that day, the family wanted to fry cabbage and sent me to the vegetable market to buy vegetables, and the result was:
"You buy lettuce, I want to fry cabbage."
I quickly searched the Internet for pictures of the two vegetables, because in my long-term understanding, these two dishes are round and green, and I can't think of any difference between them.
That evening, Little D came home from school to learn about this and comforted me:
"Mom, it's okay. When Confucius was studying abroad, he was scolded by the farmers for "the four bodies are not diligent, and the grains are not divided". ”
The daughter's comfort is really warm, now don't talk about cabbage and lettuce, I will no longer be able to distinguish common vegetables, these smallest and most inconspicuous and most ordinary things in daily life, it turns out that it has such a big effect on our happy life!
Today, Shanghai does not have vegetable freedom, but we and our children love life, love nature, and love the hearts of ordinary days around us, which cannot be sealed by the epidemic!
01 Exposure to nature education from an early age
Natural education is actually to guide children to pay attention to the things around them, a little bit of mastery and memory, and slowly accumulate in daily life, rather than rote memorization.
Look around us, plants are everywhere, the roadside of the community, the flower beds, the vegetable market, the park, in fact, can become the classroom of nature education.
Children's nature is to love nature, they are born to be observers, explorers, what we have to do is to constantly stimulate their interest in exploring the surrounding environment, so that they love life more and grow up in the sunshine.
02 Do a good job of phased learning
0-3 years old
Perception ability is the basis of children's understanding of the world, at this stage children are still relatively small, they mainly use vision, hearing, smell and taste to understand the world, thinking to image thinking.
At this stage, we can teach them to recognize common vegetables in life in a simple, very intuitive way.
Vegetable markets and supermarkets (during the epidemic period, we must pay attention to prevention and control, we can buy vegetables back and show them to the baby, and when the epidemic is over, take the baby to the vegetable market and supermarket) is a very good education base.
Because not only do you have a complete variety of vegetables, you can also feel the strong atmosphere of life, and more importantly, you can also educate your baby while buying vegetables at home.
We can explain to children by distinguishing the color, shape and taste of vegetables.
For example, we can choose 5 different colors of vegetables (purple eggplant, red tomatoes, green spinach, white radish, yellow potatoes).
▲Purple eggplant
or 5 shapes (flat-bulbous tomatoes; oblong or cylindrical cucumbers; needle-shaped, conical chili peppers; round and peelable onions, lettuce; slender strips of kidney beans)
▲Round tomatoes
Of course, we can also distinguish from the taste, at this time we can add a cooking process, let the baby observe before and after cooking, what happened to the vegetables? What's the difference in color? (Potatoes and yams, for example, turn brown after frying, which is phenol oxidase at work)
What is the taste and texture of different vegetables? How do different cooking styles affect them? (For example, the taste of fried potatoes and fried potatoes has changed, one is fresh and refreshing, one is crisp and crisp, and it is sweet and dipped in tomato sauce)
▲ Potatoes
▲ (potato variation)
Sauté shredded potatoes
The way of cooking can also help children increase their appetite and love to eat more, which can be said to kill two birds with one stone!
This stage can also be combined with some vegetables, plant picture books.
1. "Baby Food And Education Picture Book" suitable age: 0-3 years old
2. "Four Seasons on the Side of the Road" Suitable age: 3-6 years old
3. "Coming out of Nature" Suitable age: 3 years old +
4. DK Encyclopedia of Plants Suitable age: 4-99 years old
3-6 years old
After the age of 3, children can already rely on familiar specific images for simple associations, at which time we can further explain the "body of the plant" systematically.
▲The "body" of the plant
During the explanation, you can assist some pictures to guide children to observe the roots, stems, leaves, flowers and fruits on the pictures, and compare them with the actual objects.
Different vegetables are different parts of our consumption, so which eat the roots and stems, which eat the leaves, which eat the fruit?
We can refer to the following figure:
In addition, we can also accompany the children to some planting experiences, cultivate their hands-on ability, both edible and can achieve the freedom of small potted plants in the kitchen.
For example, hydroponic avocados, potatoes, carrots, coriander, celery and so on.
I tried a hydroponic avocado with Little D once, and it looked like this:
Little D is happy throughout the process, observing the changes in the avocado every day and feeling happy for each small change, full of a sense of accomplishment.
If there are no avocados at home, you can replace them with sprouted potatoes, which is simpler and has a higher success rate. To share with you the main methods and steps of hydroponic potatoes:
How to make hydroponic potatoes?
1. Prepare a glass bottle or plastic bottle, the bottle mouth should not be too large, can jam the potato, do not let it fall.
2. Prepare a sprouted potato, add water to the plastic bottle, put the potatoes on it, let the buds emerge from the potatoes touch the water surface slightly, and after 1-2 weeks, the hydroponic potatoes can take root.
3. Hydroponic potatoes need light, but should not be strong light, scattered light is the best. About 10 days to change the water, you can add some nutrient solution appropriately, about 1 month, the hydroponic potatoes can grow up, but also bloom beautiful small flowers Oh.
There are also some planting playsets on the market, which contain planting teaching, materials, etc., but some are difficult to germinate by netizens, which requires everyone to carefully select and screen.
In addition to systematic learning and home planting, in the spring, we can also use weekends and holidays to take children to the farmyard to experience picking, enhance their enthusiasm for vegetables and fruits, and it is also a good parent-child activity!
Primary school or above
At this stage, children can already observe and learn independently, which can allow them to learn more common sense of life and increase some life skills on the basis of understanding the common vegetables and plants in life.
Local plant factories, science popularization bases, and botanical gardens are also good choices, which are mainly based on biodiversity habitat and science education.
Children can get up close and personal with more kinds of plants and expand their knowledge and horizons. For example: Miyexi in Shanghai, Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, etc.
When you encounter a small long holiday, you can also take your baby out on a wild trip, embrace nature, meet the poisonous wildflowers and wild fruits, and the uncertain journey may have unexpected gains and surprises.
When going out to play, I recommend some "take pictures and recognize flowers" apps: all kinds of flower companions Baidu zhitu and so on.
This kind of app can know the name and meaning of the plant as long as the photo is uploaded for 1 second, which is very convenient, whether it is in the community, the plant factory or the field, anytime, anywhere, quickly identify.
Regarding the recognition accuracy of such apps, experts from the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have specially evaluated, and the accuracy score is in order from high to low: flower helper - Baidu zhitu - flower companion - various colors - flower recognition - plant recognition - discovery of flowers - Microsoft flower recognition.
You can choose the top few.
Children who are interested in planting can also design a "plant corner" on the balcony, which not only cultivates hands-on ability but also purifies the air indoors.
03 Deepening and expanding
Some parents report that their babies are particularly enthusiastic about plants and feel that conventional methods can no longer meet the needs of their children. In this case, I suggest something like this:
1. Recommend a B station UP master: infinitesimal light
Reason: Infinitesimal Liang is known as the "intelligent encyclopedia" of walking, and his videos are witty and humorous and do not lose professionalism, which makes the original niche boring science more entertaining and easier for children to accept.
2. Buy a home microscope
Satisfy your child's curiosity and bring him a world under a microscope. What would it be like to put leaves and vegetables under a microscope and magnify 1600 times?
Children are free to experiment and make leaf specimens, and I think this toy must be popular!
3. Take a botanical trip that goes away
Many plants only grow in specific environments, for example, many flowers and trees in the south cannot be seen in the north. Why not take advantage of the eleventh, or winter and summer vacations to take the baby on a long-distance trip?
For example, the Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Xishuangbanna is a good choice, according to statistics, there are 38 plant special areas in the park, collecting more than 13,000 kinds of living plants, and preserving an area of about 250 hectares of primitive tropical rainforest, which is called a "plant feast", which can definitely make children feast their eyes.
The following picture is the real picture of the publishing house inviting our public friends to Go to Banna last year! After watching it, I want to fly to the tropical forest!
Reading thousands of books is not as good as walking thousands of miles, nature education is in books, more around us, in every journey we walk.