Those who own flowers don't need gods.
—Fernando Pessoa
Think about it, how long have you not sat on the grass with your child in a daze and looked at the clouds?
It's nice to take a vacation and take your kids between mountains and rivers; it's great to plan a country trip, climb trees to pick fruit, go down to the river to touch fish and shrimp.
But what if there are no specific opportunities and venues?
Don't think too much of a return to nature.
More often than not, we just take our children out of the house, look at the trees and listen to the birdsong on the boulevards of the neighborhood, and go to the nearby park for a picnic and flower viewing.
It's all good and easy to do, isn't it?
Nature is not far from us.
(At the end of the article, there is a practical guide for outings, patiently see the last yo)
Don't let the little universe in the garden run away
Wu Huiwen (former editor-in-chief of Bund Education)
Just in our courtyard, on the side of the street, where there are plants, there are rivers and lakes, a small universe that runs silently, which should be with the beat of the earth, and stage a magnificent and life-and-death drama every day.
In the early morning, earthworms burrow out of the dirt and risk their lives to cross smooth stone paths; at dusk spiders form webs among the blades of grass, waiting for a delicate midge; in late summer, wheat winter grass blooms silently and bears black pearl-like seeds deep in the dense leaves; and the long night wind rises, and the fruit of the trees changes from blue to brown and yellow, rolling down to the ground...
The exploration and interest in nature, often like a chord, stirs a polyphonic sense of pleasure in my heart, and the source of pleasure is my childhood with plants, such a mixture of today's urban children may be difficult to imagine -
Illustration of "Treasure in the Courtyard"
Each plant has a special use: the young leaves of the sycamore have fine sticky threads that can be carefully broken into a bead chain; the stems of the cauliflower are covered with inverted triangular siliques, gently torn into a hanging shape, and there is a fluttering "wind chime" sound with the fingers of the ear; the hydrangea can be used as nail polish, but I have not succeeded in dyeing hundreds of flowers; the fruits of Shanglu are the best pigments, and if they are on the clothes, they can no longer wash off their purple color, and they must be beaten...
This relationship between children and nature is subtle and direct, starting from identifying famous objects to establishing diplomatic relations in games, and the plants at the doorstep of the home are the secret treasures of children. In such day-to-day experiments, even reckless tastings, nature gifts children with free thoughts and sensitive hearts.
It is difficult to say with a straight line what the natural environment plays in the child's inner development, but without nature, we have already tasted some consequences – "it can cause a gradual degradation of the senses, attention disorders and depression phenomena that affect the physical and mental health of children." Indirectly, it undermines the moral, aesthetic and intellectual growth of the child".
Richard Love, author of The Last Child in the Woods, calls these damages "nature deficiency", and the modern environment allows children to unconsciously live a life away from nature, but the fact that they are close to nature requires additional planning and design.
Illustration of "Grandma's Vanilla Lesson"
Getting back to nature requires some "guides" – there are many primer books on the encyclopedia of plants, but very few books to guide children to live with plants. This requires the author not only to have knowledge about plants, but also to have a childlike heart that can "do a hundred plays" with plants. Among the various picture books about plants, only the japanese writer Yatsuo's book is the most suitable for my taste.
Ohno Yasuo loves to paint plants in life. "Treasure in the Courtyard" and "Grandma's Vanilla Lesson" both start from those semi-wild, ordinary to inconspicuous flowers and trees, leading children to re-understand the small universe around us.
"Treasure in the Courtyard" and "Grandma's Vanilla Lesson"
Do you know what color spring begins with? It's not green, it's actually golden. More than ten kinds of early blooming flowers in a year are yellow, such as incense, and sweet flowers bloom first at the top of the unlearned light pole, and the flowers fall off before they are born. Yellow primrose, because "yellow is the most easily seen color by flower flies";
Do you know what is the plant with the most "Virgin Heart"? It is a beautiful chamomile. The chemical scent she releases can make the surrounding plants more energetic, and it can also attract aphids to herself and protect the plants around her.
Garlic and onions, which are difficult to associate with "beauty", flowers are actually very cute, they have the smell of insect repellent, and delicate flowers such as roses actually love to be friends with them.
Looking for treasure in the courtyard, Ohno Yachiyo's picture book hides a kind of equanimity, teaching children to re-understand the wild grass, and the insects between the blades of the grass, taking the child to re-feel the resonance of the small universe in the courtyard with the mind, where there are laws of causal determination, there are also adventures full of uncertainty, there are delicate flowers, and there are also hidden vitality.
Many times, we think that children's addiction to nature is just "small fun", but in fact, even on the tiniest stage, nature is no less than Shakespeare's drama; alienated from such a small universe, children will not be able to understand their own vulnerability and tenacity, and these are the internal forces they can fight against a changeable society in adulthood.
Super practical identification plant APP
As an advanced section, recommend an APP for identifying plants, with it, in addition to good books, you can also use high-tech to increase the fun of children's understanding of different plants. The family holds a mobile phone to learn plant knowledge, which is very convenient
Variety
A plant community with a recognition function
This APP, according to the prompts to take a photo of the plant, you can identify the plant. The recognition speed is fast, and the plant will be "pocketed" by you, automatically collected into your virtual garden.
In addition, its map function can also show the recognized flowers around you in real time. If you and your child are hanging out and see a plant that you want to encounter, press the Tusso flower according to the positioning. It's so cool
Creative gameplay
1. Pick up leaves and fruits of different shapes and colors and go back to do handicrafts
2, pick up the branches and go back to make a forest photo frame to decorate the home
3. Have a hand-made forest picnic
4, the morning and evening light is the most comfortable, is a good time to take photos, remember to take a few beautiful photos of qingqing.
tips
1. Prepare anti-mosquito things in summer
2. Choose botanical gardens, parks and relatively safe and clean woods
3, parents must be optimistic about their children, do not let the children away from their own sight
Source | Wu Huiwen
Edit | Geminino, every heart
Typography | Geminino
【 Click on the image above, buy now 】
Treasures in the Courtyard (set of 2 volumes)
Written by Yao Ohno
Take your child to observe and explore
Share the hundreds of flowers and plants around you
Let the child make friends with everything in nature
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