Field Detectives

and the Magic of Mysteries

"What is it that strikes the imagination? Above all, grandeur, and next, mystery."
--Dr. Maria Montessori, From Childhood to Adolescence



Absolutely! Children love to approach a question as if they are detectives solving a mystery. Last week, we embarked on our first field trip of the year. On a day when we worried rain would force us into our jackets and under umbrellas, the sun shined on a delightful day of discovery.

One of the "guiding tenets" of Coyote's Guide and the Wilderness Awareness School is the 50-50 Principle: Be prepared with lessons but be flexible enough to abandon them when the current of energy and enthusiasm pulls in a different direction. Maria Montessori had the same advice: "follow the child." So much rich learning can happen if you are prepared to put down your grown-up plans and embrace learning opportunities as they present themselves. "In the moment of opportunity, you adapt and adjust your plans. . . . Plan for cyclic flow AND be prepared to ditch the plans and improvise" (Coyote's Guide). Mysteries are most fun when they are spontaneous surprises. Adults who work with children need to be flexible enough to capitalize on these teachable moments when curiosity is at a crest.

Our first mystery presented itself during lunch, after we watched the outdoor Opera to Go performance of How Nanita Learned to Make Flan. One of my second graders finished lunch early and grew curious about the tall trees with gray peeling bark that provided us shade. He began to explore the ground around our picnic tables, picked up a leaf, and fetched the Texas Trees & Wildflowers fold-out field guide from his group's field pack so that he could identify the tree. He had trouble, though, because the leaf was not an exact match to any in our guide. He and Mrs. D discussed. "The shape looks a little like this American Sycamore, but these areas are not as deep between the lobes," he told her. She pointed out the spiked fruit in the field guide illustration and suggested he look around in our spot for evidence of a similar fruit. When his search yielded no such find, he came to tell me the disappointing news but cheerfully pushed on in his pursuit. "I'll ask Mr. V. He might know because he's a scientist." I love that! My students have learned to first examine the evidence themselves and use an identification resource. When that fails, bring your question to an expert scientist. (Mr. V, a former engineer not a botanist, had joined us for the day as a chaperone. He gave the child his best guess--Sycamore--and then came over to ask me what I thought, but the children have got the idea right about consulting experts and viewing scientists as accessible resources!) "The veins look the same as the ones in the field guide. Maybe it is another type of Sycamore?" suggested the child. We collected a few leaves, and I promised we'd find a less limited field guide when we returned to the classroom. As we were checking for trash before we left the tables, the child came to me excited. "The mystery is solved!" he announced, eyes wide and body proud with accomplishment. He had found another leaf that was a more exact match to the one in our field guide, and another child had spotted some of the spiky fruits hanging high in a tree.

The next mystery arrived in the form of a pinecone. "What's this?" Hmm. Can you find more of them or something else that is similar? "I think these are the same thing but this one is tight and this one is open at the end and missing parts down here." What do you think happened to this one to make it look this way? "I think a squirrel chewed it and pulled open these little parts." That's an interesting hypothesis. How do you know? Can you find evidence of that? We looked around for more pinecones but a swampy area forced us back onto the path and then we were distracted by following tracks. An unsolved mystery . . .

The final mystery we encountered was a group of footprints. What type of animal left these footprints? One set of sneaker prints was easily identified as human, but the other group of tracks was a slightly bigger challenge, especially for our first graders. Having just finished identifying some Mallards swimming nearby, one young child suggested "maybe a duck" had left the prints. Hmm. Let's think about the feet of a duck. What do a duck's feet look like? "They look a little like those flippers that we can put on our feet when we swim." Yes, the ducks have "webbed" feet to help them paddle in the water. Does this print look as if it was made by an animal with webbed feet? "No." Let's look carefully at the track. What do you notice? "There's a fat part down here and four round parts like toes up here." "In this one you can see some claw prints, too." Have you seen an animal in the park that has four toes and maybe also some claws? "Maybe it's a bear!" Have you seen bears in the park? "No." (Without a field guide to tracks (that's next on my list!) with which to show the children that bear tracks have five toes rather than four, I was forced to provide some information.) Unless it escaped from the zoo, it is very unlikely that this track was left by a bear. Bears do not live in our habitat. So is there another explanation for who might have left these tracks? Very soon our little band of naturalists concluded that we had evidence of a dog. In which direction do you think the dog was walking? How do you know? "Because these are the toes and the toes are at the front of the foot. The foot was facing that way." "We could also tell whether the animal walked on four legs or two." YES! We followed the tracks until they disappeared at a dry patch of ground.

Having used every last moment for exploration, I hurried the children (fast-walking and not Fox Walking) back to the bus. "Look! It's a squirrel!" urgently whispered one child, pointing at the mammal. We were due back at the bus, but I heeded Montessori's advice to "follow the child." They're interested in this, now. We can spare a few moments. We slowed our pace and Fox Walked incredibly close to the creature. As we watched, the squirrel bent over to pick up a pinecone. "Look, there's the proof! It's chewing on a pinecone. The mystery is solved! That's what happened to OUR pinecone!" excitedly breathed another child, as the squirrel gnawed on it like a corncob.

When we met the other Cooperative Investigation Teams at the bus, everyone was full of stories of discoveries. Wilderness Awareness School (and their book Coyote's Guide to Connecting with Nature) refers to this as "Story of the Day," one of the Core Routines of Nature Connection. By incorporating this as a conscious routine after an outdoor adventure, we not only celebrate and honor each child's experiences and individual discoveries, but we can stretch the thinking further by asking for details about their observations and explanations of their conclusions. "How do you know?" "What made you think that?" "Was there evidence for that?"

Our Nature Museum is now filled with mementos of our mysteries!

"If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder . . ., he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in."--Rachel Carson

Resources:
From Childhood to Adolescence by Maria Montessori
Coyote's Guide to Connecting with Nature by Jon Young, Ellen Haas, and Evan McGown
Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv

Other posts about "field work":
Scorpions & spiders & snakes! Oh, my!
Digging is fun
Meanwhile, back at the lab
#8 on the list
Holes
Soil science
On Uneven Ground
Into the Woods
Reclaiming the Field in Field Trip