Nature Tag - Make Me One with Everything Version

Explorations in Ecology for Children and Their Adults: Transformative Adventures for All of Us

Note: For now, this blog is a serialization of a book titled Explorations in Ecology for Children and Their Adults: Transformative Adventures for All of Us. Here is the preface. The first adventure is Taking Education Outside

Introduction

In the Tree Tag version of Nature Tag, we introduced an engaging and exciting way to play tag and learn about trees. In that version, the  tagger (often an adult) calls out the name of a tree. The kids have to run to a tree of that type before the tagger catches them. I do everything I can to keep the game playful and haven’t tagged anyone in years. The kids either don’t notice or don’t care.  They just joyfully run through the woods touching trees getting to know them through their appearance, scents, touch, and names. The game is pure magic! The kids have a blast and enjoy helping each other find the type of tree in question. Less experienced kids learn from the more experienced kids as they follow them and listen to their hints. I often suggest that they look to see what trees are around them while they’re safe on base. This helps build a wonderful habit of locating themselves through the forest around them. More than once, I’ve paused the game because a group of kids became so enthralled by something happening on a “base” they were all touching. From discovering lichen and moss to ladybug eggs and larvae, they learn so much from just touching trees. My “teaching” comes in the form of answering their questions or helping them while they’re running around by offering “hints:” the manzanita are the ones with red bark or all the oaks have acorns now. In this adventure we expand this game of tag to include learning just about anything having to do with the natural world including how we really are one with everything in nature!

Activity

Adding the Names of Other Ecosystem Contributors to the Game: I introduce this activity after the kids have experienced the tree tag version of this game. The first expansion I usually do is adding other ecosystem contributor names along with tree names. When I add new names I start as general as possible and then make additional distinctions over time. For example, I might start by adding “flowering plants," then add different common genera, and then species within those genera (see We’re All Related for more information about taxonomic distinctions). Adding in the stories of these plants, such as whether they’re native or invasive, also brings additional learning opportunities. For geology, you can initially say “rocks” and then make the distinction between metamorphic, igneous, and sedimentary rocks. Animals are hard to include in a tag game but you can add animal signs like a gopher hole or a pine cone that’s been partially eaten by a squirrel. We are not fans of asking kids to memorize the names of things. We do recognize that one of the first steps of forming a relationship with another being is to learn their name and link that name to their appearance. The more they hear the names and how they relate to what they do know, like comparing blueberries and manzanita berries or noting how big the rose family is, allows them to relate all the more! This game is a way to learn the names and appearance of ecosystem contributors in a way that is playful and rich and at their own pace!

Adding Botanical and Mycological Adjectives to the Game: There are lots of botanical terms that describe different kinds of plants including: perennial, annual, evergreen, deciduous, and herbaceous. Terms that describe different kinds of mushrooms include gilled, capped, and shelf. Knowing these terms is useful for lots of activities including identifying plants and fungi. You can introduce one or two of these terms each time you meet with kids and add them to the game.

Adding Patterns to the Game: In the Patterns that Connect adventure, we mentioned that one way to support children learning about patterns that connect is to use patterns in place of tree names when playing nature tag. For example, call out tubes, fibers, waves, or spirals and watch the kids run around looking for those patterns. See the Patterns that Connect adventure for more examples and information about patterns that connect.

Adding Ecosystem Roles to the Game: One way that ecologists classify ecosystem contributors including plants, animals, and fungi is where they get their energy from. Producers (mostly plants) get their energy from the sun and produce their own energy storage molecules. Consumers get their energy by consuming live organisms. Primary consumers eat the producers. Secondary consumers eat primary consumers. Some ecosystems have tertiary consumers that eat both primary and secondary consumers and some even quaternary consumers that eat primary, secondary, and tertiary consumers. Decomposers get their energy from eating formerly living material. All plants are producers (along with some microorganisms) so they’re easy to add to the game. It also should be easy for kids to find consumers as many insects fit that bill. I don’t usually separate primary and secondary consumers when playing nature tag. Decomposers should also be relatively easy to find including fungal mycelium, insects, other arthropods and their larva, and worms feeding on decaying wood. Until these words become recognizable to the kids, I’ll usually shout out something like “producers: beings that get their energy from the sun.”

Adding Needs and Contributions to the Game: As we discuss in some detail in the Nature Science Stuff section of the Observing Closed Loops in Nature adventure, there is no waste in ecosystems. Every organism’s needs are provided for by ecosystem contributors (including the sun) and every contribution put out into the ecosystem fulfills a need of some participant within that system. I usually introduce needs and contributions starting with basic needs like air, water,  food, and shelter. I’ll call out things like: provides food for Monarchs; gets food from plants; provides shelter for a burrowing creature; provides food for animals; and gets food from other animals. 

You can also include proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, and nucleic acids as needs and contributions in the game. They are the four main types of biological macromolecules (i.e., big molecules). The first hint that I give to kids about these substances is that they play a central role and are present in all living beings. Then I’ll call out something like, find something that needs carbohydrates. If they start running around looking for something, I’ll remind them that they need carbohydrates and they can just put their hand on themselves! They get a kick out of that. When we’re starting to explore energy use and material cycles at a finer grain size, I’ll start calling out: things that need oxygen from the atmosphere; gets its energy from the sun; contribute carbon dioxide to the atmosphere; and gets energy from eating plant sugars.

The moral that kids come to understand from this and other experiences in the forest is that we all contribute to and have our needs met within our ecosystem. We are all so interdependent with each other with our ecosystems that we each truly are one with everything!

Stuff That Has Other Stuff in It: Sometimes I shout out things like, “find something that has carbon in it”” With few exceptions, this is the same as calling out: needs carbon. It’s mostly just a different way to think about things that highlights that We’re All Made of the Same Stuff.

Adding Other Stuff to the Game: And, of course, you can add anything else you come up with to the game. For example, after doing some of the activities described in the Observing Relationships in Nature adventure, I add plant guilds to the list of things I might call out along with things like a contributor growing on or under another ecosystem contributor. Please let us know in the comments of things you add when you play this game!

Some Nature Science

Since this adventure is about how we can support kids learning about almost everything in nature in a way that feels very natural, it seems natural to share the big ideas that we use to organize how we think about science. Instead of organizing science content into the traditional subdomains of physics, chemistry, biology, and Earth science, we think of all of that content being organized around the following big ideas.

We are all remarkably similar to each other. All living beings are formed from similar materials, use energy to do similar life actions, and maintain homeostasis until we don’t. Cycles (life cycles, seasonal cycles, material cycling, feedback loops), synthesis and decomposition, and complex dances of interdependence are critical in maintaining homeostasis.

We are all remarkably different from each other. Living systems, at all levels, from cells to ecosystems, are formed from entities that have varying structures and functions. The functioning of living systems emerges from the coming together of those diverse entities.  

We are all in this together as members of a global ecosystem. Like all living and nonliving (i.e., abiotic) features of ecosystems, humans are ecosystem contributors. We all give and receive matter, energy, and information from each other and thus directly or indirectly interrelate and are interdependent. We humans of the global north must relearn how to benefit rather than harm each other and poison our environment.

It’s all about relationships! Both living and nonliving things exist in relationship to each other. Things have both spatial relationships with other things (e.g., under, over, next to, connected) and material exchange (e.g., chemical) relationships with each other (e.g., getting carbon dioxide from and giving carbohydrates to). Many chemical and physical relationships depend on spatial proximity (i.e., closeness).  Systems are formed from things in relationship to each other that act together. Patterns that connect are common repeating relationships.

Relationships in ecosystems tend to minimize harm. Many material exchange relationships in ecosystems are mutually beneficial. Those that aren’t including competitive, consumptive, predatory, and parasitic relationships, tend to minimize harm.

Educational Ideas

Learning by Repetition: In this adventure, we introduced a game that can help young people learn the names of things in nature, the kinds of relationships in their ecosystems, and how ecosystems in general work in a very playful way. This is another demonstration of synthesizing a factory-like pattern, in this case, repetition of an activity, with a forest-like pattern, creates opportunistic learning as we wander the forest.

Learning by Following: In this game the kids learn so much by imitating the behaviors of others with more experience than them with a little bit of help from a supervising older expert.  This synthesizes the kind of learning from others that happens naturally in forests with more directed factory-style learning.

The Role of Play in Learning: Many educators write about the importance of free-play for children. I absolutely agree. Free play and freedom in general is a critical learning activity and I leave lots of time for it in all my sessions. And, playful guided activities are also important. This is another synthesis of factory and forest-like activity.

Synthesizing Teacher Led Versus Student Led Into Shared Control: Mechanical systems act in ways that are prescribed by others. In factory-like learning environments, the actions of students, teachers, and even administrators are largely prescribed by others. In forests, organisms act in response to their environments as they seek to fulfill their own needs. Student-directed learning, free schools, Freire’s Popular Education, and the unschooling movement all emphasize the kind of internal control that typifies the activity of beings in ecosystems. Some learning environments clump these ways of being together in separate chunks of teacher-led and student-led activities.  In ecological learning environments that synthesize these two patterns, educators mediate between their goals of supporting children becoming ecological and children’s interests and needs while all participants have lots of opportunity to self-determine, self-regulate, and participate in shared decision-making, and self-governance. These learning environments and communities are agreement-based and non-coercive. In many such learning environments, all major decisions are made during whole-group meetings.

Wrap Up

Nature tag is an activity that encompasses so much in so many ways: it’s fun; you can go as deep as the kids want; kids learn so much from each other; it’s playful! In the preface to this blog series, we boldly stated that the best thing we can do for our children is to help them live ecological lives. We also suggested that living ecologically is more than being kind to our ecosystems. Living ecologically starts with being aware that we’re all in this together with our fellow travelers in our shared home. It grows with knowing the contributors and relationships within our local eco-, social, and technological systems and understanding the traditional and modern views of how ecological, technological, and social systems function. This knowledge empowers us to truly act ecologically because we understand that living ecologically means forming caring, mutually beneficial relationships with ourselves, others, and our Natural World. These kinds of relationships minimize harm and enable us to contribute to and obtain value from our human communities and ecosystem at home and in nature. While we adults can use nature tag to support children learning so much of what we’d like them to learn, it is, of course, only one of many ways we can support their learning in the forest. We often play the game for ten or fifteen minutes at some point during our get-togethers. We encourage you to try this game out and to explore others shared in other chapters.