So, last month I received this wonderful award from the North American Association for Environmental Education. What struck me was that for every project mentioned, I could think of at least a half dozen people who made it work. 

My North Carolina Certification in Environmental Education? Well that was inspired by my sister, Kitty, who pointed out to me that once my kids were grown, I would only have my career as a helping mom to fall back on. Yipes, that didn't sound promising.

EcoFest at Washington Elementary in Raleigh? I can still remember my good friend and co-chair, Melissa Zeph, saying that everytime I called her with another good idea, it just meant more work for her. 

The HOWL program at Wolftrap Elementary? It was great to head into classrooms and help children understand the complex issues of the environment, from designing the perfect seed package (how does Mother Nature get tree seeds to move away from the competition) to understanding the complex web of life in environments as diverse as streams, woodlands, deserts and oceans. It was, of course, the courage of Principal Anita Blain, who let us wander into the classrooms and, eventually, create some wonderful natural habitats at Wolftrap. The success of these gardens is due, in large part, to the artistic eye of Joanne Hardison, a superb naturalist and artist.

I was able to share my enthusiasm with some wonderful children, first at the Vienna Community Center and then at Meadowlark Botanical Gardens. Luke, Bryce, Michael, John Paul, Charlie, and Henry were my regulars, later joined by Lily, another Luke, Isabelle and Thomas. We'd meet once a week at Meadowlark and spend a couple of hours just discovering what was out there. No worm too ordinary nor ant too small to escape our fascination. Of course, it took their parents to loan me their children for a few hours once a week to play. And, without fail, I learned something new every week.

Now, I get to spend some time with the preschoolers at Epiphany Preschool in Vienna. It's easy to forget how wonderful little surprises like spiders crawling around, bugs cleaning their faces and birds can be when you haven't really spent time just looking. 

Of course, with these little ones, it's so wonderful that they have teachers willing to give them time just to look at nature up close. Sometimes we forget that a few minutes to watch and think are minutes well spent.

Then, there are the teachers themselves who learn new ways of providing lessons to their students. I've recently had the chance to work with teachers from Wesley Preschool in Vienna, and teachers at Ashland Elementary in Manassas. I come away from those trainings with a whole new bag of tricks, and the knowledge that their students will be learning about the world outside.

I visited my friends over at Epiphany Preschool yesterday. Every day, a different class spends the day outside learning about nature.

Today, I dropped in on the pre-kindergarten class.  Our first plan was to look at a bunch of tree cookies. But, a daddy longlegs appeared from under one of the cookies. Shrieks and scary human sounds filled the air. Then, when the little guy crawled on my sleeve, things got interesting. We talked about how spiders and other wild things don't really like screaming. 

Then one of my new friends, Alex, thought he would like to hold the spider. Does it tickle when it walks? Kind of.

Will it bite? It's mouth is kind of tiny so I don't know if it would be able to hurt much.

We were surprised to see that its legs were different lengths.

It didn't take long before everyone wanted to know what it was like to feel a spider crawling on their arm. 

Our spider put up with us for a long time before it finally dropped to the ground and headed for a cool dark place to hide.

All the kids felt very brave for having watched the spider crawl around and even crawl on each other.