Daisies Welcome The Spring

 

 

By Kendra Bobowick

“Spring is a time when you eat vegetables,” came the shout from a huddle of first-grade girls in Daisy Troop 50093. And, “Spring is when you eat candy.”

With pigtails bouncing behind them and pulling coats inside out in a rush to drop them on the grass, the girls scattered across Treadwell Park Tuesday trailing excited chatter. Free of her jacket and stopped for a moment, Lily van der Kroef associated the outdoors with approaching warmer weather, “I like to go swimming; I like that I don’t have to be home.”

With her back to the warming sun and throwing the first of spring’s shadows down the hill, Conservation Commission member Patricia Barkman smiled at one of her favorite signs of spring. “I love the sound of children laughing and playing.” With a tiny teddy bear, a bag full of compasses, books about wildlife, and an imagination filled with nature, Ms Barkman, fellow conservation members Mary Wilson, George Ferguson and Mary Kaley, Leon Barkman, troop members Fran Wong, Julie van der Kroef, and a group of parents packed as much springtime lessons, sights, and sounds as they could into the girl’s quick attention spans.

With a hike down a short trail to look beneath leaves and into the branches for blue jays and along the ground for the vernal pool, the Daisies hoped to earn a patch called “Spring is Here.” “I love getting the girls out into nature,” Ms Wong said.

Collecting the girls from their hurried dash in the sunlight, Ms Barkman spoke softly; the girls leaned closer or moved toward her to hear: “You have people here who are interested in nature. We protect open space for you and the future.” But the girls were more interested in the little bear.

Ms Kaley instructed, “Get in a circle. There are two rules …” Everyone must catch the bear. Each person can only touch it once. With palms face up and pressed together both girls and adults loosely formed a circle and tossed the bear from one set of waiting hands to another. “This is about solving problems — think, how can we do this faster?” They tightened the circle. They moved more quickly. They soon were passing the bear around the circle. The group eventually stepped toward the center until the girls’ fingertips touched.

Soon Mr Barkman was reaching into a bag: “The compass guides you to where the sun comes up. The compass guides you to where the sun goes down.” Staring into their palms, Ashleigh Thomas and Mee Mee Filan watched the red needle shimmer under the plastic. With an explanation from Ms Barkman, Matthew Menousek better understood what his compass was revealing. Alex Wong listened to Mr Barkman explain about north, south, east, and west.

“Which way is south?” asked Mary Wilson.

After the compasses, the girls tracked stuffed animals after Ms Barkman asked them to hold up to their eyes binoculars and monoculars (actually the inner cardboard from paper towels). Lauren Menousek watched carefully as Ms Barkman held a toy cardinal and mimicked its flight. After flipping through pages of a wildlife book and looking at the skull specimens of different small animals, the girls were ready for their nature walk. Among the first to get in line was Johanna Tartaglia, who had been interested in the images of flora and fauna in the book’s pages. Would she see anything like that as they walked?

“You have to be really quiet so you don’t scare the wildlife,” Ms Barkman whispered. “We’ll go now and identify oak leaves and smell some skunk cabbage.”

“Eeew,” many of the girls replied.