Natural Wonders : Even in Urban L.A., Kids Can Learn to Bond With the Earth

Alain Norte is a 7-year-old paleontologist who lives in East Los Angeles.

He received his calling half a lifetime ago after observing paleontologists at the La Brea Tar Pits’ Page Museum.

“He’s been digging ever since,” says his mother, Consuelo Norte. First it was Bam Bam, the family cat. The gray tom died years before Alain was born, but he knew the cat was interred some where in the back yard, so he got out his shovel.

“He was ruining my plants,” says Norte, describing her pockmarked lawn. “I told my husband to tell him where the cat was. But Alain wanted to be a true paleontologist and find it on his own.”

Now, sighs his mother, “he wants to turn his room into a natural history museum.”

Lee and Nancy Redmond say stray raccoons, possums, coyotes, bobcats and snakes that frequent their Hollywood Hills doorstep offer great naturalist learning experiences.

“When I find a salamander under the wet leaves, I almost always show it to the kids,” says Lee Redmond, father of Sara, 5, and Kathleen, 8.

“They’re interested in anything new and different. It’s a good way to learn about local species.”

Bonding with nature can change children forever, say parents who hunt down outdoor experiences for their kids. Approaches vary--from reading aloud from a dinosaur book to catching snowflakes amid the quiet of a winter forest.

And in even in the concrete jungles of Southern California, nature experiences abound.

“I’m amazed you can walk down 3rd Street in West L.A. where we live and see rows of carob trees,” says Amy Grabarsky, mother of Annie, 8, and Todd, 7. “But most kids--and adults--don’t pay attention or even see the trees. I like to identify plants on a trail.”

Children who commune with nature have “a sense of being alive that stays with them as adults--nature remains a refuge to turn to when all else fails,” says educator Joseph Cornell, author of such popular activity books as “Sharing Nature With Children.”

“Kids love surprise and discovery; that’s what nature offers,” he says.

The biggest mistake parents make, say experts, is to assume their children have sparse knowledge of the outdoors.

“Young kids seem to understand that rocks are brown or gray for no crucial reason--but that cardinals are red for a good reason,” says Frank Keil, professor of psychology at Cornell University. “They understand why roses need thorns. They’re spontaneous little scientists and observers who don’t always need an adult alongside them to explain it all.”

Some parents, however, discover that “kids know more about what’s happening in the disappearing tropical rain forest than they know (about) the indigenous plants in their own back yard,” says Grabarsky. “What’s great about L.A. is you don’t have to go so far away to be in nature.”

Within Los Angeles, Griffith Park--at 4,400 acres--is one of the largest urban parks in the United States. Farther out, miles of coast line, more than 4 million acres of national forest and 25 million acres of desert are all within a 1 1/2-hour drive.

The key to finding deeper nature experiences involves going to “where there are no telephone wires,” Grabarsky says.

“In the city, my kids know we have to keep an eye out for each other because anything can happen,” she says. “When we camp in Yosemite, they know it’s OK to run far away. I think that gives them a limitless, free feeling.”

Says Todd Grabarsky: “I like it when I’m going up a mountain--for days it seems like--and then suddenly I see the view on the other side. I’m really out there alone. You either feel like you’re someone real big or someone real small--I guess because there’s no one else around.”

Cognitive development experts say kids are interested in different nature experiences at different ages.

Keil says children love to classify objects when their reasoning skills appear, a period that begins about age 6 or 7, Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget discovered.

During that shift in awareness, children often become transfixed with just how far the sun is from the Earth--or how many bones are found in a cat’s skeleton.

Using anatomy books, for example, Alain Norte discovered that cats have 244 bones.

And after Alain reassembled his prized cat skeleton, his parents realized that the project furthered their son’s artistic leanings. Indeed, experts have seen a connection between an early interest in nature and creativity. (Children’s illustrator Beatrix Potter regularly dissected, examined and drew frogs, insects and other creatures found in her Middlesex England neighborhood’s woods and streams.)

“There’s a certain balance and perspective you get from observing bodies and bones,” says Norte, adding that her son has since begun drawing and also pores over acetate sketches of the human anatomy in the encyclopedia. “He’s developing a keen eye. He can do nothing else but imitate what he sees and handles.”

At the Los Angeles Natural History museum, children often gravitate toward activities that involve observation--like the “Track, Scat and Habitat” trail walks, says museum educator Ann Morrissey.

“They learn to identify animal tracks and smell or hear other animal details,” says Morrissey. “They love the surprise that simple looking offers. It’s a matter of honing perception skills.

“There’s a definite hunger for nature education. Both parents and kids want to learn. And they want to spend time with their kids doing it--not just dropping them off at another place for the weekend.”

Lee Redmond says he takes his daughters to Sea World, zoos and museums, “but we found there’s more to learn about nature when you see the real thing--like on a whale watch. Seeing whales in their real environment leaves much more of an impression than watching them do tricks in a tank.”

Other parents seek out education geared around a naturalist-theme school, like Pacific Oaks Children’s School in Pasadena, which Alain Norte and his brother Gian, 4, attend.

Children often hike down to the bordering Arroyo Seco for nature walks; many of the elementary school classes are held outdoors.

“I think most classrooms are created to contain passion and emotions--it’s all about management,” says master teacher Dorothy Garcia. “Here, we feel a lot of energy bouncing around; we take the activity outside where it can be processed, either in a game or just by letting the kids run free.

“When I see a child who doesn’t get any outdoor experiences, I view them as having a large part of themselves missing.”

Keil believes children learn more from natural environments than from man-made ones. “In a Berkeley study years ago, rats were put in scaled-down amusement parks jammed with whizzing Ferris wheels and bumper cars, but they learned no more--and often less--than in their natural burrows,” he says.

“My guess is that it’s the same for kids--a quiet woods or a rushing stream will stimulate them more than Nintendo. We’ve evolved through a natural system, and that’s how we learn best.”

Lee Redmond says he’s noticed an increasing amount of “environmental sophistication” among his daughters, who can rattle off dinosaur extinction theories and facts about recycling.

Such savvy often begins in the elementary classroom, says Arie Korporaal, science consultant for the Los Angeles County Office of Education.

Although children adopt entire rain forests for school projects and “know each dinosaur’s name,” says Korporaal, “what do they end up with? Lots of names.”

Korporaal hopes the trend will fade as schools take “a more integrated thematic approach--like the idea of interdependence among all living things. There’s now an effort to reach a depth of understanding of nature with kids.”

Whether in the classroom or outdoors, Cornell says, there’s always a way to teach nature--even in Los Angeles.

“I have friends who lead nature walks for kids at inner-city supermarkets,” he says. “They stroll through the produce section, then stop and hold up a carrot and say, ‘This is a carrot. It’s a root crop. It didn’t come from Safeway. It came from the ground.’ ”