Out-and-Out Adventure : Nursery Nature Walks’ Family Fun Festival will make learning a stroll in the park for children.
Engaging in a scavenger hunt along a park trail, painting a mural using elements from nature as a paintbrush or using sticks and rocks to build trail signs. The lessons will be so subtle at Nursery Nature Walks’ first Family Fun Festival at Griffith Park that your children will be barely aware they are learning, event planners promise.
The festival, which will be Oct. 26, is designed to teach environmental awareness and outdoor skills to children up to age 10. At the center of the event is a trail that divides into two paths--one for children from 1 to 5, and a more challenging route for older kids. Craft activities steeped in nature will be set up at the base of the trail.
“Once kids get involved in school, they don’t get to the park or mountains as much and actually learn about being outdoors,” says Terri Ann Sullivan, a Nursery Nature Walks docent and board member. “We wanted to raise some awareness about the fun you can have outdoors.”
Children of all ages can paint a mural using such items as feathers, walnuts or sticks. They also will be able to decorate three simulated native trees with leaves they have embellished with pictures or words. “Since it’s fall, we decided to put some leaves back on the trees,” Sullivan says.
Younger children will use potato stamps to decorate bags they can use to carry “passports,” which will be handed out to everyone and include a map of the trail. The back of each passport also contains a nature lotto game with big pictures of what can be found on the trail, with descriptions in English and Spanish. “They will be out there as little nature detectives to see if they can find these things,” she says. They also can do leaf rubbings, decorate birdhouses and listen to a storyteller.
The activities for older children are related more to the trail, with educational stations planted along the path. At one, they can learn how to read trail signs found in national parks and use sticks and rocks to make their own trail markers. At others, they will learn to make knots that are useful outdoors, discover animal homes or make finger puppets out of acorn caps. Those involved in scouting will be able to work toward badges, but everyone who finishes the trail earns a visit to the “mission accomplished” table for a prize.
As many as 2,500 people are expected to attend the event, says Judy Burns, executive director of Nursery Nature Walks, which stages walks for the 5-and-under crowd almost daily around Los Angeles. “This enables kids to come out with their families and to do things on a more complex level,” she says. The money generated by the festival, which costs $5 a person, will help the Nature Walks program fund urban programs, train volunteers and rent buses. Food will be available from nearby vendors.
At the festival, a “playpen of tons of squishy leaves” also will be set up for younger children since there’s not much of an opportunity to play on a huge bed of leaves here, Sullivan says. “It sounds really good. I hope they let the adults go in too--maybe at the end of the day.”
BE THERE
Nursery Nature Walks’ Family Fun Festival, Griffith Park, off 4800 Crystal Springs Drive, near the Carousel, Los Angeles; Oct. 26, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. $5 per person. (310) 364-3591.
