Kids participate in Big Backyard program

Shaded by the forest's canopy, fifth-grader Troy Moran peered through a magnifying glass at the grayish-purplish lichen creeping up the side of a tree.

"It looks like seaweed," he declared, while three of his classmates crowded around. Each busily recorded their observations in stapled packets of papers.

Throughout the year, the fifth-graders at Estabrook Elementary School have walked through the school's playground and the adjoining conservation land to explore the natural world around them.

As part of the Big Backyard program, started at the school 10 years ago, students are given the opportunity to practice inquiry-based learning as they study plants and creatures living around the school.

"Instead of learning about it in the classroom, we get to see it. Instead of learning about animals and their hibernation, we get to see it. It's a better way of learning," said Matt Tambor, an Estabrook fifth-grader.

His classmate Pooja Kumar, 11, said the students look forward to Big Backyard excursions.

"I've learned something new every time we've been out. I've learned about the plants and animals," said Kumar, who started at Estabrook this year.

Prior to the recent walk through the school yard and woods, the students listened to a 20-minute presentation by parent volunteer Linda Arnow.

"Here in New England, we experience some of the most dramatic weather changes of anywhere in the world," she said. "... Today, we're looking for evidence of spring - creatures that may have returned, evidence that things have hatched and new growth."

While walking through the forest, volunteer Pat Magrath Abel, the parent of an Estabrook fifth-grader, stopped the group of four she was leading to give a short talk about skunk cabbage. She asked each student to pull a couple of leaves, rip them up and smell.

"Eww! It smells like skunk," squealed the two girls, while Moran and Tambor ripped leaves and remarked over the plant's look and smell.

Farther down the path, dotted with wooden planks to save people from trudging through the mud, the students stopped to examine turkey tails, a fungus growing on trees and fallen logs.

"I find that as they get older they're more comfortable expressing themselves. They seem to be generally interested," said Magrath Abel, a program volunteer of five years. "To be able to go out and explore nature and to have this nature in their own backyard, it's fantastic."

"My incentive for starting the program was I saw kids studying it (science) in class, and I looked outside and saw most of our elementary schools are surrounded by beautiful conservation land, woods and playgrounds. It seemed like the perfect connection," said Fran Ludwig, elementary curriculum specialist in science for Lexington Public Schools.

Each of Lexington's elementary schools has a Big Backyard Program. More than 400 volunteers, mostly parents, and 2,500 children currently participate in the program. Each grade takes as many as four walks a year.

Through the school district's membership in a regional educational collaborative, Ludwig was able to contact Bev Morrison, a Wellesley resident who started a similar program in the Wellesley district.

"Her (Morrison's) premise is to open kids' eyes, nose and ears so they become observers. That generates questions," Ludwig said.

In the beginning, Morrison, who designed each nature walk, provided training for the parent and community volunteers. The goal was to train parent leaders so they could eventually take over the program. Through the years, this has happened.

"I've had parents who have told me how much more fun it is to go out in the woods with their kids because they have learned so much," Ludwig said. "I think we really need this [program] because the kids get so far away from the Earth - they're watching TV or playing computer games. Many of them don't know where their food comes from or the relationship between plants and animals. That's really a life skill."

Morrison, who was recently honored with the "Secretary's Award for Excellence in Environmental Education for 2004" from state Secretary of Environmental Affairs Ellen Roy Herzfelder, hopes children learn to care about the world through the program.

"We're not focusing on teaching facts, we're focusing on the kids being self-learners - to be better stewards of the world, to keep on learning throughout their adult lives," said Morrison, who will retire form the Wellesley program next month. She has already retired from the Lexington program.

While the content of the program is similar at each school, the unique features of each school's surroundings are incorporated.

The Lexington Education Foundation provided initial funding when the program began at Estabrook. After LEF's support at several other elementary schools to assure program success, current funding is provided by the Lexington Public Schools for materials, printing and volunteer training.

If the upcoming Proposition 2 1/2 override fails, money for science supplies will be cut in half. Ludwig's position would also shift to a part-time position, leaving little time to devote to Big Backyard.

"It's one thing to be on a list of these cuts, it's another to see the impact," Ludwig said.

Throughout the years, Morrison has been impressed by the Lexington community's devotion and enthusiasm surrounding Big Backyard.

"They (the volunteers) don't have to know a lot of science to be a nature walk leader. They just have to be curious and that's one of the greatest things they can show kids - that they don't know everything and they want to keep on learning," Morrison said.

Trina Waters, a former Big Backyard parent coordinator at Fiske Elementary School, said the district is lucky to have the program.

"Her point of view (Morrison's) is to focus on what is right there and not to focus on the lions, tigers and bears," said Waters, who has science and research training. "It's the things kids might take for granted, but what the Big Backyard does is show them these little wonders."

As a parent volunteer, Waters has witnessed the children's excitement and sense of wonderment first-hand.

"It's just amazing to see," she said. "Their little eyes peer into what they're looking at. You know they've made the connection."