In our conversation this week, Eileen Garcia-Sanchez told me about how they embrace the philosophy of risky play at the San Antonio Zoo preschool. She describes an old storm-beaten tree trunk on their campus, and what she does when a child gets to the top and wants to be lifted down: I’m not going to walk up to the...
Fox tracks and coyote tracks are really hard to tell apart – especially in the snow! For our Fun Fact in this week’s podcast, naturalist Claire Dobie described how she helps kids determine the difference. Want to find out yourself? Well, I won’t leak the secret here, but ur-ine luck! Make a pee-line – I mean, a...
On this week’s podcast, aquarist Jim DePompei describes a dance-like call and response technique they call the do-it-do-it at Cabrillo Marine Aquarium. Language educators have hit upon a similar strategy they call total physical response, but it needn’t be limited to the language classroom – I have used it teaching...
In our first podcast, educator Kady Yeomans described her work leading groups of kids on the floor of a large science museum. And the main sense I got from Kady was that she is always thinking about her audience – there are facts to deliver, sure, but there’s no lecture. Here’s how she put it, speaking from her...
In his memoir, E.O. Wilson writes of trying to lure a giant ray to the Florida seashore as a seven-year old boy. His parents were divorcing, so he had been sent to stay at a coastal boarding house. There, he spent long days alone, exploring the beaches and bays near Pensacola. After a brief glimpse of a huge ray off a...
Since we’re aiming to create community among informal educators here, it seems only natural that we should start by defining our terms: What is an informal educator, exactly? To start with some eliminations, we all intuitively know that a formal educator is the one in the classroom: your Grade 3 lead teacher, high...