Posted by Sue Landsman on Aug.04, 2009

ⓒ iStockPhoto - agaima

With the incidence of Lyme disease on the rise, it’s hard to get excited about taking the kids for a hike, especially if you’re aware of how to prevent tick bites to begin with. Getting all your kids to wear long pants, tuck their pants into their socks (never mind *find* their socks), and submit to thorough bug-spraying is enough to make any mom give up and opt for a margarita on the patio instead of much needed family nature awareness.

One thing you can do to get your children outside and learning about nature without full-body protection is to create a family roadside herbarium. A herbarium is a collection of preserved plant specimens, either bound together in a scrapbook or mounted on the wall in display frames. You can find a huge variety of plants to clip and preserve just by walking along well-paved roadsides with a plastic bag and a plant identification guide. You don’t need to go hiking through the woods to start out a magnificent collection.

What you’ll do is snip samples of the plants you’ve found, making sure to cut a plant only when there are plenty more plants of that kind in the area, or if the plant won’t miss what you trim off of it. At home, have a plant press ready. You can buy these, or you can make your own. You can also use an old phone book to press the plants you collect, but if you do this make sure that you decorate the outside of the book so that you don’t end up with a green mess on your floor because someone wants to order Chinese food. Dry the plants in your press and then either glue them to paper or place them in a “magnetic” photo album.

Depending on how old your children are, you can focus on the plant identification first, or leave it till later. You can help a small child become aware of the differences between plants without spending ten minutes at each plant determining genus and species. Older children might like the competition of seeing who can identify a plant first. Before you touch anything, be aware of the poisonous plants of your area–you may just want to draw those rather than picking them and suffering the consequences.

If you do get in trouble with poison ivy, oak or sumac, check out Summer First Aid for Your Family for natural remedies.

Not all plant-identification books are equal. Many of them will leave you feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of green things with leaves. Others will not have what you’re looking for, because they don’t include “weeds.” Most of these books will be too difficult for children to navigate. Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide, by Lawrence Newcomb is a must-have and will guarantee at least some success. Rather than trying to pick your plant out of a lineup of hundreds of others, this book has you asking yourselves key questions about your plant in an effort to narrow down what it could be.

If you’re a beginner, Newcomb can help you learn how to look at plants and tell them apart, which is a satisfying skill even the youngest child can appreciate. Pick any plant, and ask Newcomb’s key questions. If the plant has flowers, is the flower symmetrical, irregular like a lily, or can you not even tell what the flower parts are? If it’s symmetrical, how many petals or parts does it have? Putting the flowers aside, is the plant a wildflower, a shrub, or a vine? If it’s a wildflower, does it have leaves? Are the leaves all at the base of the plant? If they go up the plant, are the leaves opposite each other, or do they alternate along the stem? What do the leaves look like — are they smooth, toothed, or do they divide or have lobes?

Once you’ve navigated Newcomb’s system once or twice, you’ll be amazed how easy it is to use. Try it first on something you can clearly identify, like a dandelion or a plant you’ve bought from the nursery. Young children can help you with this, and even if they only have the patience to help you identify one or two other plants, they’ll learn a lot.

When the plants come out of the plant press, they will be brittle. Children can help write the name of the plant and where it was collected on a little card and help you place your plants into your journals or frames. This is a great project for an older child, and perfect for those days in late summer when the kids want to stay inside where it’s air conditioned.

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Posted under GDM Kids, Tweens, Teens, Home Environment, Organic Garden.