Where Am I Going To?

My own kids are obsessed with the soundtrack from the musical, Evita. We recently found a vintage vinyl recording of the Broadway show with Pattie Lapone and one song is stuck in my head. The plaintive refrain from "Hello and Good-bye," is "Where am I going to?" The subtext is kind of complicated and a bit adult and I've spent some time discussing all this with my twelve-year-olds, but that question, "Where am I going to?" reminds me so much of my work with young kids.

Dodge kids go outside every day, and most days we "go for a hike" together in smaller groups-- usually one teacher and six kids (a great, and unusual in early childhood ed, ratio, by the way). We often hear the same question, "Where are we going?" To which teachers often respond, "Where do you want to go?" This is a big question, in both literal and figurative ways-- Dodge is a big place and deciding about all sorts of things is a big job, but it gets easier to answer this question as the year progresses. Kids get to know Dodge Nature Center in a variety of ways. They learn about our playground, and then our immediate trails, and then those that are farther afield, and they also spend time navigating less trammelled wilderness, off the trail.

Each time a child traverses familiar and new terrain, they are growing and changing. They notice different things and use their bodies in different ways. This fall, I am particularly struck, not only by the kids growing abilities to navigate and understand where they are  relative to other spots around the Nature Center, but by how their hiking experience changes when we leave the trail for uncharted territory.

All the hiking they do, creating physical pathways through space and time, accruing experiences, not only develops childrens' muscles and coordination, it helps children establish and strengthen physical pathways in their brains, connecting hemispheres and helping the various parts of the brain integrate and function faster and better. When children spend time hiking trails, we see signs of growth and development in these areas:

-control and regulation of their bodies (physical)
-control and regulation of feelings (emotional)
-forging connections and building attachments with place and peers (emotional & social)
-awareness of spacial relationships, emerging mapping skills (math)
-memory, recall, association and building context (general cognition)
-noting, interpreting and documenting experiences with teachers and peers (literacy)

When children leave the trail to explore, following fresh deer tracks in the snow, for instance, they lose familiar way markers and references and their focus changes. Kids hiking on a very familiar trail tend to run (if the snow isn't too deep) or chat away with each other in a pack. Kids going off trail, through trickier terrain, tend to fall into single-file, following a leader.  The physical challenges are greater, and their focus moves outward to their surroundings. There is less chatting and no running. Chatting and running are, of course, great things to do, but going off trail seems to heighten the child's powers of observation in stunning ways. Kids become more aware of their own physical bodies as they negotiate thick foliage, pokey stuff, burs or fallen logs. They also become much more aware of their surroundings and they seem to notice much more minute details.

After the first snow, I set out with a small hiking group. Their bodies were a little disorganized and they were playing a game of bumping and pushing. I elected to try a session of Dodge wrestling, but kids quickly abandoned that project. Someone started complaining about cold feet and another child didn't like the bunchiness of her new snow pants. With a measure of desperation, I drew their attention to a big deer track. I worked up a lot of enthusiasm about the track and said I thought it must belong to the big, goofy buck--Mr.Buck--we'd seen lately. A boy perked up, "Mr. Buck?  He made you almost pee your pants!  Remember!  Where'd he go?" I looked around, "Well, I dunno, but he must be around here somewhere!" Then my little friend with cold feet took the bait, "How do we find him?" I threw up my hands, "I dunno!  Where should we look?" "Follow his tracks!" said the boy. "That sure was funny when he surprised you. I told my dad you almost peed your pants!" Cold Feet said, "He went this way." And off we went, following her through the raspberry canes, across the frozen stream and under the pines.

On and on we went. I kept asking, "Where are we?" and "Which way is the classroom?" or "Where is the Lab?" I wasn't lost of course, but I wanted to know what they were thinking, what they were seeing. Kids looked back the way we had come. Wheels turning, they looked around, searching for something familiar. "I see something up ahead." Turned out to be a familiar bench and I watched and listened as the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. "We're close to the drinking fountain." "The Lab!" "And that's were the letters are." We nearly lost Mr. Buck's tracks when we crossed other deer tracks and kids had to discern the difference between Mr. Buck's tracks and the others. We followed him through the marsh and its long, tricky grass. We saw tiny, frozen mushrooms, and even smaller frozen fungus. Kids noticed that the old puffballs had lost their puff. We heard crows and speculated about owls. We saw chickadees and a cardinal. We followed Mr. Buck through many kid tracks and then over dead trees. Kids spotted buck scrapes and then we wound our way through a dense stand of burdock and out, across the Farm Road. We tracked Mr. Buck through the little orchard and the kids talked about the lack of apples. We followed Mr. Buck's tracks to the edge of the prairie and then we stopped. Someone said, "He went in the prairie." By then we were far from school and needed to budget time to get back to base camp. "How should we go back?" "Let's follow our own tracks," said Cold Feet. And so we retraced our steps, following Cold Feet, all the way back to the bridge where we began our tracking adventure. The kids seemed to feel puffed up and powerful, elated with a sense of victory. "We made it!" Nobody was complaining and everybody had something to say. "That was a big adventure." "We went far." "Mr. Buck went far.  He's hiding." "Those burs were tricky." "Next time we play on the ice some more."  "Next time we follow another deer!" said Cold Feet.