Summer camp isn’t just for kids.

This week, 15 grandparents and their grandkids came to Severson Dells Nature Center for an outdoor adventure, and the chance to bond in nature. 

Creek sloshes, butterfly catching, pond mucking and scavenger hunts were among the activities that people from age 7 to 70 took part in.

One of our campers was Rockford Register Star Columnist Geri Nikolai, who grew up on a farm but hadn’t dipped her toes in a creek since she was in grade school. She wrote about the camp on the paper’s Website in a story, Camp reveals creepy — and fun — side of nature.

It wasn’t the first time I’d waded through a creek, but it’s been 50 years since the last time. And I would not have been there, except that granddaughter and I were at Severson’s grandparents/grandkids nature camp, and the 9-year-old insisted I go in the creek with her. I’m glad she did.

I had forgotten how cold the water feels in some spots, and warm in others where the sun is hitting it. How fun to maneuver over the rocky bottom and discover what’s living under the rocks. Our group found bugs, jellylike eggs, and two crawfish — one live and one dead.

For Geri and her granddaughter, fun was a byproduct; the camp had a purpose. Her granddaughter was afraid of the woods. See related video: Overcoming Fear of Deer

One reason I signed us up for this camp was my grandchildren’s fear of anything approaching wild. Last summer, when we were searching for 17-year cicadas at another forest preserve, 9-year-old refused to walk down a trail surrounded by woods. Bears, she shrieked.

At Severson, she walked down wooded paths with groups, found no dangerous animals, and let on that it was kind of pretty out there. She freaked when we discovered a snake in a downed tree, but later forgot about that as she entered prairie grass to net a butterfly.

Experience is a great way for kids to overcome fear. And there’s now better way to experience nature than with grandma, grandpa, or both.

Read Geri’s story:  Camp reveals creepy — and fun — side of nature.

Video

WTVO Stateline Green Visits
Camp-Peek-Into-Creek

e-Notes From the Dells

June 2008

Spread the word about Severson Dells to your people! Forward this newsletter by clicking the link at the bottom of this page.

  In this issue . . . . .

1. A World Class Butterfly Dude and A Top Shelf Author
2. Butterfly Hikin’ With the Pros
3. Kiddie Lit and Outdoor Discovery
4. What You’ve Missed in the Rock River Times
5. Whaddya Mean There’s Nothing to do Around Here?
6. Hall Creek Scamper: Run Green on July 26
7. What Kids Say About Nature
8. Leopold Project: Using A Sand County Almanac as a Curriculum Guide (Register by Sat.  June 21)
 

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   1. World Class Butterfly Dude & Top Shelf Author

Over the years some of the country’s greatest naturalists, conservationists, authors and artists have come to Severson Dells.

  We’ve got a double header you won’t want to miss: World renown butterfly expert Robert Michael Pyle and a Severson Dells’ favorite, writer extrordinaire Scott Russel Sanders.

Pyle’s Bio: http://www.xerces.org/Butterfly_Conservation/butterflyathon.html
Sanders Bio: http://www.scottrussellsanders.com/biog.html

They’ll be at the Nature Center on Friday, June 27 for a twin bill, starting at 6:30 p.m. The program is entitled The Extinction of Experience. IT’S FREE! Sponsored in memory of Dr. Alan Hutchcroft.

Scott will read from his forthcoming book, First Boy in the Woods.  

Bob is making a return trip, too, as he traverses North America on a quest to find as many of the 800 species of butterflies that call the continent home.  He’ll talk about how close daily involvement with nature is the only true antidote to alienation and what he calls “the extinction of experience.”

Then, they’ll lead a group discussion on how we can reconnect a society that has pushed nature away.

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    2. Butterfly Hikin’ With the Pros
  Note: These hikes are open to members only and there are fees. But they’ll be worth every penny!
To join, call (815) 335-2915. 

Come, be in the presence of butterfly greatness. Bob Pyle and Jim Wiker know Lepidoptera.  They want you to know butterflies, too. They’ll lead Severson Dells members on two separate hikes to discover our region’s flying jewels on Saturday, June 28.

Bob, is founder of the Xerces Society, a worldwide organization that  seeks to protect and conserve invertebrates. He is one of the top butterfly experts in the world. Jim wrote the book, literally, on Skippers of Illinois.    You won’t find a higher caliber nature walk this summer, if ever. So call and sign up.

Click here to learn more.

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3. Children’s Lit as Springboard to Outdoor Discovery 

If you read to a child, you need to join us this Sunday, June 22, to help make kid’s books truly come alive.   You’ll explore cross-cultural picture books and venture afield for activities suggested in the stories.

The workshop will be co-led by Mira Reisberg and Clifford Knapp.

Click here to learn more

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4. What You’ve Missed in the Rock River Times

Severson Dells staffers are writing weekly columns for the Rock River Times. Please pick up a copy of the paper, or buy an ad to support our work!  

The candied fable – by Don Miller My Weeds — by Brian Leaf The last float – by Don Miller Seeking a sense of place — by Don Miller The gift of nature education — by Brian Leaf

 

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Support Severson Dells: Shop at our Gift Store

Books, puzzles, jewelry, natural lotions and more. Proceeds support environmental education.

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5. Whaddya Mean There’s Nothing to Do Around Here?

June 2008
22: Using Children’s Literature as Springboards to Outdoor Discoveries, 1:00 pm
23-25: Grandparents and Kids Camp, 9:00 am
27: Extinction of Experience, featuring Robert Michael Pyle and Scott Russell Sanders, 6:30 pm
28: Butterflies in the Field with Robert Michael Pyle and Jim Wiker, 9:30 am and 1:30 pm.

July 2008
08-10: Nature Play for Little Kids, 9:00 am
12: Leopold Education Project, 8:30 am
22-24: Adventure Quest Camp
26: Hall Creek Scamper
26: In Flow With Nature’s Inspirations, 8:30 am
26: A Night of Music: Everybody Needs a River, 7:00 pm
27: Bats at the Beach (at Pec River FP), 7:00 pm

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6. Hall Creek Scamper: Run Green!

Come run with us on a trail race that’s more than just a romp through the woods. Hall Creek Scamper Race Director Stephanie Baliga has applied the 4 Rs — reduce, reuse, recycle and rethink — to this event. Her goal: Create a running event in a beautiful setting that minimizes waste and energy inputs.

So on July 26th, there’s a 5k open race, a 5k youth race and a 1 mile run-walk-scavenger hunt. In addition to individual awards, we’ll score the 5k races like a cross country meet, so get a few running pals together and compete as a team.

Register online now!

Race begins at 8 a.m. Register now as entries after July 23 will cost more.

There will also be a green expo where area businesses will display their environmentally friendly wares.
Someday, we hope this will become a template for other race directors to follow.

Click here for a video about the race (produced by Phil Pilcher of The Abilities Center).

Volunteers needed: Contact Stephanie at dellsgreenrun@gmail.com

Learn More About The Hall Creek Scamper.

We need a race director for 2009. Know anybody? dellsgreenrun@gmail.com

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7. What Kids Say About Nature   Do you remember seeing your first deer? Jasmine saw her first whitetail during a visit to Severson Dells.

Click here and she’ll tell you her story.

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  8. Leopold Project: Using A Sand County Almanac as a Curriculum Guide

When: Saturday, July 12, 8:30 am-3:30 pm

Where: Severson Dells Nature Center, 8786 Montague Road

For Whom: Teachers and Youth Leaders (Illinois teachers can earn 6 CPDUs!)

What: The Leopold Education Project is a curriculum that guides learning through direct observation of the natural world. Aldo Leopold’s book, A Sand County Almanac, forms the basis around which the curriculum is centered. Participants will receive a curriculum guide, a copy of A Sand County Almanac and a set of task cards.

How Much: $45 (Full Scholarships Available Through Winnebago County Pheasants Forever)

Instructors: Dr. Clifford Knapp, Professor Emeritus at NIU and Richard Benning, Severson Dells Nature Center.

Pre-registration is required. Deadline June 21. Call (815) 335-2915 to register.

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About Severson Dells Nature Center

What: Your link to the Natural World in Northern Illinois Where: 8786 Montague Road, Rockford, IL 61102 When: Open Mon.-Sat., 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m.; Sun., 1-4:30 p.m.
Call: (815) 335-2915
Write: info@seversondells.org

Severson Dells Nature Center is a 501(c)3 non profit organization. Our mission: To Link People to Nature Through Education.

We rely on donors to support our work. Click here now to show your support.

© Severson Dells Nature Center

 

This from Canada: Global trends indicate a looming environmental catastrophe, and engaging high school students through Internet social networks around the world may be the only hope.

High schoolers changing the world with Facebook, something most adults would have to ask, “What is Facebook?”

Social networking sites are powerful forces that are shaping students, our future leaders. Online communities are tying together millions of ordinary people, who will have to mobilize to lead government and industry down the paths of sustainability if it is to happen.

As trends show global consumption of seafood, steel, aluminum and other resources continuing to break records, the only real hope for a sustainable planet is for a grassroots global citizens’ movement unlike anything ever seen on the face of the Earth, according to a story by Stephen Leahy — Can Networking Teenagers Save the World?

Steve Chase, director of the Environmental Advocacy Program at Antioch University in New Hampshire, trains activists. Chase tells Leahy that students were a major force in civil rights and social justice movements. They will be a major force in creating a sustainable planet.

“High school students are my hope. They could save the world — after all they will inherit this world,” Chase said.

Governments at all levels along with individuals need to attack this problem with energy and determination, Chase says. But little will change without a global citizens’ movement, sparked in large part by teenagers deeply worried about the world they will inherit.

“We have just a few years left to do something about this,” he said.

Chase argues that social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace could be the vehicles that drive society away from consumerism, that it can help them overcome the $600 billion influence of advertising and its effect on popular culture that equates more and more stuff with good.

We hope Chase is right. We agree that today’s students will have to live the greenest lives of any modern generation as global economies compete for for limited resources.

And we hope that part of their coping is learning about nature to understand the plants, animals and ecosystems that sustain life on the planet.

How do we do that? Sengalese environmentalist and poet Baba Dioum gave us the formula in 1968, when he said:

“In the end we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand what we are taught.”

We’re teachers at Severson Dells. Nature is both the subject that the most pressing issue of the 21st century.

Learn about it.

Teach someone else what you know.

Share the love.

Get active.

Click here to become a Severson Dells Facebook friend. 

Join us 6:30 tonight (Friday, Sept. 14) at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Rockford, 1601 Parkview Ave., to learn all about butterflies and the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, a bird believed extinct for 60 years until it was reported in an Arkansas swamp three years ago.

Butterfly expert and author, and former Rockfordian, Alan Branhagen returns to talk about the adaptations that help defend, camouflage and make butterflies the beautiful creatures that they are.

Then, it’s Bobby Harrison, a Huntsville, Ala. college professor who for 33 years searched for the Ivory-billed woodpecker. In 2004, he and colleague Tim Gallagher made the first qualified sighting of the bird since 1944. Bobby will tell first had the story of this rediscovery and show an unpublished video of the bird that was taken in September 2004.

Harrison’s discovery is controversial in the birding world. He’ll discuss the controversy, current search efforts, and evidence of Ivory-bills in other states.

These programs are FREE, part of the Mysteries and Miracles of Nature program that continues through Saturday, Sept. 15.

The series is in memory of Dr. Alan Hutchcroft and David L. Burdick, and sponsored by the law office of Jim Black and Associates, The Abilities Center, Specialty Screw and Rockford Litho Center.

Students are headed back to college and this year they’re more likely to meet someone with suggestions on how to make their dorm room greener.

The Los Angeles Times reports that campus crusaders for green living hope to influence what dorm livers buy and how they go about their daily lives — Green goes to school; Students spread the word, and eco-friendly dorms arrive on campus.

The story says it is part of a much larger trend and that lies ahead for college living.

“Some schools have already built apartments with low-flow shower heads, low-VOC paints, carpeting made from reused materials, even solar-heated pools. Others lag behind. It’s one thing to install motion sensors that automatically turn off lights in a 40-year-old building; it’s another thing to construct a new hall with high-efficiency heating and cooling units that shut off when windows open.”

Going green isn’t a destination. It is a journey. People don’t become green overnight. They take incremental steps to become more responsible.

There are great tips on the web on how to make your dorm room greener. Do a google search using the words “green dorm room.”
Here’s how one Annie B. Bond, executive producer of Care2’s /Green Living Group, helped her daughter make her dorm room greener. Use these tips and green up your dorm life.
Old Paradigm: plastic water bottles
Easy Greening: tabletop filter; pretty stainless steel water bottle (find these online through a search engine)

Old Paradigm: plastic electric kettle
Easy Greening: stainless steel electric kettle

Old Paradigm: air freshener plug-ins
Easy Greening: natural air freshener using essential oils (or better yet, clean up the mess causing the odors)

Old Paradigm: scented candles made of paraffin and synthetic fragrance
Easy Greening: beeswax candles (these are natural air cleaners in their own right)

Old Paradigm: permanent press sheets made with polyester blend
Easy Greening: natural fiber, preferably organic

Old Paradigm: synthetic pillows
Easy Greening: pillow made with natural materials

Old Paradigm: polyester-filled comforter
Easy Greening: organic wool or organic cotton-filled duvet; wool or cotton blankets
Note: Buying a comforter like this is the big ticket item, but it will last a lifetime.

Old Paradigm: scented laundry detergent
Easy Greening: “Free and Clear” laundry detergent

Old Paradigm: fabric softener
Easy Greening: no fabric softener unless from a respected green brand such as Seventh Generation or Ecover

Old Paradigm: no education about energy use with laundry
Easy Greening: Give them 12 Laundry Tips for Maximum Energy Saving

Old Paradigm: plugs everywhere, no easy way to turn off electronics
Easy Greening: Take a power strip to attach all the sundry electronics *and* easily turn them all off to reduce phantom loads (electronic devices that keep running clocks, etc., even when the power switch is turned off).

Old Paradigm: lamps that use only incandescent light bulbs
Easy Greening: buy lamps that can accommodate compact fluorescents; switch existing lights in the dorm room to compact fluorescents.

Old Paradigm: halogens
Easy Greening: compact fluorescents (halogens can be a fire hazard)

Old Paradigm: not paying attention to the fields that electronics give off
Easy Greening: To avoid electromagnetic fields make sure that all transformers, such as the little black boxes, and digital alarm clocks and other electronic equipment is at least 6 feet from the sleeping area.

Old Paradigm: Bug sprays with DEET
Easy Greening: Herbal alternatives found in health food stores

Old Paradigm: not reading labels on personal care products
Easy Greening: Many body care products contain ingredients that can disrupt hormones and cause reproductive harm. Find safe brands and companies from this list:
http://www.ewg.org/reports/skindeep2/findings/index.php#companies

Old Paradigm: lindane-based shampoos for head lice
Easy Greening: Use a natural alternative to lindane for head lice and scabies, if they become a problem. (Lindane was banned by the EPA for agricultural crops in August, 2006, but use as a shampoo is regulated by the FDA and lindane has not yet been banned for this use.)

Old Paradigm: sodas with aspartame/Nutrisweet
Easy Greening: drinks with natural flavors

Old Paradigm: fragrance in body-care products
Easy Greening: naturally-scented or unscented products instead

Old Paradigm: regular coffee
Easy Greening: organic, fair trade coffee

Old Paradigm: no plants
Easy Greening: Top 10 house (dorm room) plants for cleaner air: /greenliving/top-ten-houseplants-for-cleaner-air.html

Old Paradigm: nothing
Easy Greening: salt lamps… crystalline salt is a natural air ionizer that boosts the negative ions in the air; an environment rich in negative ions has a wonderfully positive effect on your physical, emotional, mental, and even spiritual health.

Old Paradigm no attention to chi energy
Easy Greening: ; Feng Shui Your Bedroom; and you can always give the hint by offering How Clutter Affects You

Old Paradigm: paper plates and plastic utensils
Easy Greening: cheap metal kitchen ware, including bowls and plates

Old Paradigm: toxic all-purpose cleaner
Easy Greening: all-purpose cleaner from a respected green company such as Seventh Generation of Ecover

Old Paradigm: junk microwave food
Easy Greening: whole food snacks

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What do buffalo and bats have in common?

News stories featuring Severson Dells Nature Center.

On Friday, June 1, Rockford Register Star reporter Mike Wiser wrote about our most recent rain garden planting at Wesley Willows.

“Dozens of students from Montessori elementary school pounded the soil underneath their feet just like the herd of bison they were told to imitate.

But the kids were doing more than pretending to be animals. They were doing the work that herds of wild bison used to do across the Midwest prairie: pushing grass seed into soil so the seeds will one day germinate and grow.

The seeding — the students had spread seeds just moments before — and the stomping were part of a project to create a two-acre rain garden in an otherwise unusable section of the Wesley Willows retirement community property off of Rockton Road.”

Read more: willowsgarden.pdf

Our friends at Bird Freak Birding Blog also posted about the rain garden project. Thanks, Eddie!

On Saturday, June 2, Register Star reporter Rob Baxter spoke with Kathy Martinez about mosquito control.

There are larvicides that can be dropped into areas of standing water which kill the insects at various stages. Sprays, meanwhile, can be used by communities to treat larger areas. More natural controls are used at places like Severson Dells Forest Preserve.

“We have two bat houses and lots of natural habitat for bats,” said Kathy Martinez, educator at Severson Dells. “Bats are pretty adaptable. They can hide in any little crevice, under the bark in trees, in old bird nests.”

What’s significant about each little brown bat, Martinez said, is not always apparent to everyone. The creatures can eat up to 800 mosquitoes an hour.

Read more: bats.pdf