William Blake
"To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
An eternity in an hour."
When I was a child, I spent hours playing outside, in my yard, in the forest, at the beach or by a stream. I loved lying on my back in the grass looking at the sky, searching for wild strawberries and raspberries, and building castles out of sticks or sand. I believed in fairies and made shelters and left food out for them. I crawled through the unmowed grass of my neighbors yard imagining a whole world of tiny creatures living in this magical place. I put bread crumbs on the ground and sat quietly, waiting for birds to come and eat. Of all these memories, however, possibly the strongest is of my rollie pollie hospital.
In front of my house there was a patch of tiny white day lillies. On the ground of this patch were wooden nuggets. Under these nuggets there was a large community of rollie pollies, and I spent my days caring for them. I would search under the wood, finding hundreds of rollie pollies each day. I would pick one up, amazed at how it would roll into a ball in my hand. I found that if I sat holding the bug long enough, it would unroll and crawl across my hand and up my arm.
The rollie pollies were all different sizes. I found it easier to pick up the biggest ones without causing them any harm. I noticed that sometimes when I held a rollie pollie in my fist, I would find that hundreds of tiny rollie pollies would then be crawling in my hand when I opened it. I spent a lot of time, ten, looking carefully at the rollie pollies before holding them. I discovered that the rollie pollies that have white bellies were the ones that had the babies. That was the beginning of my rollie pollie hospital and birthing center.
The Audubon Nature Preschool
"Children are born naturalists. They explore the world with all of their senses, experiment in the environment, and communicate their discoveries to those around them."
