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Rediscovering My Sense of Wonder

By Louise Belmont-Skinner, Vice President of Exhibits, Chicago Children's Museum

In 1965, I was a teenager in New York City. For Christmas that year, my best girlfriend gave me a thin book, The Sense of Wonder, by the world-famous environmental activist Rachel Carson. The book is an intimate account of the authorís adventures along the coast and through the forests of Maine with her grandnephew Roger from the time he was ten months old. I recently thought about this book and the inscription my friend wrote on the first page: May your child experience the same wild freedom and exhilaration that this child did. Back then, I didnít know why one city kid would give another city kid a book about natureóor why we were even thinking about children. I did read the book, however, and have kept it all these years. Some of the lyrical passages must have imprinted on my teenaged brain, even while I wasnít sure if I identified more with the adult or the child in the book.

Twenty years later, my son Zachary was born in the middle of January in Chicago. It wasn't long before my husband, Steve, Zac and I started to explore the natural world as a threesome. One of my earliest memories of that time is carrying my son in a "snuggly" and waiting on the shore with my husband for the sun to rise above Lake Michigan on the first day of spring. Another 19 years have passed, and I realize that exploring nature with my child gave me as many memories and experiences as it gave Zac. If the objective of The Sense of Wonder is to encourage adults to help children develop their inborn sense of wonder, it certainly worked for me. If a child is to develop this sense, Carson believes, "he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in."
Here are a few simple tips extracted from this wonderful, ageless book:

• Don't worry if you don't know the names of plants or birds. Rachel Carson sincerely believed that for the adult seeking to guide the child, it is "not half so important to know as to feel."
• Use all your senses to discover new things as you walk with your child in the sand or a nearby park. Note the smell of freshly mowed grass, an approaching thunderstorm, or rain on hot sidewalks. More than any other, the sense of smell has the ability to evoke vivid memories.
• Help your child listen to the sounds around you. Carson wrote, "Hearing can be a source of...exquisite pleasure but it requires conscious cultivation. By suggestion and example, I believe children can be helped to hear the many voices about them. Take time to listen and talk about the voices of the earth and what they mean."
• Journey after dark into your backyard or local park to search, using flashlights, for insects that make sounds. Carson suggests that the adventure of hunting for these small musicians by flashlight can give both adults and children "a sense of the nightís mystery and beauty."
• Watch the moon rise with your child or grandchild from your back porch, rooftop deck, or a beach.
• Observe the patterns of migrating birds. Listen hard and discover if you can hear the birds even before you see them.
• Listen to the wind in a forest preserve or "around the corners of your apartment house."
• Invest in a magnifying glass. Perhaps because children are small, they delight in miniatures. "A lens-aided view into a patch of moss reveals a dense, tropical jungle in which insects, large as tigers, prowl amid strangely-formed trees."
• Remember to have fun! "Sharing...is based on having fun together rather than on teaching."

We all know the importance of instilling in our children such attributes as a love of learning and a respect for others. Childhood is also the time to discover the mystery, joy and excitement of the world we live in. The Sense of Wonder can inspire us to rediscover the world with our children at our sides.

© 2007 Chicago Children's Museum

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