Finding a name for someone or something is a remarkable thought process. How can we capture the essence of something?

I was inspired to write this post after reading Don’t Call Me “That Blogger from Kansas” and I want to share a part of our woods.

Children love to give places names and “my kids” have a name for everything.  What’s nice about this is that I know they have a connection to the places they play. When we give something a name it becomes a part of us.

I remember when my son was nursing, he played with a freckle on my inner  arm. I am sure in his mind he had a name for it.

As  he got older and connected to the surroundings of the house, he gave people, places, and things names.

Now, he is an adventurer- a skill I encourage- and he has begun to name our local geography- namely the trees. And here’s what he calls them:

The Party Tree: This is where birthdays and tea parties take place. It’s also where we feed our birds. The stones on the ground are sometimes used as a fire pit for cooking.

The Climbing Tree: For obvious reasons, this tree is affectionately called by it’s name. It sometimes serves as a bus stop or train station for folks coming to the Party Tree since it’s just across the yard.

The Monkey Tree: Rhode Island monkeys actually climb on pine trees! This tree is a little further from the house and involves trekking up and down a knoll.  It’s a big beautiful pine tree where we love to monkey around.

The Playing Tree:  It was the first tree he really connected to and the first he named.  We spend many hours each week playing here, laying on the tree, appreciating the roughness of the bark and the softness of the pine needles.

Through this naming, my son and his friends are learning geography and the spacial relationship between places that are important to them.  Places without which they feel they cannot survive.

The child(ren) is/are able to navigate from one tree to the next totally independent of me and without direction. It has fertilized their confidence and security and confirms they are part of nature and nature is part of them.

This, after all, is the point of all the nature play stuff. So take time to name the places you visit. Simple, straight forward names given by the children can lead to extraordinary learning.

And it’s useful, I know if push comes to shove- for instance, a fire in the house- I can tell all the kids to go to the playing tree and they will know exactly what to do. They have named their own independence.

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