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I chose to listened to the nature podcast from BBC Earth. The topic this week is how science can help cannabis growers and the legislations around it. The researchers head over to a cannabis industry in Canada, the 2nd country to legalize it.

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Welcome back to the Nature Podcast. This week, we've got four-and-twenty ways science could help a budding industry...
Host: Noah Baker
And a potted history of the Sun. I'm Noah Baker.
Host: Shamini Bundell
And I'm Shamini Bundell.

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Host: Noah Baker
Around the world, more and more governments are relaxing legislation on the use of cannabis both for medical and recreational purposes. But how much do we know about how to grow this formally black-market crop? To find out, reporter Elie Dolgin headed over to a cannabis factory in Canada, only the second country in the world to legalise the stuff. His goal - to find out how science could help.
Interviewer: Elie Dolgin
In a suburban Toronto strip mall, past the barbed wire fence and layers of electronic security, sit rows upon rows of cannabis plants. Welcome to TerrAscend, one of 129 licensed cannabis producers in Canada. Ari Unterman, the company's Head of Business Development, shows me around.
Interviewee: Ari Unterman
The first room we're going to is our mother and veg room.
Interviewer: Elie Dolgin
This is where the company keeps its stocks of different cannabis plants. The varieties each have distinctive names like 'CBD God Bud' and 'Shishkaberry'.
Interviewee: Ari Unterman
The yield on the Shiskaberry is about 15% better than the CBD God Bud, but as we grow there's more time for learning the right food recipe, lights, environmental controls, amount of time in each phase, etc.
Interviewer: Elie Dolgin
Those aren't the only scientific studies happening here at TerrAscend. A few months ago, the company teamed up with a few local academics to run a series of experiments altering the plants' genetics. One of those academics, Shelley Lumba from the University of Toronto, normally studies a parasitic plant called 'witchweed'. But with cannabis getting legalised, she jumped on the chance to study a different kind of weed instead.
Interviewee: Shelley Lumba
This is a natural place for us to try to maximise our skills into a commercial plant.
Interviewer: Elie Dolgin
She and her team are now exposing cannabis seeds to chemical mutagens and looking for DNA changes that benefit the plant in some way. Those mutations may confer disease resistance or they might yield chemical profiles that are better for patients. It's a fairly basic experiment but one that could have a huge impact for an industry that has lacked a solid scientific foundation.
Interviewee: Mike Dixon
The industry struggles mightily for just real information, reliable information.
Interviewer: Elie Dolgin
Mike Dixon is a plant scientist at the University of Guelph, home to the largest agricultural college in Canada. He laments the fact that many growers continue to operate as they've always done, cultivating cannabis in much the same way as they did in basements and warehouses during the plants black market days.
Interviewee: Mike Dixon
They're basing a lot of what they do on what they know, which is not founded in sound scientific principles and some of it is just remarkably silly.
Interviewer: Elie Dolgin
That's beginning to change though because of the global trend towards legalisation, and nowhere is there more money and opportunity for cannabis science than in Canada where starting on October 17th the plant will legal for all medical and recreational purposes. Legalisation has bought with it government support and financial services both of which, says Shelley Lumba, put the country in a very unique position.
Interviewee: Shelley Lumba
Canada is perfectly situated to be pretty much a driving force when it comes to research and development for cannabis.
Interviewer: Elie Dolgin
The goal for scientists and companies alike is to produce high quality, industrial grade cannabis that is consistent from plant to plant. This should ensure patients get the same dose from one cannabis prescription to the next, and that recreational users know what they're putting in their bodies. Some researchers like Lumba are focused on meeting these goals through breeding and genetics, but others like Dixon think that here are better places to focus their scientific efforts.
Interviewee: Mike Dixon
We can take genetics and blow it out of the water.
Interviewer: Elie Dolgin
For the past 20 years, Dixon has worked with the Canadian Space Agency to develop systems for growing food on other planets. Now, he's applying some of those same technologies to cannabis, starting with fine-tuning the lighting conditions.
Interviewee: Mike Dixon
The spectral quality of the light is imperative. You really do have to figure out what the physiological response of the plant is to this colour because it's different than it is to that colour, and the implications in interpreting the medical benefits are profound.
Interviewer: Elie Dolgin
In addition to light, Dixon is also testing how best to modulate temperature, humidity and ambient carbon dioxide levels.
Interviewee: Mike Dixon
If you homogenise those four major environment variables, you can't lose. The plant must do what you tell it to.
Interviewer: Elie Dolgin
Back at TerrAscend, Ari Unterman walks me - somewhat backwards - through the last two steps of the cultivation process. Amidst hundreds of plants hanging upside down, he explains the three key elements that affect the quality of cannabis.
Interviewee: Ari Unterman
The genetics going into the plant, the growing conditions and then the drying and packaging conditions.
Interviewer: Elie Dolgin
Finally, Unterman takes me into the grow room, where I'm immediately struck by the glow of the high-pressure sodium lamps. Wow!
Interviewee: Ari Unterman
You can tell a nice healthy plant - nice colour green, pretty robust and yeah, that's pretty much it.
Interviewer: Elie Dolgin
But really there's so much more. With advances in genetics and agriculture, the cannabis industry is entering a new phase of science-driven of R&D and after years of black-market breeding, this weed is becoming a true horticultural crop.
Host: Noah Baker
That was Elie Dolgin reporting from Canada. If you want to read more about the science of cannabis production, check out Elie's feature-length story over at nature.com/news.
Host: Shamini Bundell
Speaking of news, we've got a mission to Mercury and a climate disaster brewing for brewers. That's coming up in the News Chat, but first it's the Research Highlights read this week by the newest member of the podcast team, Ali Jennings.

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Interviewer: Ali Jennings
Scientists in the States have constructed a purpose-built microscope to study early mouse embryos in unprecedented detail. After a mouse embryo implants in the uterus, it undergoes a staggering transformation, ballooning to 250 times its initial size in just 48 hours. During this time, embryonic cells divide, expand and reshuffle as they rush to build the mouse's basic body plan. Up until now, researchers had only seen snapshots of this staggeringly complex process. The embryos are easily damaged by light and their rapidly evolving size and shape can make it tricky for microscopes to keep the image in focus and at the right resolution. This new microscope automatically tracks the embryos growth and uses single sheets of laser light to illuminate this transformation for the first time. So, if you fancy brightening up your day, check out their stunning images in Cell.

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Interviewer: Ali Jennings
Now, are you sitting comfortably? Well, if you're listening to this podcast from Jupiter's moon, Europa, the answer is probably not. A team in the UK have suggested that ice on the surface of Europa could form 15-metre-tall frozen blades around its equator. Ouch! On Earth, these spikes form when a steady stream of sunlight repeatedly reflects back and forth inside small pits in cold, dry snow. The sunlight's heat causes snow from the pits' edges and bottoms to sublimate from solid straight to gas, so the pits grow wider and deeper until only their edges remain, forming spine-like structures called penitentes. And if that pricks your interest, you can read about it in Nature Geoscience.

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Host: Shamini Bundell
Now, here in the UK, autumn is currently getting serious and reminding us all that the record-breaking Northern Hemisphere summer of 2018 is well and truly over. Despite worries about the warming climate, we will miss it, so we've sent Lizzie Gibney off to remind us all of warmer days by exploring the story of the Sun.
Interviewer: Lizzie Gibney
Solar physics is something of a hot field of research right now, if you excuse the pun. In August, NASA launched the Parker Solar Probe, which is going to get closer to the Sun than any craft has done in history. The European Space Agency is launching its own probe in 2020 so why the interest? Well, despite being the very hub of our solar system, as well as an influencer of life and culture on this planet, the Sun is still something of a mystery. To learn more, I've come to London's Science Museum where a new exhibition is opening this week on our nearest star - the Sun - and humans' relationship with it. I'm going to meet curator Harry Cliff for a sneak preview. Hi, Harry, is it?
Interviewee: Harry Cliff
Yeah, hi Lizzie, nice to meet you.
Interviewer: Lizzie Gibney
Nice to meet you. So, what's the motivation then behind this exhibition? What made you want to do it?
Interviewee: Harry Cliff
Well, the exhibition is all about the Sun and the Science Museum has a great collection that kind of relates to the Sun in all kinds of different ways. The problem with Sun, in a way, is that it's so big, it attaches to almost every aspect of human history so trying to distil it down to something manageable was the real challenge at the beginning. And the story we've gone for is the way that our relationship with the Sun has changed through history from the Bronze Age right up to the Space Age but through the lens of science, technology and medicine.
Interviewer: Lizzie Gibney
So where do we begin?
Interviewee: Harry Cliff
So, we start off with this rather beautiful screen. So, this is showing a live feed of footage of the Sun over the last 24 hours. What you can see here is the Sun in extreme ultraviolet light and as soon as you look at this, you see that the Sun is not a sort of static source of light. It's dynamic, you can see there's all kinds of things going on on its surface. There's magnetic field lines bursting up from sunspots. The atmosphere is constantly sort of moving around and changing. You can see around the edge of the Sun this kind of hazy halo which is the corona, which is a region of superheated plasma. You can see sunspots which are the sort of regions where you have these bright, magnetic filaments looping out from the surface of the Sun.
Interviewer: Lizzie Gibney
Fantastic. It looks very dramatic. So how long have people been studying the Sun as the centre of our solar system?
Interviewee: Harry Cliff
You can find evidence of ancient Greek philosophers who argued that the Sun was the centre but they never really gained much traction. It was Aristotle's view of the Universe, with the Earth at the centre, that really became the dominant model. So, the idea that the Sun was the centre of the solar system only really starts to become widely accepted from the 16th century onwards, when Copernicus publishes On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres in 1543, but it's not this instantaneous change in our view of the Universe. It takes a century for his ideas to become refined and accepted, ultimately with the contributions of other people like Galileo and Kepler and Newton. So, the next phase of the exhibition is kind of actually saying something that in a way is quite obvious but also which we've totally forgotten, which is that time is solar. So, our very concept of time really ultimately comes from the Sun and for most of history, if you wanted to know what the time was you looked at the sky and you looked for where the Sun was in the sky. And because we've surrounded ourselves now by machines and by digital devices, we've kind of forgotten that basic fact.
Interviewer: Lizzie Gibney
Is there still any link at all or do we just measure time digitally nowadays?
Interviewee: Harry Cliff
Well, so one of the objects we have over here in this showcase is an atomic clock. So, in the 1960s, the global time standard moved away from astronomical time based on the Earth's rotation and moved to atomic clocks which are much more precise. That's because the Earth actually doesn't rotate perfectly. It wobbles and it changes so you find that the Earth will lose or gain certain amounts of time depending on what's going on at the surface. The only link that's maintained is that we have these things called leap seconds, so every six months people compare the time according to atomic clocks to the time according to the Universe, to astronomy, and if they find that things have drifted by more than a second then they add or subtract a second from atomic time to keep it in step.
Interviewer: Lizzie Gibney
Ah, so this looks like we've leapt a little bit further forward into the future.
Interviewee: Harry Cliff
Yeah, so this is quite an interesting story and it really begins at the end of the 19th century when Robert Koch and Niels Ryberg Finsen discover that sunlight has bactericidal properties, in particular that it can be used to kill tuberculosis bacteria. And you get special hospitals, sanatoria, set up where children and patients can be put out on to a sundeck and they were actually left out in the sunshine, so TB lesions on the skin are then treated using natural sunlight.
Interviewer: Lizzie Gibney
So that wasn't an old wives' tale? That actually did have an impact.
Interviewee: Harry Cliff
No, it does have an impact, but you also get a certain amount of quackery that comes out of this. So, this really strange object which is a big wooden human-sized box with mirrors on the inside and lightbulbs, this is an artificial light bath, electric light bath. It was invented by John Harvey Kellogg of Kellogg's Corn Flakes for his sanatoria in the 1930s and 40s. So, the idea is you sit inside this box, the doors close, the lights are switched on and it blasts you with light, and that's supposed to treat all kinds of ailments from a bad back to diabetes, whatever you like. There's very little evidence it did anything apart from warm you up and possibly risk electrocution. I'm not sure I'd want to get in it to be honest.
Interviewer: Lizzie Gibney
Me neither. It looks a bit like a torture chamber. So of course, the Sun is not all good for people's health.
Interviewee: Harry Cliff
No, and this was only really realised in the 50s, 60s and 70s. You get a huge increase in melanoma cases as a result of everyone being told in the 30s and 40s to go out and get as much Sun as possible. So, this section is all about our attempts to harness the Sun to drive machines, to power our industries. So, in the 1870s, particularly in France, you have engineers who are already thinking what happens when coal runs out, how are we going to power this world when this is a finite resource? And they start to build solar-powered machines. And there's a big exhibition in Paris where very famously Augustin Mouchot and Pifre display this large solar engine which is used to power a printing press that prints of this solar journal, and it amazes the crowds, turning light into mechanical power. So, we've got here we think the oldest solar-powered machine in existence.
Interviewer: Lizzie Gibney
And how does it work?
Interviewee: Harry Cliff
So, it's a parabolic dish that focuses sunlight onto a heat engine that warms it up and then uses the heat generator to drive a little engine. Actually, there's even an egg cup attachment so you can use it to boil an egg if you wanted to cook an egg.
Interviewer: Lizzie Gibney
You can do an awful lot with a bit of light if you concentrate it enough.
Interviewee: Harry Cliff
There was that famous incident a few years ago, where 20 Fenchurch Street in London, this huge skyscaper there, was built with a concave surface that focused the Sun's light onto a guy's BMW or something and melted the car. So yeah, the Sun's very powerful and if you concentrate it you can cause all kinds of mischief. We're trying with this exhibition to remind people that this thing is really fundamental and actually, so much of what we take for granted comes from the Sun.
Host: Shamini Bundell
That was Harry Cliff talking to Lizzie Gibney at the Science Museum in London, England. Read Lizzie's review of the exhibition at nature.com/books-culture.
Interviewer: Noah Baker
And finally this week, it's time for the News Chat and joining me in the studio is a voice you might have heard before, Anna Nagle, she's our Chief Editor for Digital and Engagement. Welcome, Anna.
Interviewee: Anna Nagle
Hey there.
Interviewer: Noah Baker
So, listeners might remember in last week's News Chat we discussed the new IPCC report and we have another climate change story here with some more bad news. This time it's about what climate change could do to beer production. Anna, tell us, what's the damage.
Interviewee: Anna Nagle
It's bad. It means your beer is going to become more expensive.
Interviewer: Noah Baker
And why is that?
Interviewee: Anna Nagle
A lot of research has looked at the impact of climate change on more staple crops like wheat and rice, but these researchers looked to the production of barley, and they found that under pretty much any climate change scenario, global production of barley is going to go down and that will mean that the price of your pint will go up.
Interviewer: Noah Baker
And of course, barley is a staple crop in the production of beer.
Interviewee: Anna Nagle
Absolutely. So, what they did is they squished together sort of climate models, economic models and looked at the impact that the reduced production of barley would have on consumption and the price of a pint of beer.
Interviewer: Noah Baker
And they are showing some really direct tangible impacts.
Interviewee: Anna Nagle
I will throw some figures at you now. Are you sitting down because they're not pretty numbers? So, it is China that will actually show the biggest national drop in beer consumption. Per year, they will be drinking over 4 billion fewer litres of beer. In terms of costs, it's Ireland that will see the biggest absolute price increase out of all of the countries that they studied. The price of beer will go at almost US$5 per half-litre bottle, which triples the current cost which is pretty eye-watering by anyone's standards.
Interviewer: Noah Baker
Now, these numbers are for the worst-case scenario. They do have numbers for different levels of warming, and some of them aren't quite as eye-watering, but they're still all increasing.
Interviewee: Anna Nagle
Yeah, even under the very best-case scenario, globally the model that they came up with predicted a 4% reduction in beer consumption but a 15% increase in price.
Interviewer: Noah Baker
So often we hear about how climate change is going to disproportionately affect the less-developed world, but this is a situation where those that may be sheltered from some of climate change's effects in the industrialised world are still going to feel its impact.
Interviewee: Anna Nagle
That's exactly why the researcher decided to focus on something like this. It might sound like a small thing, but he explicitly said that he's trying to emphasise how climate change will impact people's' lifestyle, and by showing the impact on that he's hoping it will prompt people to take action and address it sooner rather than later.
Interviewer: Noah Baker
And of course, our beer consumption is one thing and that will have an impact on many in the developed world, but that does not really compare in many ways to the impacts which will be felt by many in the developing world.
Interviewee: Anna Nagle
Absolutely. I mean worries about our beer consumption pale in comparison to the kind of life-changing and life-threatening effects of climate change in the developing world. But if this kind of research can help reveal to people in the developed world the impact of our habits and our consumption, then it's one way of getting that communication across that might encourage some people to make some changes in the long run.
Interviewer: Noah Baker
Okay, so from one long-running problem to another long-running mission. This is the BepiColombo mission to Mercury which is due to launch any day now.
Interviewee: Anna Nagle
Absolutely, so this is just the second ever mission to get into Mercury's orbit and it is the most expensive mission from the European Space Agency, coming in at €1.6-billion.
Interviewer: Noah Baker
And it's not just the European Space Agency involved here, the Japanese have got involved as well.
Interviewee: Anna Nagle
Absolutely. It's Japan's largest contribution yet to an international collaboration in space.
Interviewer: Noah Baker
Now, this mission has been in the planning stages for a long time - since the 90s. Tell me, what is it that they're trying to achieve.
Interviewee: Anna Nagle
So, what they aim to do is they will be sending BepiColombo off on its mission. It will take seven years to get to Mercury and it will arrive in orbit hopefully in early December 2025, and then it will release two probes, one built by ESA (the European Space Agency) and the other by JAXA (the Japanese Space Agency).
Interviewer: Noah Baker
Now, there have been various missions by ESA and JAXA and others, to Mars, to comets, to asteroids that have dropped things on those asteroids. Why is this is a particularly tricky mission to get to Mercury?
Interviewee: Anna Nagle
Mercury is deep in the Sun's gravitational well, so to get there the craft has to lose that initial momentum that it's got from Earth's orbital motion so that it can fall towards the Sun in the first place, but then it's got to avoid overshooting. So, altogether, all these complex bits of the journey - which is 9 billion kilometres - it will take eight times more energy and several years longer than, say, an equivalent mission to get to Mars.
Interviewer: Noah Baker
So, tell me, what does the journey from Earth to Mercury look like? How is BepiColombo going to get there?
Interviewee: Anna Nagle
So, it's using some really advanced technology. It's using solar-powered ionic thrusters and combining that with some gravitational help with a total of nine fly-bys of Earth, Venus and Mercury itself.
Interviewer: Noah Baker
Now, Mercury, up until relatively recently, was considered to be a fairly dull planet that was hot and round and not much going on, but actually there's maybe more things to look at than we at one point thought.
Interviewee: Anna Nagle
So yeah, in recent years there's been a few surprises from what we thought was quite a dull planet in the context of all the other planets. It's had an unusual magnetic field, water ice deposits found in some of its craters, but partly because of the difficulties in getting there, some of those things have made it one of the least explored of the four planets of the inner solar system. So, so far there's only been one other mission that's entered Mercury's orbit which was NASA's Messenger mission, which spent four years studying the planet a few years ago, but this will be just the second one ever apart from that one to enter the orbit and find out a bit more about it.
Interviewer: Noah Baker
And I have to ask, why BepiColombo? It's a great name, where does that come from?
Interviewee: Anna Nagle
It is a great name. It's named after Giuseppe 'Bepi' Colombo who's a late Italian scientist who studied Mercury and he conceived of the trajectory that was used for a mission in the 70s known as Mariner 10.
Interviewer: Noah Baker
So, this is a collaboration between the European Space Agency and JAXA (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and this is a particularly busy time for JAXA because they have another mission that we've reported on the podcast recently called Hayabusa2 that is currently in a crux point and there has been some more news about that as well.
Interviewee: Anna Nagle
JAXA was hoping that they'd be able to make a landing this month on the Ryugu asteroid but they've had to delay that until January.
Interviewer: Noah Baker
And why has that delay occurred, has something gone wrong?
Interviewee: Anna Nagle
No, nothing's gone wrong, it's just that the asteroid that they're landing on is considerably rockier than they were anticipating. So, what they're trying to do is going to take a little bit longer to make sure that when they do make a landing, they can safely do it in a much smaller zone.
Interviewer: Noah Baker
Okay, so delay but no disaster, and we're going to have to watch and see what comes out of that mission and watch and see over a longer time to find out what comes back from Mercury.
Interviewee: Anna Nagle
Absolutely.
Interviewer: Noah Baker
Thank you very much Anna and that's it for this week's show. As always, you can find even more of the latest science to peruse over at nature.com/news.
Host: Shamini Bundell
Now, there is sadly now show next week, but we will be back better than ever in two week's time. And if you'd like to help us on our quest for continual self-improvement, why not give us some feedback? Tell us what you like, what you don't like, what you want more of. Get in touch on Twitter (@NaturePodcast) or a good old-fashioned email (podcast@nature.com). I'm Shamini Bundell.
Host: Noah Baker
And I'm Noah Baker. Thanks for listening.

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Podcast: Cannabis cultivation in Canada and the Sun's place in history

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Shamini Bundell and Noah Baker bring you the latest science news, direct to your ears Hear the biggest stories from the world of science | 18 October 2018

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I chose to do my research on garden based learning. I first heard of this when you posted videos about it on blackboard. I think it's a great way to keep kids engaged in the lesson while also being connected to earth. Its a unique way for students to learn garden types/designs and different habitats for animals.

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Environmental Education Alliance of Georgia

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School gardens are a great place to observe the life cycle of a seed, or to grow fresh fruits and vegetables to eat. They are also great places for student-directed experiments and investigations...

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I chose this meme of the black bear, brown bear, and polar bear. It is a meme but there's also some truth to it. Depending on the bear you need to know when to get big or get small. For a brown bear you're supposed to get small. For a black bear you're supposed to get big and loud. Lastly if there's a polar bear you're supposed to quite leave where you came from or completely away from the bear.

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For this week video I decided to share an analysis between a Gorilla vs Grizzly Bear. Before watching the video I had my money on the gorilla. The video compares bite force, stamina, teeth/claws, speed, character, and special advantages. You need to look at whose environment they're at as well but i'm still sticking with a gorilla.

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Here we are for the final archive reflection. I'm grateful not only to meet you but to be in this class. I've always appreciated nature from the flowers to the sun. This class has made me dig deep, go into depth, and really understand why I love nature. I think it's natural as humans to connect with the earth. To bad nowadays people are so stuck on their phone inside, they don't even know what they're missing out on. In chapter 9 of Coyote's Guide they talk about the natural cycle of earth. It talks about where the sun is coming from and the general energy that is brought with these. Definitely my favorite section of the book.

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I stopped by the sit spot Tuesday afternoon it was sunny and 40 which is honestly pretty solid weather considering its almost December. Takes living in grand forks for 4 years to realize that doesn’t happen too often. I’m not at all an artist but I’ve wanted to start drawing for some time now.  I decided drawing my sit spot would be a good start. I drew in pencil the s shaped path that leads to the bridge. I know there’s not much color currently, but I remember what it looked like when it did. I used color pencils to add some flavor to the trees and flowers. It was by no means a master piece but I enjoyed doing it beside it being windy that day.

I thought the video on garden-based learning was unique. I think it’s a great way to get kids engaged in learning. As well as incorporate math and science into the lesson. You can compare it to game-based learning in the traditional classroom. Where students play games like kahoot to help spark their learning. As a future educator you need to find unordinary ways to make learning interesting and engaging. We’ve all been in a classroom where a teacher lectures the whole time and it’s hard to stay focused the whole time. By doing garden-based learning it makes interacting with the lesson not only fun but mandatory.

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The podcast I decided to share is called BirdNote. It is a nature podcast dedicated to birds and run by its own independent media organization. They're 3 podcast are Bring Birds Back, Biodiversity, and Threatened. I listened to the Threatened podcast, in this specific one we talk about a spot in puerto rico. The salt flats is a place were humans have extracted salt for the last 500 years. This causing certain species of birds to become endangered!

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I watched the video you posted on blackboard on the preschool where nature is the classroom. I was glued to this video! So many thoughts going through my head, especially, me wishing I went to school there! I decided to share an article that goes into depth about why outdoor education is a good idea for young children. They're allowed to just explore nature and learn about gravity, texture, shape, and colors. All things you would see in a preschool curriculum, just outdoors!

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Children play and explore nature at the Forest Preschool at Carrie Murray Nature Center in Baltimore on May 5. Outdoor preschools have exploded in popularity over the past few years. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)

BALTIMORE - On a chilly May morning in Leakin Park, preschoolers at the Carrie Murray Nature Center Forest Preschool fanned out across a small section of the woods. Bundled up in colorful rain suits, boots and mismatched gloves, some children used tin buckets to scoop water from a creek while others traipsed off with a teacher to examine a large log a few yards away. There, they discovered something huge, orange and "very sticky."

"There's a chicken of the woods up here if anyone would like to see it!" a teacher called out.

The rest of the preschoolers stopped what they were doing and clomped up a muddy path toward the discovery. They veered into the underbrush, warning one another to watch out for sticks and "deer scat." The children already at the log wordlessly made room for their friends, and they all gazed in awe at two blossoming chicken of the woods mushrooms.

"I found a very old one once," a child said.

"I see black stuff," said another, crouching to peer at specks on the mushroom.

"You can eat chicken of the woods, but first you have to cook it," offered a third, sternly.

This outdoor approach to teaching preschool is gaining momentum nationwide. Long common in such countries as Denmark, Sweden and Germany, nature preschools and kindergartens have exploded in popularity in America over the past few years, growing from 250 in 2017 to more than 800 in 2022, based on a forthcoming report from the nonprofit Natural Start Alliance. In the past five years, five states have introduced legislation or established pilot programs to support outdoor learning as an alternative to traditional preschool and child-care programs.

Experts and advocates say the naturalist approach can be especially beneficial to children after the pandemic. In these preschools, children spend most or all of their time outside. The natural settings are generally calm and quiet, lead to lower levels of stress and foster traits like resilience, leadership, problem solving and perseverance, research shows.

Finding child care is still impossible for many parents

Yet outdoor preschools are generally inaccessible to children of color. Only 7 percent of students in these preschools are of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin, and only 3 percent are Black, according to a 2017 report. Those numbers haven't budged, even as programs have increased.

As it stands, most states make it difficult - if not impossible - for outdoor early learning programs that lack physical buildings and other amenities, such as handwashing stations, to get licensed. So, they are run as mostly private, half-day programs - drawing in children from higher-income families, most of whom are White. The Carrie Murray Nature Center's outdoor preschool in Baltimore is licensed and uses a park building for the times when children are napping, eating or need to use the bathroom. Program officials have advertised in local neighborhoods to try to improve diversity, but recruiting a diverse population is a challenge.

Unlicensed outdoor preschools are ineligible to accept state subsidies for low-income families, said Monica Wiedel-Lubinski, executive director of the Eastern Region Association of Forest and Nature Schools. "It just perpetuates that barrier for the most vulnerable kids and most vulnerable communities."

The handful of states that are embracing outdoor education by adjusting licensing requirements are doing so in part to expand access. In Maryland, legislation passed last month and sent to Gov. Wes Moore (D) would create state licensing standards. The bill would also establish a pilot program to test outdoor preschool standards and track efforts to expand the play-based outdoor model. If the pilot is successful, it will set the stage for an expansion of such preschools, which could chip away at persistent child-care shortages. Outdoor preschools, once licensed, will be able to participate in the state's child-care-quality program and enroll families that pay with state subsidies.

While pandemic-related health concerns spurred the recent uptick of outdoor preschools, the hands-on approach of these programs is backed by a growing body of research on the importance of play for children's learning and emotional well-being. Moreover, spending time in nature can benefit young children: Research shows it can boost academic performance, reduce symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, improve mental health, and promote physical activity and the development of motor skills, among other things.

It may seem as though children at the Forest Preschool at Carrie Murray Nature Center are simply playing for hours each day, but teachers say they are developing valuable skills. They are practicing leadership when they help less-experienced classmates navigate the terrain. They learn how to work together when they collaborate to build a waterfall or a miniature mudslide. And they develop empathy when they check on friends who have slipped in the mud.

"I see these kids thriving," said Monica French, director of the Forest Preschool, which is run by Baltimore City Recreation and Parks. "When they are little, we let them play and respect the fact that they are learning through play."

Some research shows that students in outdoor programs are just as academically ready for elementary school as their peers from more traditional schools. Kids who learn outside may derive additional benefits. A report on Washington state's outdoor preschool pilot found children in one program experienced fewer incidents of challenging behavior when they attended preschool outdoors, and the prevalence of childhood obesity was reduced for children in another program.

French said she sees these benefits daily at the Forest Preschool. On a recent drizzly morning, she perched above a creek as several preschoolers stood in a chocolate-brown puddle.

"It's 9 inches deep!" announced Bash, a 4-year-old with curly blond hair who was wearing a red-and-gray rain suit, or a "muddy buddy," as it's called in the outdoor preschool world.

As the rest of the group wandered off, Bash dropped her ruler in the water and gasped when it stayed afloat. A friend descended the muddy hill to the creek and splashed into the water.

"Can I try?" he asked.

Bash nodded and handed him a plastic ruler. He dropped it in the water, then fished it out and examined it.

"These ones are inches, and those ones are centimeters," Bash said, pointing to the sides of the ruler.

The two crouched and called out measurements as they inched their way through the water.

French said her biggest fear when children leave her preschool for kindergarten "isn't that they won't have their writing skills but that they're going to go sit behind a desk all day long."

While Maryland's legislation provides a significant boost for outdoor programs, considerable challenges remain. The bill gives priority for participation in the pilot to programs that are licensed as summer camps, child-care programs or registered family child-care homes enrolled in the state's quality rating system. But it doesn't offer extra funding to help new preschools get off the ground.

In northeast Baltimore, officials with Backyard Basecamp, which focuses on expanding access to nature among communities of color, hope their organization will be among the pilot programs testing out the new regulations. While the nonprofit runs a nature-based summer camp, past efforts to launch an outdoor preschool at the organization's 10-acre green space have been stymied, mostly by funding and staffing shortages. The program is working on training naturalists of color who can become teachers to "reflect the people we are serving," said Tatiana Mason, program director at Backyard Basecamp.

Mason added that outdoor preschools are expensive to run. "There's a lot of gear, land is really expensive, and to have a place that is accessible and nature-based is very few and far between," she said. While the pilot program could greenlight an outdoor preschool at Backyard Basecamp, there are other challenges, including stereotypes and fears around nature-based learning. "People think nature's not for them, it's not safe. That's why it's important to me to get people, especially children, a connection with nature starting early," Mason said.

As Maryland works to formalize outdoor preschools, the state's two dozen existing nature-based early learning programs are watching to see how officials handle licensing. "The whole licensing system is really built upon a framework where learning happens indoors and the outdoors is a break area," said Christy Merrick, director of the Natural Start Alliance, which supports nature and outdoor learning programs.

The state will have to consider a slew of things, including rules for diaper changing, staff-to-child ratios and proper clothing for children. Maryland's officials could look to Washington state, where licensing standards for outdoor preschools require a staff-to-child ratio and group size smaller than that of center-based early learning programs to ensure there is "appropriate" supervision of children while outdoors. Providers must also devise a risk management plan for such nature-based activities as encountering wildlife. Teachers need not only the standard credentials but also experience or training in environmental or outdoor education. Children must wear proper clothing and have a safe building available for emergencies.

Children could reap the benefits of an increase in the number of licensed nature schools, supporters say. Ilina Chaudhuri, the parent of a preschooler at the Forest Preschool, was originally skeptical that preschool could work outdoors, especially in a large public park like Leakin. But after seeing the impact on her son, she has become a believer. Before enrolling, she said, "I wondered, 'Is my child going to be one of these hippy-dippy, tree-hugging kids and doesn't have any of those academic skills?'"

Now, Chaudhuri said her 4-year-old, Ravi, has developed early academic skills, including letter recognition, writing his name and counting. He has also become better at regulating his behavior and emotions. He's more patient and able to resolve conflict, which she attributes to the peaceful environment in which he spends his days.

Recently, when their family's dog died, Ravi was remarkably calm. "He was already familiar with this idea [of death] from what he's observed every day" in nature, Chaudhuri said, incredulous. "He knew there's a life cycle. He used the word, 'decomposition.'"
This article about outdoor preschool access was produced by the Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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Outdoor preschool is gaining momentum nationwide

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Maryland is among the states moving to expand and diversify the naturalist approach to early education

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Thought I would stick with the ibex while i was on them. This meme makes me laugh and if you read the article to the left you should understand it. Ibex climb very vertical walls in order to obtain salt which they need to survive. So yes I agree find someone whose willing to take some risk and make some sacrifices to be with you!

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This amazing video shows an ibex make his way up a near 90 degree wall all in the pursuit of salt. Salt is very scare in the region and is needed for the ibex to survive. You see the babies follow their parents on the dangerous climb. Very cool to see the ibex eventually make it to the prize! This video shows how animals use their unique bodies to survive, doing whatever it takes.

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The incredible ibex defies gravity and climbs a dam | Forces of Nature with Brian Cox - BBC

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Winding down to the last month not only of the semester but of college. Need to soak it all in. Grand Forks is weird when it comes to winter, it goes from snowing on halloween to being 55 degrees and sunny in mid november. In the Coyote’s guide to nature they say, “learning depends on what is meaningful to each individual, not necessarily what has meaning for a mentor or a parent” (pg.126). This line really stuck out to me as I read it. Too many times we forget that everybody is different, something that we may love may not even ring a bell for another individual. That’s what’s so amazing about being out in nature, everyone can find something unique for themselves

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I've seen a lot less activity at my sit spot. With fall ending and winter approaching they start to fade away, kind of like the leaves. The leaves are at the point where they’re turning red, indicating the end of their cycle. I decided to look up why leaves change colors from a scientific view. As the night length increases in the fall, chlorophyll slows down and then stops, leading to all chlorophyll being destroyed. The carotenoids and anthocyanin that are present in the leaf are then unmasked and show their colors. I want to share a quote I’ve always enjoyed about leaves. By Amit Ray, “In every change, in every falling leaf, there is some pain, some beauty. And that’s the way new leaves grow”.

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This website has 53 different episodes. Victoria Hackett talks to parents and teachers interested in cultivating learning gardens and nature based curricula. I listened to the third episode discussing one of her monthly classroom sessions. Episodes vary but most stress the importance of child development and ho two facilitate free choice learning. The podcasts has a pleasant background rhythm as well as an intriguing story from the special guest.

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My garden story started when I was a parent at my child's elementary school spearheading the transformation of an old desolate courtyard into a children's Garden & Outdoor Classroom. This process changed my entire philosophy of education and triggered my research into The Four Types of Gardens, the Five Phases of Teaching Outdoors and the benefits of teaching outdoors on child development.

I now inspire teachers and parents to create outdoor classrooms and backyard learning gardens. At Outdoor Classrooms, my mission is to create a community of like-minded educators from all over the world that eagerly support, playfully learn, willingly collaborate while on the journey to reconnect children with nature. .

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My garden story started when I was a parent at my child's elementary school spearheading the transformation of an old desolate courtyard into a children's Garden & Outdoor Classroom. This process changed my entire philosophy of education and triggered my research into The Four Types of Gardens, the Five Phases of Teaching Outdoors and the benefits of teaching outdoors on child development.

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Since we've been talking about outdoor learning the last couple weeks I thought it would be fit to share some research on the same topic. Studies have shown that students who learn outdoors develop a sense of self, independence, confidence, creativity, decision-making, problem solving-skills, and motor skills. Have you ever learned outdoors? I've had class outdoors in middle school and it was an awesome change of environment.

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Thought I would keep the meme consistent with the video I shared to the left. I don't know how true this specific meme is but it wouldn't surprise me. Honey badgers are know as of of the MOST fearless animals on the planet. They aren't the biggest weighing about 20-30 pounds for the males. They got their name from their fondness of feeding on honey and honeybee larvae.

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This video shows one of my favorite animals being relentless. A honey badger is a mammal mainly distributed in Africa, southwest Asia and the Indian Subcontinent. They habitat consists of forests, grasslands, savannah, woodland, and mountainous regions. These feisty animals have no fear as seen in this video. This is the animal I would like to compare myself too while on the football field.

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🍯🦡 Fearless Honey Badger takes on 6 Lions 🦁🦁 | Caught in the Act

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This past month i've really been soaking in this fall weather. The leaves are changing colors, the temperature starts to drop, and even are mood starts to sway. I know how quick winter comes up here so I make sure i really stay in the present and enjoy the weather while we have it. It's tough when a week starts out as 75 and sunny and ends with 45 and rainy. This temp change definitely dampens my mood a bit and makes me reluctant to go outside.

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We're about two months into the semester and I still love my sit spot. I'm happy I chose to pick a location that not only meant a lot to me but is right on campus. I have learned a lot more about the specific types of garden flowers. Mostly seeing yellow/purple daisies and learning about their origin, as well as how long they typically last. Journaling has still been a great way for me to clear my head and think a little deeper.

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The link above has 7 different podcasts but I chose The Atlas Obscura Podcast. The author is Dylan Thuras and each episode is about 15 minutes. This episode talks about NIST which stands for the National Institute of Standards & Technology. The time realization and distribution lab is discussed in depth. Talking about ways to tell time involving reading nature being one small example. They also created an atomic clock using ticks of atoms. There isn't just one clock but a network of 21 different ones, presented as a science experiment.

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Listen to a podcast that offers exciting facts and inspiring sounds. Discover the best podcasts about nature.

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How Does a walk in nature impact the brain?

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How Does a walk in nature impact the brain?

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I chose to do my research article on what a walk with nature can do for the brain. I chose the word with here on purpose because we are part of nature when we're there, present in the moment. I'll let you read the article for yourself but it mentions how walking in nature has shown to enhance working memory, restores focused attention, and relieves fear/stress. Chapter 2 of Coyotes guide talks about the brain patterning cycle. I had never heard of it before this and i found it very unique. It pretty much states that "everything we take in with our senses, combined with what we focus our mental attention on, results in brain patterns"(pg.24).

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How does a walk in nature impact the brain?

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A new study shows how exposure to nature through a one-hour walk in a natural setting can prevent mental strain and possibly reduce the incidence of mental ill-health.

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I found this meme funny because i've heard this exact saying so many times growing up. I never really knew the truth behind it so today we present the facts! This goes for most coyotes but not for all. They are naturally timid animals that will usually flee at the sight of a human. If they approach or linger around it's time to begin "hazing". This is a term applied to chase coyotes away. You are supposed to be as big and loud as possible. Do not turn your back towards the coyote or run away as this may make them chase you!!

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In the first chapter of Coyote's Guide To Connecting With Nature the authors discuss some of the amazing traits they carry. Coyotes are known for their cunning adaptability, craftiness, and their ability to survive anywhere. These animals need to be very aware of their surroundings as they have the potential to be predator or prey at any moment! This is a quick 2 minute video that shows a coyote(kind of looks like a fox to me) hunting prairie dogs, which are a form of squirrels. These animals can be sneaky and sly, while they use their speed to catch prey off guard.

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Coyote Predators | Natural World | BBC Earth

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This past month i've been working on trying to slow down and not always be in a rush. I think nature can be a big help when it comes to that. Life goes by so fast we need to be able to be present and soak it all in. When i'm outside with nature i feel like i don't need to go anywhere, i'm exactly where i'm supposed to be. After reading some of coyote's guide to nature they discuss how humans are habit forming creatures. So why not create healthy habits that give us real, natural dopamine!

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I want to start my journaling category talking about my sit spot as well as why I got into journaling. About a couple months ago I was having some mixed emotions and wanted more clarity in my life. I started to journal everyday, sometimes paragraphs and sometimes just a couple sentences. Journaling is for you so there should be no pressure write or draw however you please. I chose the garden corner area over at university park as my sit spot. This has always been a place where I could go and find peace. I could journal, read, listen to the birds chirp, and even just sit in the sun and be present in nature!