Today’s inspiration comes from Amy Clapp! 

(highlighted here on August 29, 2017 in KidsVT )

Those of you who received the latest BC Bubbler also received a link to this booklet, Naturally Literate Vermont.

Amy created with the help of Vermont’s naturalist community, Otter Creek Audubon , and Nini Crane, Amy’s friend who contributed the attractive and scientifically accurate watercolors to the  front and back covers.

Amy was inspired to create this checklist booklet after a trip to Costa Rica where she joined a group of advanced birders as a very beginner. She learned to love her checklist there, and saw that through the “checking off process” she gained a lot of knowledge. This was reinforced by her own children on family trips where they “collected” natural world flora and fauna that they experienced.

Amy is an elementary school teacher in Salisbury, Vermont, a mother of three, a summer Betsey Cox staff member, Devri’s good friend from Colby College (!), and someone who appreciates and values the outdoors and all it offers to share with us- from exercise, entertainment, and knowledge. She is someone like all Betsey Cox people, who sees the value in connecting with the outdoors on many levels.  Naturally Literate Vermont helps us learn to name some of the natural world around us and that creates connections.

“The next generation really will inherit the world, and this is where I have power to make a positive change and get children ready for that inheritance. If kids learn the names of the things around them, they’ll come to know who and what those things are. In that process, they’ll connect with what’s living and growing outside their doors, like beavers and marsh marigolds. And when kids connect with their world, they’re much more likely to make positive choices — everything from turning off the lights to caring for the world we live in.” https://www.kidsvt.com/vermont/natural-connection/Content?oid=2430000  

Amy is a place- based educator. She reminds us of this important observation and fact, “ We forget that for kids finding a grasshopper in the field can be just as thrilling as seeing an elephant in the zoo. That grasshopper is the thing connecting them to their world.”

Contact Amy Clapp directly at [email protected] for information about where to get your own copy!

Since Amy has been teaching from her home these past weeks she decided to create a video series, using Naturally Literate  for the students in her district and other interested folks. This video is about spring wildflowers! Very neat. She even title it with a Betsey Cox phrase- “Nature Moment”

We hope you enjoy it!