Urban Nature Adventure: Micro Safari

How many critters can you spot in this picture? Look closely.

Very closely. 

This is what The Little Explorer and I discovered last week when we went on our very own mico safari.

What’s a micro safari? It’s what I call it when we explore the plants and critters that inhabit a very small area. In our case, we took a close-up look at the life we discovered on the stems of a few plants in our neighbor’s front garden.

We named all the colors we saw, counted the bugs and took some pictures to show The Big Explorer later on.

Once we got home, we also discovered that the black and orange critters that The Little Explorer called caterpillars are actually ladybug larvae. Cool!

Just goes to show you that you don’t need a lot of green space to explore the wonders of nature.

How can you go on your own micro safari?

• Head outside and choose one square foot of space to study up close. You can choose anything from a patch of grass to a bunch of flowers or the trunk of a tree.
• Bring along a magnifying glass or a cardboard toilet paper roll.
• Spend a few minutes taking a close look at everything within your defined area. 
• Discuss what you see. The Little Explorer is 3.5 years old, so we kept it pretty simple. We talked about what colors we saw, then about all the different bugs. Since he’s really into counting, we did that for a while, too.
• Take pictures. These will be helpful later if you want to try to identify what you see.

Here are a few more links for exploring urban nature:

• Getting your daily green hour: No backyard required 
• Tips for urban nature spotting with kids 
• The Urban Outdoors series by Family Wilds