The adjacent photo is a cricket my eldest son Joseph took home from Morton Arboretum over the weekend. We went out there to see the Big Bugs exhibit, which stays until mid-July. What we found when we got there, though, was day-long family fun that allowed both my kids and the adults to explore nature in a hands-on kind of way.
It's been six years since I have been to The Morton Arboretum. Last time, I went, I was thrilled to be an audience member for the theater hike production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. (See this years productions here). At that time, the arboretum had all the untouched nature anyone could need, but in the last few years, the arboretum has started catering more to families.
"We really want to get these kids to connect with this fascinating world," Anamari Dorgan, Manager of Interpretation & Exhibits at Morton Arboretum said of nature.
And connect they did.
The children's garden, which debuted in 2005, is less of a garden and more of a nature's adventure park.
The kids can climb ropes:
They can play in the climbing fort with rope bridges:
And, perhaps best of all, they can play in the pond, scooping up tadpoles, careful to keep them in water.
The entry to the Children's Garden is included with admission to the arboretum and is open from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day and until 6:30 p.m. on Thursdays, May through August.
You want to get to the arboretum before July 20, if you can, so you can catch David Rodgers' Big Bugs
The exhibition of a dozen giant bug sculpures has been traveling for 12 years, but one of the sculptures, the daddy long legs, has never been on display before.
Each of the sculptures are along the banks of Meadow Lake. For kids enjoying the bugs, stop in the visitors center for a bug detective book, which gives details about the real bugs they can encounter and what they do to help the environment.
Hopefully, your kids, like mine, will take what they learn about at the sculptures and use that knowlege to look for the real deal.
Dawn Aulet is a woman, a writer, a wife and a mother. Often, the lens
through which she sees the world is colored by these roles, but not
always. Sometimes, her experiences have less to do with her roles and
more with the frustration of being a consumer, the need to put gas in
her car or the realization that the world does not have any obligation
to deliver what she expects.
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