Welcome to the newest feature on Kids Discover Nature -- The Undercover Mother.  The purpose of  posts in this series will be to help parents and caregivers confidentially purchase nature and outdoor related products.  Reviews written as part of this feature will help you determine the best products for your families as you pursue your quest to connect with nature.  Special attention will be paid to help you identify whether products are safe and healthy for use around children and whether they are are friendly to the environment. 

This week the Undercover Mother was shopping at a popular garden center for deer repellent.  As I stood in front of the product display that included repellents of all types, my eye was immediately attracted to Ortho's EcoSense Brand Snail and Slug Killer.  I was quickly distracted from what I was originally doing and had to take a closer look thinking, "has Ortho jumped on the 'green' bandwagon and really started manufacturing safe and environmentally friendly products?"  I was skeptical.

Critterific! will now be a regular feature on KDN because, after all, I am a wildlife ecologist at heart! Additionally, it's my opinion that learning about nature helps people become more invested, and thus more concerned.  Part of the reason I write the blog is to encourage parents and children to enjoy nature and all its living creatures as well as become stewards of the planet we share.  So now that you know the purpose behind Critterific! feature, here we go!

Spring Peeper (Pseudacris crucifer)
How many of you enjoy hearing the Spring Peepers?  I look forward to it every year.  Each spring, in the early evenings you can hear hundreds of them if you are lucky enough to live by wetlands, a vernal pool, lake or pond in the eastern United States or Canada.  The sound is so pleasant, it's easy to spend hours outside in the evenings listening to them.

What you are actually hearing is the their mating call.  If the population in the area is dense, the combination of all the calls sounds like sleigh bells. I have often tried to locate a peeper by tracking it's call with my children, but we are usually unsuccessful.  As soon as we get too close, the peeping stops and we are unable locate the little guy in the reeds.

Check out this nice little video that displays the lovely call of the peeper.





Frogs, in general, are going through a tough time right now.  Many populations around the world are suffering from disease and chemical run-off from farms and lawns and are in serious decline.  You can help by using only eco-friendly fertilizers and pesticides for your lawn and gardens.

Do you have a favorite frog species?

Happy Monday to you all!  For our nature activity this week, we'll be creating Nature Cards.  These are easy to make and work for children as young as 18 months.  Thanks to Fiona Danks and Jo Scofield author's of the book Nature's Playground (one of my favorites) for the idea.

By Nicoleta Gabriela

KDN was honored and humbled when is was recently included on DiscoveryHealth.com as a "learn more" link!  It is exciting to be featured on such a well-known and widely recognized website.  However, I was flabbergasted when I saw it was an article on the Top 10 Radical Parenting Methods!  Is connecting kids with nature so far out of the realm of how kids spend their time these days that it's considered radical?  I continued to read the story and found out I was included with the likes of Lenore Skenazy, founder of the Free-range Kids Movement.  If you don't know her name, she is the New York City mom who allowed her child to take the subway to school by himself and received boatloads of flack from the media and the public for it.  I personally think she has a point --- to a point.  Her website says "we just do NOT believe that every time school age kids go outside, they need a security detail."  Agreed!  That is an entirely different issue that I will address one of these days.  Anyway, I digress.  If you have a moment, cruise on over to Discovery Health and read the entire article.  There are some radical ideas out there!  Please let me know what you think in the comments section.

Welcome to the all new Kids Discover Nature!
As many of you have already seen, KDN has completely changed!  The goal is to provide information and features that will better reflect the overall goal of this blog --- to connect kids with nature!  Please take a moment to navigate around the site and have a better look.

New Features
1) Better navigation
2) Cleaner, updated design
3) Quick links to the best KDN stories and others that may interest you
4) An updated blogroll of my favorite related blogs
5) A new privacy and disclosure statement
6) A new "Special Deals" tab that includes links to special deals offered especially to KDN readers
7) The Kids Discover Nature store designed exclusively for KDN readers.  It includes terrific products to that will encourage your children to connect nature.
8) A really cool "Look Who's Visiting" tab that shows you where people who are checking out the site are from throughout the world.  

More to Come
Yours truly is especially excited about all the great new changes at KDN, but more is on the way.  Over the coming months I'll be rolling out terrific new stories, feature columns, great interviews, guest bloggers, free downloads, exclusive products and much more....all designed with you and your children in mind.

If you aren't already a KDN regular, I encourage you to join the community.  Click here to see all the various ways you can become a friend of KDN.  You don't want to miss out on any of the exclusive offers my regular readers will enjoy!

Lastly, thanks to all of you for your continued support and great feedback! :)

1) Set up a lemonade stand an donate the proceeds to The Green Team.
2) Organize a play group at the park and collect donations for The Nature Conservancy.
3) Make them responsible for collecting spare change around the house and donate them to the National Wildlife Federation's clean up effort.
4) Instead of buying milk at school for the week, save the change and donate it.
5) Ask them to make a craft and sell it to family friends and neighbors. Let them know them proceeds will help the oil clean up. You can too by clicking this link. I'll keep you posted on what I am called to do.

Beginning today and until the end of the month, KidsDiscoverNature will donate a portion of the proceeds from sales in its online nature store to charities assisting with the clean up. Additionally, your truly recently volunteering to help with the clean at

Do any of readers have any other creative ideas on how to help? Please post them in the comments section.

This post is part of the Backyard Mama Children and Nature blog carnival.

Photo by: pink.polka

It has been a sad week.  The situation in the Gulf of Mexico is dire and will require an unprecedented amount help to clean up the mess made by BP.  It will take years to repair the damage to the ecosystem, and it may never be the same again.

To watch the news is like watching a documentary about the effects of oil spills, accept unfortunately, what is happening in the Gulf is real and the disaster is unfolding before our eyes.  Within a week's time, the fragile ecosystems that support a huge amount of this country's biodiversity is being destroyed in one fell swoop.  I am so angry on so many levels!  It is frustrating as a parent to try so hard to save nature, albeit in a small way, by assuring a connection between it and my children, and by helping other parents do the same, to then see it destroyed so easily.   This week, it seems, I am fighting a losing battle.

It  is my generation, Generation X, that will responsible for passing a planet in such poor shape on to our children.  How will we explain ourselves? Granted, many environmental problems we have today began under the watch of previous generations, but we have an unprecedented amount of  knowledge and tools to change it.  But do we have the desire?  It often seems like we are sitting back and allowing the destruction.   In a time that everyone knows how damaging our dependence on oil is to the environment, we continue to drive gas guzzling vehicles, live in inefficient homes and support political agendas that allow us to live with blinders on, all the while driving continued demand.  This in turn, promotes the need for offshore drilling, drilling in the pristine wilds of Alaska and the plains of our country and in beautiful deserts and wild lands in other parts of the world.  We know the risks to the environment and, in turn, ourselves, our well being and our children's future, yet so continues the status quo. What message are we sending to our children?

Pelicans, sea turtles, shrimp, crabs, herons, ducks, oysters, jellyfish, dolphins, bluefish, sharks and the thousands of other species that inhabit the Gulf of Mexico and marshlands that surround it are currently paying the price of our negligence.  Rather than continue to be hypocritical and teach one way and act another, we can change.  We can tell our children that what has happened in the Gulf  is not acceptable.  We can do everything in our power to make little changes, such as changing the light bulbs in our houses to energy efficient ones and by turning off our computers.  We can also make big changes by purchasing hybrids and other more efficient vehicles.  We can teach our children by setting the example.

As we watch the scene in the Gulf states unfold, it is easy to feel helpless.  However, there are ways  to help.  Please consider donating money to the many organizations involved with the clean up.  Below are several ideas to help you and your children raise money .

1) Set up a lemonade stand an donate the proceeds
2) Organize a play group at the park and collect donations.
3) Make them responsible for collecting spare change around the house
4) Instead of buying milk at school for the week, save the change
5) Ask the to make a craft and sell it to family friends and neighbors.  Let them know them proceeds will help the oil clean up.

Check NBC Nightly News for daily updates of organizations accepting donations.  There is also a website just for kids named Together Green that is accepting donations.  Let's use this tragedy to teach our children that nature is worth saving by doing the right thing!