el calendario perpetuo de la naturaleza . perpetual nature calendar

One of the concerns I had when I was first considering whether to speak Spanish to my children was that it might hinder my (our) enjoyment of experiencing nature together. I thought I might need to switch to English during our outdoor experiences because talking about nature (and all the ways we interact with it) is deeply rooted in my native language (English). I was very intimidated at the prospect of learning so many new terms.

As it turns out, we have been learning together. In many ways this has renewed my own wonder of and appreciation for the natural world. It has been a fun challenge to learn how to talk about nature by focusing on our experiences; on what we can see, touch, smell, and hear. With each season, we expand on these experiences and, consequently, our ability to talk about them in greater detail. To give an example, I remember asking my oldest when she was a toddler if she wanted to stand on a (tree) stump - I didn’t know how to say “stump” in Spanish so I asked: “¿Quieres subirte al stump?”. Afterward, I looked up how to say tree stump (el tocón) and I have never forgotten the word. Language study and nature study are mutually beneficial.

We discovered that the content of our conversations about nature experienced orally evolved into writing (and reading). We started to create our own bilingual materials in the form of calendars and nature journals.

This year, I designed a printable Spanish language perpetual nature calendar (combination of a perpetual calendar with a phenology wheel) so that I didn’t have remake the actual template by hand each year. I have made the calendar available in my tienda to inspire families to document (in multiple languages) what they are observing over the course of a year.