letters to nature kids

A Letter About Attention and Mindfulness

/ Michael Smith / Leave a comment

The latest of the “Letters to Nature Kids” is about how I like to use my attention when taking a walk in nature. It describes noticing your breathing and then imagining that your attention is like a light that you can turn toward one thing and another.

I wrote, “When you are outside, try imagining that your attention is a light that you can shine on one thing or another. Put the light on a tree and keep it there for a count of five (or more). Then turn the light toward something nearby and count how long you can keep your attention there.”

This is borrowed from mindfulness, though I’m not trying to teach meditation in this letter. I just want to share some ways to really notice and enjoy things and help strengthen the ability to pay attention.

In the letter, I wrote, “You start narrowing your attention – your flashlight – to a particular flower that has something in it. The flashlight beam gets so narrow that you have to get down near the flower to focus attention that much. The insect is a tiny baby form of a katydid, and look at those black-and-white antennae! Keep the focused light of your attention there a little longer.” The point is to be able to direct our attention purposefully and stay with something long enough to really explore it, like the colors and structure of that primrose flower.

If you know someone who might be interested in this, please share it. Letters to Nature Kids is always a free download (there’s a donation button in the right column of the website for anyone who feels inclined). You can browse all those 25+ letters on the Letters to You page.

A Letter About Nature Kids and Palmetto SP

/ Michael Smith / Leave a comment

You may recall that I write periodically to “nature kids.” It’s a free pdf download from the Letters To You page, written for older kids and teens who are drawn to wild places and the things that live there.

This time I included a bit about why I write these letters. Some of it is about sharing places and experiences that may encourage young people to go see preserves, parks, and such places themselves. As an example, I talked about Ruthann’s and my trip to Palmetto State Park in 2022. (I also blogged about it here.)

If you know any kids who would be interested in this current letter, please share it with them (in print or via a link). I mentioned that I’m currently writing about nature kids in several articles for Green Source Texas and noted that – with parent permission – I very much would like to talk with a couple of serious nature kids. And thanks!

A Letter About Small Things

/ Michael Smith / Leave a comment

I have experimented with writing letters to you, because I want to communicate about nature and I love the idea of doing so in a personal way. I started with Letters to Nature Kids, which are short and informal “letters” about being out somewhere, or about how nature experience is related to gratitude or coping with fear, and so on.

This latest one has to do with all the small wonders we can notice when out for a winter’s walk. Finding a half-hidden lizard or noticing a tiny shell and tracking its identity down (it was a Texas liptooth) make a walk fascinating, even when the discoveries aren’t very dramatic. Being able to notice and appreciate small things is a valuable skill, and the letter is an attempt to show that this is true.

I notice that these letters get downloaded fairly regularly, but I rarely hear from anyone about them. That makes the whole thing very experimental – writing for the reader who I imagine might read it but not really knowing how a reader felt about it. If you wanted to bring the whole idea of a letter closer to reality, you could write back to me. One way would be to use the contact page here, or there is an email address at the end of the letter. Then we would be having something closer to a conversation, and I would be very grateful for that.

But if not, it’s OK. My hope is that the letter gets read, and that it gets the reader thinking about things and wanting to get outside for a walk.

A “Letter” for New Year’s

/ Michael Smith / Leave a comment

Happy New Year everyone! Thinking about what we do to mark New Year’s Eve and where it comes from, I’ve written a new Letter to Nature Kids. I hope you will have a look and share it with any kids who might want to have a look. (When you click the link it will download as a pdf)

Have a safe and happy New Year’s Eve. May we all have a good 2026; may the light return figuratively as well as literally.

A “Letter” About Hot Times in Winter

/ Michael Smith / Leave a comment

The weather lately is kind of a roller coaster. We’ve had some snow and ice, and last weekend the temperature out in the woods where I sat was 87 degrees. Maybe some wild weather is par for the course for North Texas, but as I wrote to nature kids, a warming climate makes it hard for the plants and animals to show up at the right times. What if flowers bloom before some of the pollinators arrive? What if some species become active but something they rely on for food, or nesting, or other critical function isn’t ready?

So I introduce the word phenology and the ideas behind it, not a lengthy discussion but just something to think about while enjoying a few unusually warm days in winter. Letters to Nature Kids is intended for older kids, teens, and adults, too. It’s a free download on the “Letters” page.

Letters to Nature Kids – When We Feel Fear

/ Michael Smith / Leave a comment

I write to older kids, and to the kid in all of us, when I write Letters to Nature Kids. Usually the letter describes a place in nature or the wildlife and plants found there. Sometimes I touch on themes having to do with the lives we lead within. I did that this time in the September issue.

What I wrote was triggered by the recent school shooting, but it’s broader than that. We hear reports that children are going through unusually tough times with stress and depression, which you can look into here, here, and here. Bullying affects many kids, and can have very serious effects. And there is our agonizing lack of effective response to school shootings, which leave survivors traumatized.

So the current letter to nature kids talks briefly about when we experience fear, how it is healthy to acknowledge it and support friends and family who are worried or afraid, and there’s also a couple of paragraphs about how nature can be helpful. It is a free download on the Letters to You page.

Letters … From the Woods

/ Michael Smith / Leave a comment

I have begun writing something that starts with what I experience somewhere in a prairie or the woods, and ends up in front of you, like a letter. I’ll write to tell you what I saw and experienced (and if you write back, that would be great!). I’m drawn to the idea of letters, a throwback to a time when we wrote to each other on paper, to be delivered to our houses and held in our hands as we read them. Now when we send something, we use the Internet and the delivery is more foolproof and quicker. I guess we don’t so much mind reading on screens.

I’ve been doing something similar when I write “Letters to Nature Kids,” nineteen of them so far in the past couple of years. They are written with older elementary school kids and teens in mind, exploring such topics as seeing horned lizards, writing in a nature journal, venomous snakes and safety, thankfulness (on Thanksgiving), and so on. Each one is a free download from the Letters to You page of this website.

And now I’ve written the first of what might be many “Letters From the Woods,” also downloadable as a pdf document at this website. I can design and format it more flexibly than I could a blog post, and you could easily hang onto it or share it if you wanted. I can post a link to each new one here on the blog, and you could click the link or go to the Letters to You page.

It’s kind of an experiment – would you let me know what you think? I’d truly be grateful for any feedback, either as a comment on this post or an email to me (livesinnature@outlook.com). Here is the first one:

A February Letter

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I’ve just uploaded a “Letters to Nature Kids” issue. These are free, short pdf documents written for young people and anyone else who is still a little bit in touch with that kid they used to be. Most of them focus on some place or some species worth learning about, and some of them have a bit of a holiday theme. This one touches on Groundhog Day, National Send a Card to a Friend Day (obscure, but we should try it!), and of course Valentine’s Day and the various ways that love graces our relationships with friends, spouses, or even nature. I hope you’ll go have a look at it here.