A friend of mine has a sister in Seattle who started one (though it wasn’t called a Grub Club). Her children were in Pre-school and Kindergarten and the schools were not the greatest with regard to curricula but the teachers were good and it was local and public so cost effective. The mom and dad started a Saturday club with the children in her daughter’s K class to supplement the learning – focusing on the outdoors (and boy does Seattle have cool outdoors stuff to do). They met either ever week or every other week (not sure which) and had kids do projects together and just have fun learning about nature, locally.
So I’ve been talking to M-ito about this for over a year and we had all kinds of names (Smug club was one – I had to explain to M-ito what that meant and why that might not be a good name) for it.
“It has to be about nature and bugs and collecting creatures,” M-ito said.
Grub was close to Smug and dealt with nature so that’s where we ended up.
We finally had our first meeting. Three families, Artinas and Randinas, M-itos two friends from Pre-K, and their parents, went to the Statue of Liberty last Sunday. How does this relate to nature? Well… we were outdoors the whole afternoon and found beautiful green space (lawn) at Liberty Island, and we took a boat ride. What more could a city kid ask for? We had the kids search for city-animals (a la Kratts Creatures – City Critters) and we listed the ones we saw as we went along – dog, squirrel, seagul, pidgeon, sparrow, rolly-poly bug, ant, moth, and beetle. We didn’t spot any rodents or cockaroaches – very grateful for that. The kids all had sketchpads to draw the things they saw as we travelled and the weather was perfect for running and playing tag on the lawn beneath the statue’s fort walls. Rolling down the hill helped also, as did airplane rides (though the spinning around made me dizzy). Next month is the Bronx Botanical Gardens with the Museum of Natural History as a rain back-up. Once a month will have to be our schedule. Sometimes things do come to fruition and man is it good when it does. M-ito had a blast. The Grub Club is official. T-shirts are next.
