Make Your Own Montessori Moments:

Our visit to Linnaeus Teaching Garden

It’s easy for me to get into a rut when planning activities for my family. I have my staples…the Tulsa Zoo, Zink Park, the OK Aquarium.  And while I’ll always be a zoo groupie, there are SO many places around Tulsa that just can’t be overlooked.

Case-and-Point: Saturday morning, my sister, mother and I took the kids (ages 7, 3 1/2 and 2 1/2) to Woodward Park for the scavenger hunt that the Tulsa Garden Center created. While the scavenger hunt wasn’t what I originally expected (I was thinking “go find a pine cone,” etc.), it lead us on an adventure that turned out to be fun and memorable for all.

Like most activities there are tons of distractions that make it even more fun. My sister and I like to call them our “Montessori Moments.” It’s when we stop whatever we’re doing and let the kids use all of their senses to learn about something cool going on in nature. Our Saturday Montessori Moment came in the form of tad poles outside of the Historic Conservatory. Which can often times end up with one of us Googling things on our iPhones to get it right.

The hunt included things like:

Find the Narcissus statue at the Historic Conservatory (Did you know that Narcissus loved his refelection so much that he froze while looking at it?)

Poems & Promises statue at the Anne Hathaway Herb Garden (Did you know that Anne Hathaway was married to William Shakespeare; who’s quote is on the book of the statue?)

Basalt Fountain at Linnaeus Gardens (Did you know that basalt is a fine-grained, hard rock that forms when bits of lava shoot our of valcanoes?)

I have been to Woodward Park many times, but I had never even known about the Linnaeus Gardens. This is a must do!

Take a picnic and go check it out with your kids (not stroller friendly). It’s absolutely gorgeous and all this time I had no idea it was even there.

We only got about halfway through the hunt before we had a soccer game to get ready for/ the pregnant lady needed to eat, so we’ll have to go back another time to finish it. I left there feeling like I had gone on a mini-vacation, but was only a mile from my house. I wanted to call all of my friends and tell them to go do what we just did. It was that lovely.

I heart Tulsa.