Celebrate your child's love of learning

© Wondertime

Tracking lets kids spy on the secret lives of animals — even the neighbor's cat.

My kids and I are kneeling near the seventh hole of our local city golf course, peering intently at the ground. We're not hunting for stray Titleists, nor are we in danger of getting trampled by an enraged golfer playing through. It's a late winter day and the turf is blanketed with new snow. Ours are the only footprints around.

Human footprints, that is. We're on this odd adventure thanks to my kids' new fascination with animal tracking. Ethan, 5, and Hannah, 9, have willingly left the glow of their computer screens to accompany me on an activity that is part treasure hunt, part hike. The idea spelled out by the marks in the snow around us — an idea tantalizing to kids, and the stuff of storybooks — is that animals have been here, busily living their secret lives, while we humans were elsewhere, oblivious. By studying the animals' footsteps and the clues they leave behind, we can spy on them. I am delighted to see that our pursuit through the snow this afternoon has added up to enough exercise to make my two young hibernators sweaty and red cheeked.

Our interest began by chance one morning after a coating of snow had whitewashed our backyard. Ethan was excited by his discovery that little doll hands (maybe a chipmunk's?) had stopped at our compost pile's drive-through window. Hannah thought she recognized (perhaps from her supermarket study of cat food cans) the prints of the neighborhood tabby, arcing across our patio on his nightly rounds. Since then, we've made it a practice to get outside after fresh snow to try to guess what the animals have been up to. In snow-deprived months, we look in mud or damp sand for markings: When vacationing on Cape Cod in summer, we scan the beach after high tide for the triangled feet of strolling seagulls or the spindly pitchforks of plovers.

Grizzly Adams, we're not. While gazing at bird scratchings below our snow-dusted feeder, Ethan ventures earnestly, "These were made by the tooth fairy." Over by our swing set, he claims to have found bear prints. Yet if I get all didactic and pull out my field guide to find the right answer, my kids' interest melts away as quickly as a snowflake on a child's tongue. They start bickering over who gets to eat the huge acid-rain icicle dripping sinisterly from our gutter.

To encourage their enthusiasm, I've learned to ask general questions fueled by my own curiosity: What do you think the animal was doing? Was it big or small? Fast or slow? If we follow it for a while, where does it go? Can you hop like that too? (Ethan answers with an exuberant plunge into a snowbank.) Occasionally, they will be invested enough in the mystery to want to pull out one of our books and match up the tracks.

Even by this low-key method, the kids are now able to identify some of the tracks we often come across: dog prints on our sidewalk, squirrels so abundant in our yard. We notice most of the squirrel prints lead to and from our big oak. One day, Ethan spots two squirrels chasing each other, toenails clicking on bark, a death-defying 20 feet up. "Are they fighting or playing?" he asks excitedly. ("Playing," I answer, dodging my real guess, which is courting.) He may not have thought to look up at them if it wasn't for our new practice of looking down.

Today, with temperatures soaring near freezing, I've driven us four minutes to the golf course in search of bigger game. I selected this destination with care: The woods may be lovely, dark, and deep, but we're not going to see them anytime soon. Ethan can endure only about 15 minutes of hiking from car door to end point, especially if the snow is more than a few inches thick. Though older, Hannah is only slightly more stalwart, especially in damp socks. Both are usually unmoved by my inspiring invocations of Laura Ingalls Wilder's hardships. Easy on, easy off, this golf course fits the bill. Small stands of trees and a (man-made) pond provide shelter and water, two necessary ingredients for attracting animals.

I have packed hot chocolate, useful as both light refreshment and bribery (as in, "That log ahead on the hill looks like the perfect place for us to drink our hot chocolate."). Hannah is toting our tracking guides. Nonchalantly I suggest, "Let's see how many different kinds of tracks we can find."

Right off, we come across a line of dog tracks stretching across the fairway. Deprived of canine companionship in their own benighted home, the kids follow, hoping the prints will lead to the actual animal. "Where was the dog going?" I ask. "Visiting friends," suggests Hannah. The tracks pause where the animal has dug down to bare earth. Ethan says, "Maybe he was hiding something."

In a little grove, we happen upon a hollowed-out tree befitting Keebler elves. Empty acorn caps spill out, suggesting some animal has been using this as a pantry. Hannah and Ethan agree this would make a cool, even magical, fort. Ethan says, "I'd love to live there." Nearby, we discover a pile of little round droppings — what trackers tactfully call "scat." This topic is dear to Ethan's heart: His face lights up with excitement. He picks up a stick and examines our find with zeal, poking it over and over, to his sister's horror and fascination.

Toward the end of our adventure, our toes numbing and our hot chocolate gone, we discover a trunk that has been nibbled. Here, just barely out of sight of a four-lane boulevard rumbling away nearby, I'm surprised to spot the bold leap of deer tracks, their unmistakable two toes forming pointed ovals in the snow.

We've been on this course many times to sled noisily into the sand traps and have never seen a deer, never considered the possibility one could survive here. "Where do they go during golf season?" I wonder aloud. "Do they have a tab at the clubhouse?" "They can't go to the supermarket like we can," observes Hannah. "They don't have humans to take care of them." For a moment, the three of us stand staring at the deer tracks, considering these wild lives lived so close to our own. Their trail, like little hearts, points into a thicket, then disappears in the deep snow.

The greatest power of tracking with children, I'm learning, is not a multiple-choice matching test but the glimpse into the lives of the animals whose footprints we follow. When they get older, Ethan and Hannah may want to learn to discern a mink track from a lynx track or pursue clues far into the woods to find a fox's secret lair. For this afternoon, though, it's enough that my kids have walked a mile in these animals' footsteps — or at least a few hundred yards.

Try This!

After fresh snow or on a damp beach, have your kids close their eyes while you walk (or hop or run) to a hiding place. They must follow your tracks to find you. Backtrack or walk to and from several wrong hiding places to keep it challenging. Or you can make like a squirrel and bury a cache of treats for kids to find if they trace your steps.

For year-round backyard tracking, leave out a cookie sheet dusted with cornmeal and a lure such as peanut butter in the middle. In the morning, check for prints left behind in the powder. Just don't try this in bear territory (or on a rainy night, which will produce mush that looks like something the Pilgrims ate).