Nature Journal Prompt: Finding a sit spot

What is a sit spot? 

According to the Wilderness Awareness School, “There are 2 basic requirements that every sit spot should have 1) It needs to be close to your house and 2) you need to feel safe while there. It is ideal for it to be wild, have a water source, be abundant with wildlife, have a view, and a whole slew of other things. While those are nice to have, they are not essential. The best sit spot is one that you go to!

Find one place in your natural world that you will visit all the time and get to know it as your best friend. Let this be a place where you learn to sit still – alone, often, and quietly — as well as playfully explore beyond. This will become your place of intimate connection with nature.”

Coyote’s Guide to Connecting With Nature  explains a sit spot:

The idea is simple: guide people to find a special place in nature where they become comfortable with just being there, still and quiet. In this place the lessons of nature will seep in. [The] Sit Spot will become personal because it feels private and intimate; the place where they meet their curiosity; the place where they feel wonder; the place where they get eye-to-eye with a diversity of life-forms and weather patterns; the place where they face their fears – of bugs, of being alone, of the dark – and grow past them; and the place where they meet nature as their home.

Examples of sit spots

• A tree branch
• A large rock to sit on by the beach, river, or any other water way.
• In the middle of a field
• vacant lot
• a window looking out a bird feeder, tree, or garden.

                                        

Methods to finding a sit spot

To get your child comfortable with their surroundings or just to help encourage the discovery of their own sit spot try the following.

• A game of hide and go seek
• Ask them where they have seen animals, and plants in the backyard

Next Post: Sit Spot Found