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As educators, we can never give a child what we don't have.  In many ways, we ourselves are the curriculum. Many years ago, during a period of intense study of birds, bird language, and bird behavior, I was with my class of young ones in the forest.  Every bird I heard, I tried to imitate.  I wasn't always good at it, but I tried.  Never having spoken to the children about what I was doing, I simply paid attention and responded in their presence, all the while serving the snack, or tying someone's shoes, grinding rocks for paint, or any number of other tasks that needed tending.  After many weeks of this, at the end of the morning, a 4 year old girl occupied with packing her lunch back into her backpack, focus and attention directed on the effort, when a nearby acorn woodpecker called out from the tall sycamore tree above.  Wacka wacka wacka it called, to greet a family member, returning from a forage.  Without lifting her head or pausing in her undertaking, she answered the woodpecker with her own wacka, wacka, wacka.   I remained silent on the matter with great difficulty.  Inside, I was cheering and celebrating her broadened awareness, her sense of connection, and her sense of normalcy in it all.  Being in relationship with the world around her was a given.  It would likely always be. ~ Lia Grippo (Reaching Nature Connection Conference presenter, The Academy of Forest Kindergarten Teachers, Co-founder/Instructor   www.forestkindergartenacademy.org)