The weather has warmed up some these last few days so I took the opportunity to take the kids out for a walk. In an effort to get them to notice some of the amazing things in the world they take for granted, I asked them to look for intriguing things.

"There is nothing to look at," they told me.

So enmeshed in their beeping and flashing world of video games and blockbusters, they were incapable of seeing many of the denizens that share our area. They could not spot the cottontail rabbit camouflaged in the dry grass or the hawk sitting in a remarkably low branch along the train tracks. They only saw when I pointed them out.

After a while they became a little more enthused about our adventure. We turned over stones and rotting trees in search of snakes and other critters. They learned that snails don't always live in water and that centipedes can have dozens of legs.

We did not only look at the living things but some of the inanimate things. I don't think that they quite get the fact that you really don't have to go that far to find amazing things... but I think that a seed of appreciation has been planted.

These are some of the things we looked at that day.