Contact with some sort of ecosystem is a daily occurrence for everyone. It surrounds us and is a part of everything we touch. The impact that humanity plays on the Earth’s ecosystems is not realized by many people. While it may be difficult for most of us to comprehend the universe with the naked eye, we can go out and study the world around us without the use of even a microscope as long as we have some idea of what we’re looking for. Studying a microcosm, or smaller world of organic activity, can help us to understand larger principles and systems at work on a major scale.

As schoolchildren, we study the basic physical sciences, including biology, physics, chemistry, and geology. College students will learn even more about some of these topics in fulfilling the general education requirements for just about any diploma. Yet, because few of us study all the sciences at length, we often do not understand very much about the way the natural world works. That’s why personal study of a nearby ecosystem may help to expand our knowledge base in useful ways.

Start by reading an introductory lesson on the type of system you want to study. It might be about a woodland area, a bog or marsh, a river or pond, or a plain or meadow. You could study a farmer’s crop of corn or beans, or a neighbor’s trickling stream. Wherever you look in the rural outdoors, you can find a mini-system of natural principles operating to support a variety of life forms. If you have kids or grandchildren, or teach school or children’s church, you may even want to arrange a field trip for an hour or so to let them learn about nature the experiential way. Go over the basic guidelines for identifying an ecosystem and how the parts work together to create a system that supports living creatures and plants.

Choose a good-weather day for the expedition. If you plan to investigate a neighbor’s property, get permission first. Be sure there are no safety hazards like swampland, ditches, or gas lines that someone could stumble over. Let everyone know the boundaries for the study project, along with an idea of what to look for. Then it might be a good idea to pair everyone in two’s to keep anyone from wandering off or getting lost. Another advantage to twosomes is they can check their impressions with each other to clarify findings.

Have everyone describe the terrain, the climactic and environmental conditions, and the dominant weather cycles for the region. They can do this afterward in discussion or take notes while in the field. Then they should look for typical life forms in the area, including species and genus, if they know how to classify organisms. Otherwise, a simple list by common names is fine. They should at least be able to separate insects from mammals, and so on.

Take it slow and easy. Thats a good motto for learning a new skill or going through a big life transition. When you decide to explore becoming a vegetarian, it is very easy to get scared off by what appears to be a difficult road ahead. But the truth is, there is an easy way and a hard way to become a vegetarian. So in keeping with our motto of the day of “make it easy on yourself”, lets discuss vegetarianism the easy way.

First of all along with learning a new way to eat, you are also giving up something you probably have loved to eat for years. So to reduce the difficulty in going through this transition, don’t try to accomplish the entire transition in one day. We have a mistaken concept about vegetarians that the conversion is instantaneous as though one day the person was eating all the meat he or she could find and in a flash they became a robe wearing, mantra singing vegetarian. But that is complete myth. Most successful vegetarians found there way into the discipline in stages and gave up meat slowly.

Select specific items you will eliminate from specific meals and just accomplish that for a week or so.Then once you have conquered that step, add lunch and then much later add dinner. And don’t throw your hands up and give up if you have a moment of weakness and have a hamburger one day. You won’t be drummed out of the vegetarian society for one mistake in your program. Just get back with it and keep on keeping on.

Find ways to see some success by being reasonable and sensible about how you approach your meal planning. If one of your goals for switching to a meatless diet is to lose weight, don’t substitute sugars and sweats for the meat. If you find yourself eating without meat but each day you have a big bowl of fruit drowned in sugary additives, you won’t lose the weight and you might mistakenly think your program failed you. Think about what you eat so you don’t sabotage your own diet.

By doing your shopping in your own grocery store and buying more food from the produce section than the meat section, you will be working with foods like carrots, onions, garlic, broccoli, celery and cabbage and that familiarity will make the transition to becoming a vegetarian easier to take. Also by shopping where you are comfortable and eating “normal” foods, you eliminate the sensation that you are joining some bizarre cult.

Now make it fun. Yes it can be fun to be a vegetarian. You can start shopping at farmer’s markets instead at the boring grocery store and select very fresh produce and vegetables for your next cooking experiment. Not only are outdoor markets more fun, you will find them cheaper so instead of seeing your food budget go up because of becoming a vegetarian, it goes down. Then by working as a family to find fun vegetarian recipes and working together to make them, everybody gets in on the act discovering how delicious vegetarian meals can be.