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You are here: Home / Activities & Crafts / My Kids Love The Edwin Warner Park Nature Center Ponds and Creeks

My Kids Love The Edwin Warner Park Nature Center Ponds and Creeks

June 6, 2010 by Scarlet

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My kids and I love going to the Edwin Warner Park Nature Center in Nashville, Tennessee. It is located by Highway 100 and Old Hickory Blvd in the Bellevue area of Nashville.  It is loads of fun to play in the ponds and creeks with kids or without!

Exercise Your Outdoor Bill of Rights And Explore Nature

While I was in the bathroom at the Nature Center, I read about the Tennessee Children’s Outdoor Bill of Rights on the back of a stall door! The TN Children’s Outdoor Bill of Rights states that every child should have the opportunity to walk in the woods, play outside, explore nature, watch wildlife, grow a garden, splash in the water, camp under the stars, learn to swim, climb a tree, go fishing, fly a kite, and visit a farm. How cool is that? Never thought about it in such official terms but all of those things are paramount to childhood! A person could do almost all of those things right at  the Warner Parks!

Warner Park Nature Center

Edwin Warner Park Nature Center In Nashville

My kids have five favorite areas of the Percy Warner Park Nature Center:

1. The Nature Center Building

The Nature Center Building is really packed with cool things for kids to enjoy from nature puzzles to aquariums to microscopes to identification guides for birds and more.  The staff is always friendly and they often have a couple of cool events you can sign up for each week that are free.  

Nature Center Play Area

2. The Nature Play Area 

The play area is kind of like a playground only instead of play structures, they have a dirt mound and a little wood cabin.  It is the perfect place to play in the dirt and in the spring and summer, they have water access so it becomes the perfect spot to get muddy.  Mud pies, dirt gardens, water tunnels- basically a child’s dream and a mother’s nightmare. (Unless you just relax and remember how fun it was when you were little and bring a change of clothes with you!)

story walk trail


3. The Hiking Trails

So many great hiking trails! Some or our favorites will bring you to an amphitheater where your kids can put on a show, a bird blind where you kids can spot birds feeding, and a story walk.  My kids love the StoryWalk Trail with a page of the book about every 15 feet. They read and then run to the next one.

4. The Garden

They have a huge edible garden and a wild flowers garden. We love reading the labels and seeing what they have growing.

5. The Ponds And Creeks

Our absolute favorite part of the Edwin Warner Park is just outside of the Nature Center, they have several ponds. The biggest one is really the star attraction. It has step stones through the water by the edge of the pond. That in itself is enough to capture every child’s heart. But wait, there is is much more.

Edwin Warner Ponds and Creeks With Kids

Edwin Warner Park Ponds

Today, I will just focus on how awesome the ponds and creeks are right next to the Nature Center. The ponds at the Nature Center are just so wonderful because most city folk and even many country dwellers don’t get to explore ponds and it is so much fun! The spring time is so special because tons and tons of tadpoles appear! If you bring your kids back frequently like I do, they can watch the whole process from frog eggs floating on the pond to tadpoles, to tadpoles with hind legs, to tadpoles with hind and front legs, to tiny frogs everywhere! We have spotted three different types of frogs there and the bullfrog tadpoles are always amazing to see.

My daughter loves to try to catch things and when she does, she takes a closer look for a few minutes and then sets them free again. The Nature Center sometimes allows you catch tadpoles as long as you then release them. At other times, they ask you to leave the ponds undisturbed because of the mating season. They post signs or you can ask a Nature Center employee if you want clarification.

Plus, we always see tons of small fish. We often see spotted newts and water turtles. A couple of times saw snakes- a Northern water snake, and a banded water snake. Not to mention the dragonflies that buzz around! These ponds are just so awesome!

Edwin Warner Park Creeks

We also love the creeks at Edwin Warner Park. Actually we love the creeks everywhere! I spent a huge amount of my summers in creeks as I kid and I loved it. So it feels great to be able to bring my kids to play in the creeks. We bring nets and a little plastic fish tank so we can observe what we have caught before we release.

When I was a kid, the creeks were full of minnows. I always worked hard to catch them but there were so many species. The Nature Center Creeks don’t seem to have very many, if any minnows. I am not sure why that is. None the less, we always have lots of fun finding crawfish and salamanders.

My daughter takes after me, and at 5, she catch salamanders with the best of them! We also catch crawfish/ crayfish, however you want to say the name! I showed her where to hold them to avoid getting pinched. My son, who is only three, sticks mostly to trying to catch water bugs that glide around on top of the water. I was never good at that either. Man are they fast!

I always have to force them to leave because they are never ready to go! I hope that every kid gets to enjoy activities in nature like playing in ponds and creeks. If you are in the Nashville area, the Edwin Warner Park Nature Center is definitely worth a visit- actually many, many visits!

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Thanks for reading Family Focus Blog, which has been named a top family blog for parenting resources. It was created in 2010 by Nashville mom blogger, Scarlet Paolicchi. She shares tips for better family life, parenting, family fun activities, eco-friendly lifestyle, family food ideas, family travel, and home decor. Family Focus Blog has been named #3 in Cision PR’s 50 U.S. Top Mom Blog list. Scarlet Paolicchi is the author of four books.

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