A child's emotional and sensory response to the natural world matters more as a foundation than factual knowledge of it; the facts are seeds that only grow later if emotion has prepared the ground. Awakening wonder and delight comes first, and information can wait until the child is ready to want it.
An adult does not need to know the names of things to nurture a child's wonder; what is needed is to rediscover with the child the joy, excitement and mystery of the world. The role is sharing and feeling alongside the child rather than teaching or identifying.
The sense of wonder is innate in children but tends to dim before adulthood, dulled and lost by many. Sustained contact with nature serves as a lifelong antidote to boredom, disenchantment and sterile preoccupation with artificial things.
One can sharpen perception of the familiar by imagining a sense had been encountered only once, or would never be experienced again; this treats dulled faculties as recoverable through deliberate attention. Carson applies this to sight, sound, smell and touch as distinct channels each worth isolating.
Carson carried her baby nephew Roger down to a rainy, wind-torn beach at night, and both laughed with pure delight at the wildness rather than recoiling from it. The shared excitement, not any lesson, was the point and the thing that transmitted.
Deliberately exploring at unconventional times and scales, at night, in rain, with hand lenses on tiny creatures, reveals a world ordinarily missed and deepens the sense of mystery. Breaking the routine conditions of observation is itself a method for sustaining wonder.