An eclectic, ethnographic methodology is presented for studying the content and acquisition of children's environmental learning, knowledge, and interaction in a transitional economy in rural Sudan. Drawing on methods of geography, linguistics, and anthropology, the paper attempts to provide a valid alternative to most of the methods used in research on environmental cognition and behavior. It is especially appropriate for work undertaken in non-Western settings. Two methodological issues addressed are that researchers need to be aware that biases and values affect the research process and that methods appropriate to study in one culture are not necessarily appropriate to study in another. The study focuses on a sample population of seventeen 10-year-olds from a village of 350 households in central Sudan. The major portion of the paper emphasizes the researcher's methodology including (1) the combination of random and directed observations, providing a complete picture of the activities of the sample population; (2) verbal methods, including ethno-semantic interviews, providing information on the content and origins of children's environmental knowledge; (3) demonstrative methods, including child-led walks, landscape modeling, and geo-dramas; and (4) "oral-geographies," conducted with parents and grandparents of children, to discover the environmental goals for their children as well as their own childhood environmental interactions. (LH)