43. Use nature as a partner to strengthen family bonds. What better way to enhance parent-child attachment than to walk in the woods together, disengaging from distracting electronics, advertising, and peer pressure? When reminiscing about childhood, grown children often mention outdoors adventures as their best memories—even if they complained about such outings at the time! And if you’re a parent who missed out on nature as a child, now’s your chance.
44. Be prepared. While it’s important to learn to maximize the health benefits of nature experiences, it’s also important to minimize health risks. Learn how to prevent tick- and mosquito-borne illnesses and other outdoor dangers. Consult your doctor or online sources, including a good Web site offered by the Centers for Disease Control (www.cdc.gov/features/outdoorsafety/). Pick up a first aid kit.
GOOD BOOKS FOR KIDS AND FAMILIES
Attracting Birds, Butterflies and Other Backyard Wildlife, David Mizejewski (Creative Homeowner, 2004)
Backyard Bird Watching for Kids: How to Attract, Feed, and Provide Homes for Birds, George H. Harrison (Willow Creek Press, 1997)
Best Hikes with Children series, guides by geographic region (The Mountaineers)
Camp Out!: The Ultimate Kids’ Guide, Lynn Brunelle (Workman, 2007)
Children’s Special Places, David Sobel (Wayne State University Press, 2001)
A Child’s Introduction to the Night Sky: The Story of the Stars, Planets, and Constellations—and How You Can Find Them in the Sky, Michael Driscoll (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2004)
The Cloudspotter’s Guide: The Science, History, and Culture of Clouds, Gavin Pretor-Pinney (Perigee, 2007)
Coyote’s Guide to Connecting Kids with Nature, Jon Young, Ellen Haas, Evan McGown (Wilderness Awareness School, 2008)
Creating a Family Garden: Magical Outdoor Spaces for All Ages, Bunny Guinness (Abbeville Press, 1996)
Fandex Family Field Guides series (Workman, 1999)
Father Nature: Fathers as Guides to the Natural World, ed. Paul S. Piper and Stan Tag (University of Iowa Press, 2003)
Go Outside: Over 130 Activities for Outdoor Adventures, Nancy Blakey (Tricycle Press, 2002)
Golden Field Guides series (St. Martins)
How to Build an Igloo: And Other Snow Shelters, Norbert E. Yankielun (Norton, 2007)
I Love Dirt!, Jennifer Ward (Trumpeter, 2008)
The Joy of Hiking: Hiking the Trailmaster Way, John McKinney (Wilderness Press, 2005)
Keeping a Nature Journal: Discover a Whole New Way of Seeing the World Around You, Clare Walker Leslie and Charles E. Roth (Storey, 2003)
The Kid’s Book of Weather Forecasting: Build a Weather Station, ‘Read the Sky’ and Make Predictions!, Mark Breen and Kathleen Friestad (Williamson, 2000).
My Nature Journal, Adrienne Olmstead (Pajaro, 1999)
National Audubon Society Field Guides series (Knopf)
Peterson Field Guides and Peterson First Guides series (Houghton Mifflin)
Rock and Fossil Hunter, Ben Morgan (DK Publishing, 2005)
Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots: Gardening Together with Children, Sharon Lovejoy (Workman, 1999)
The Sense of Wonder, Rachel Carson (HarperCollins, 1998)
Sharing Nature with Children, Joseph Cornell (Dawn Publications, 1998).
Shelters, Shacks & Shanties: The Classic Guide to Building Wilderness Shelters, (Dover, 2004)
Sibley Field Guides series (Knopf)
Summer: A User’s Guide, Suzanne Brown (Artisan, 2007)
Sunflower Houses: Inspiration from the Garden, Sharon Lovejoy (Workman, 2001)
Take a Backyard Bird Walk, Jane Kirkland (Stillwater, 2001)
Track Pack: Animal Tracks in Full Life Size, Ed Gray and DeCourcy L. Taylor, Jr. (Stackpole, 2003)
Tracking and the Art of Seeing: How to Read Animal Tracks and Sign, Paul Rezendes (Collins, 1999)
Treehouses and Playhouses You Can Build, David and Jeanie Stiles (Gibbs Smith, 2006)
Unplugged Play, Bobbi Conner (Workman, 2007)
Young Birders’ Guide to Birds of Eastern North America, Bill Thompson III (Houghton Mifflin, 2008)
For additional books, see Suggested Reading
Suggestions for Transforming Our Communities
45. Discover what your community’s nature-oriented and educational organizations can do to help get your child outside in a safe environment.
46. Face the fear. In most neighborhoods the perception of stranger-danger exceeds the reality. Teach your child to watch for behaviors, not necessarily for strangers. According to family psychologist John Rosemond, “Telling a child to stay away from strangers is relatively ineffective. ‘Stranger’ is not a concept young children understand easily. Instead, children ought to be taught to be on the lookout for specific threatening behaviors and situations.” This view is supported by the U.S. Department of Justice.
47. Know your neighbors. Invest in the life of the block and the surrounding community. Create a play-watch group and ask fellow parents to sit on front stoops or porches several hours a week, available at a distance as children play. Such parent groups can take children on trips to local or regional parks.
48. Join or create a “nature gym.” In the United Kingdom, families and individuals are banding together for regular exercise in nature. Another opportunity is offered by the California-based organization Hooked on Nature, which helps families and individuals form “nature circles” to meet and explore their relationship to nature. A nature circle guide is available at www.hookedonnature.org.
49. Support scouting, 4-H, and other traditional programs—and encourage them to deepen their commitment to connecting kids with nature. One example: in 2006, Camp Fire USA, Central Ohio Council, launched Vision 20/10: Reuniting Children and Nature to bring “10,000 kids into the woods by 2010.” Also consider supporting new, nontraditional scouting organizations.
50. Help green your city. Push for better urban planning in developing and redeveloping areas, including tree-planting guidelines, more natural parks, and walkable neighborhoods. Lobby for affordable public transportation, so that urban children and families can easily reach nature areas. Developers and builders: create green communities, or, better yet, renovate decaying neighborhoods with green oases that connect children and adults to nature.
51. In your neighborhood challenge conventional covenants and restrictions that discourage or prohibit natural play. Rewrite the rules to allow kids to build forts and tree houses and to plant gardens. Make sure they have access to nearby nature.
52. Help naturalize old and new urban parks. During the last two decades, designers of natural play areas have become skilled at creating living landscapes for parks with high foot traffic. Such areas can be distributed throughout every city.
53. Reinvent the vacant lot. Developers often leave set-aside land—slices of property not large enough to be playing fields, not located conveniently to be pocket parks, but that can serve well as islands of wildness. These and other urban and suburban plots can be transformed into adventure playgrounds or “wild zones” (www.wild-zone.net).
54. Nature centers, nature preserves, and wildlife sanctuaries: Review programs and facilities to see how to provide more unstructured play for young children and how to encourage teenagers to volunteer. Pay as much attention to parents as to children, particularly younger adults who are decreasingly likely to have had much experience in nature when they were children.
55. Conservation organizations: Build a future environmental constituency by supporting programs to get kids outside, not only to learn about conservation but to experience the joy of nature. Become involved in regional campaigns to reconnect children with nature; measure children’s engagement in nature and include this information in reports about endangered or threatened species.
56. Protect open space by promoting the health and education benefits of nature, especially for children. Pledge to dedicate a portion of any proposed open space to children and families in the surrounding area, with
, ideally, nature centers to provide education for schools, including outdoor-oriented preschools. Download the “Health Benefits of Parks” article by the Trust for Public Land (www.tpl.org).
57. Recruit families to volunteer on the annual National Public Lands Day. In 2006, a hundred thousand people built trails and bridges, planted trees and shrubs, and removed trash and invasive plants. For information see www.publiclandsday.org.
58. Religious organizations, take a leadership role. In Houston, for example, inner-city churches, nonprofits, and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department work together to take inner-city kids camping, fishing, and hiking. Their goal: the development of life skills and strong moral character through shared experiences in nature.
59. As a young person, become a “natural leader.” Help organize regional campaigns, or volunteer at nature centers or with such programs as the Sierra Club’s Building Bridges to the Outdoors and Inner City Outings, the Student Conservation Association, Outward Bound, and the Service and Conservation Corps. Others who have youth engagement programs are the National Wildlife Federation, Audubon Society, and Nature Conservancy. Faith-based summer camps also offer opportunities to serve. The Sierra Club and the Children & Nature Network are pursuing the creation of a Natural Leaders network.
60. Consider a career change to a nature-oriented job. Conservation organizations are experiencing a “brain drain” as baby boomers retire; this presents career opportunities you may not have considered. Or, if you wish to stay in your current field, consider ways to make the children and nature movement part of it.
61. Participate in Take a Child Outside Week, an annual international program that originated at the North Carolina Museum of Natural History (www.takeachildoutside.org).
Pursuits for Businesses, Attorneys, and Health Care Providers
62. Give corporate leadership and support to the creation of regional and national campaigns that connect children to nature, through contributions of money, services, employee volunteer time, or goods in kind.
63. Adopt a targeted effort. Your company can fund bus services for underbudgeted school field trips, sponsor outdoor classrooms for schools, underwrite nature centers and programs for vulnerable children, join with land trust organizations to protect open space—and help build family nature centers on that land.
64. For your own employees, sponsor on-site nature-based child care centers, as well as nature retreats for employees and their families.
65. Save your own business. The outdoor equipment and sporting goods industry faces diminished sales if the divide between the young and nature continues to widen. The industry can help raise public awareness about the benefits of nature to child development and on a practical level can put more entry-level gear in the hands of children and families, particularly those who cannot afford to buy it. To find out more, contact the Outdoor Industry Foundation (www.outdoorindustryfoundation.org), the Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation (www.rbff.org), or Anglers’ Legacy (www.anglerslegacy.org).
66. Construction and urban design professionals: convene conferences at local, state, and national levels on how to create new kinds of housing developments that connect residents to nature. Establish incentives for child- and nature-based development. Louise Chawla, a professor at the University of Colorado, proposes a children and nature design certification along the lines of the green industry’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System. A good resource: Children, Youth & Environments Center for Research and Design (thunder1.cudenver.edu/cye).
67. Lawyers and insurance agencies: promote the concept of comparative risk as a legal and social standard. Establish public risk commissions to examine areas of our lives that have been radically changed by litigation, including the experience of nature. Create a Leave No Child Inside legal defense fund that would, using pro bono attorneys, help families and organizations fight egregious lawsuits that restrict children’s play in nature and bring media attention to the issues. One provocative resource is Common Good (www.anglerslegacy.org).
68. Health care providers and public health officials: in your community advocate children’s contact with nature as integral to healthy development. In the ongoing search for answers to child obesity, attention-deficit disorder, and childhood depression, health care researchers, practitioners, and public health officials should emphasize free outdoor play, especially in natural surroundings, as much as they now do organized sports. At the national level, health care associations can support nature therapy as an addition to the traditional approaches.
69. Create a “grow outside” campaign. Pediatricians and other health professionals, using office posters, pamphlets, and personal persuasion, can promote the physical and mental health benefits of nature play. This effort might be modeled on the national physical fitness campaign launched by President John F. Kennedy. A similar approach, “green checkups,” is proposed by the National Wildlife Federation: “State health and natural resource departments can follow the lead of the American Academy of Pediatrics and ask doctors to recommend regular outdoor time as part of a wellness check for children.”
Ways Educators, Parent-Teacher Groups, and Students Can Promote Natural School Reform
70. Parent-teacher groups: support educators who sponsor nature clubs, nature classroom activities, and nature field trips. Establish annual awards for the teachers and principals who most creatively and effectively exemplify the “leave no child inside” slogan.
71. Become a natural teacher. Learn more about the cognitive benefits of nature experience. Also learn how nature outings help reduce teacher burnout. Resources include: Green Teacher magazine, available in English, Spanish, and French (www.greenteacher.com), and the Learning with Nature Idea Book, published by the Arbor Day Foundation (www.arborday.org).
72. Ask your students to take the nature-deficit disorder survey. Created by Dave Wood, an eighth-grade teacher at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., for his students and for National Environmental Education Week, the survey is available at www.eeweek.org/resources/survey.htm.
73. Green the K–12 curricula. Tap professional resource programs, among them Project Learning Tree (www.plt.org) and Project WILD (www.projectwild.org), which tie nature-oriented concepts to all major school subjects, requirements, and skill areas. The National Environmental Education and Training Foundation’s Classroom Earth (classroomearth.org) maintains a directory of environmental education programs and resources for K–12 teachers, parents, and students.
74. Teach the teachers. Many educators, especially new teachers, may feel inadequately trained to give their students an outdoors experience, so programs must be created and existing ones broadened. Many wildlife refuges, working with nonprofit organizations, provide professional development programs that have been correlated to public school curriculum standards (www.fws.gov/refuges). For example, an interdisciplinary workshop called Teach the Teachers is regularly offered at Patuxent Research Refuge in Maryland.
75. Green the schoolyards. Tap the knowledge of such programs as Eco-Schools in Europe (www.eco-schools.org), Evergreen in Canada (www.evergreen.ca/en), and the Natural Learning Initiative (www.naturalearning.org) in the United States. A worldwide list of schoolyard greening organizations, including ones in Canada, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States, can be found at www.ecoschools.com. To get started, send for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s “Schoolyard Habitat Project Guide” (www.fws.gov/chesapeakebay/schoolyd.htm).
76. Create nature preschools, where children begin their school years by knowing the physical world firsthand. Encourage nature-based public, charter, or independent K–12 schools that place community and nature experience (not only environmental education) at the center of the curriculum. Resources include Antioch’s Center for Place-based Education (www.anei.org/pages/89_cpbe.cfm).
77. Establish an eco club. One example: Crenshaw High School Eco Club is one of the most popular clubs in the predomi
nately African-American high school in Los Angeles. Students have received their first introduction to the natural environment through the club’s weekend day hikes and camping trips in nearby mountains, as well as through expeditions to Yosemite and Yellowstone national parks. Community service projects include coastal cleanups, nonnative invasive plant removal, and hiking trail maintenance. Past members become mentors for current students. Student grades have improved.
78. Start a Salmon in the Classroom project or a similar endeavor. In Washington State, participating students in over six hundred schools receive five hundred hatchery eggs to care for in each classroom. They learn about life histories and habitat requirements and release the salmon as fry into the streams they have studied (wdfw.wa.gov/outreach/education/salclass.htm).
79. Beyond the school grounds, create nature-based community classrooms through outreach programs that engage parents, physicians, landscape designers, businesspeople, parks departments, and civic leaders who can help develop safe natural learning environments within walking distance of every school. Include visits to parks and overnight camping trips in the curriculum.
80. Follow Norway’s lead and establish farms and ranches as “the new schoolyards,” and thereby create a new source of income to encourage a farming culture. This will teach kids about the sources of their food and give them hands-on experience with lasting benefit, regardless of their future occupation.
81. Return natural history to higher education. Work to require universities to teach fundamental natural history, which has been eliminated from the curricula of many research universities, and to fund research on topics involving the relationship between children and nature. Higher education can be a doorway to more career choices, including recreation and service-learning opportunities.
Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder Page 40
