Articles and Essays
Back-to-nature play push gains ground
Sue Hornof March 3, 2014
http://www.newsmagazinenetwork.com/2014030445243/back-to-nature-play-push-gains-ground/
Sue Hornof March 3, 2014
http://www.newsmagazinenetwork.com/2014030445243/back-to-nature-play-push-gains-ground/
USA Today recently ran an article by Peg Smith, CEO of the American Camp Association, calling for parents to demand for children the developmental experience of play and access to the outdoors. An early childhood professional and mother of two, Smith wrote that she is troubled because it seems “the ritual of resume building is trumping the rights of childhood” and by “mounting evidence that there is an increasing absence, repression and deprivation of play.”
“Learning takes place indoors and out of doors,” Smith wrote. “If we want to super-size something, let it be the science of play and access to the out of doors.”
Smith’s voice is one among many that are speaking out in support of outdoor play. The following organizations offer research information on the topic and explain what is being done to reconnect kids with nature:
What's Needed to Prepare Your Child for the Future? The Answer May Surprise You...
By Todd Kestin LCSW, Life Skills Mentor August 20, 2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/todd-kestin/whats-needed-to-prepare-your-child-for-the-future_b_3777547.html
By Todd Kestin LCSW, Life Skills Mentor August 20, 2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/todd-kestin/whats-needed-to-prepare-your-child-for-the-future_b_3777547.html
There's more to preparing for adulthood than academic education. I believe if kids spent their summers in camp, they'd be better prepared for later decisions like whether to go to college, and how to make the best life for who they are...
...An interesting thing happens at camp when kids are taken out of their usual environment. The rules change. Everything changes. Authenticity is rewarded. Responsibility is cool. Maturity adds clout. If it weren't for camp, I would never have been ready for college, which led to graduate school, and the mentoring career I enjoy now. It was a natural progression that began in camp.
If Children lose contact with nature they won't fight for it
George Monbiot, published in The Guardian, November 19, 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/19/children-lose-contact-with-nature
George Monbiot, published in The Guardian, November 19, 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/19/children-lose-contact-with-nature
In the US, in just six years (1997-2003) children with particular outdoor hobbies fell by half. Eleven- to 15-year-olds in Britain now spend, on average, half their waking day in front of a screen...
...In her famous essay the Ecology of Imagination in Childhood, Edith Cobb proposed that contact with nature stimulates creativity. Reviewing the biographies of 300 "geniuses", she exposed a common theme: intense experiences of the natural world in the middle age of childhood (between five and 12). Animals and plants, she contended, are among "the figures of speech in the rhetoric of play … which the genius in particular of later life seems to recall."...
...Studies in several nations show that children's games are more creative in green places than in concrete playgrounds. Natural spaces encourage fantasy and role play, reasoning and observation. The social standing of children there depends less on physical dominance, more on inventiveness and language skills. Perhaps forcing children to study so much, rather than running wild in the woods and fields, is counter-productive...
...And here we meet the other great loss. Most of those I know who fight for nature are people who spent their childhoods immersed in it. Without a feel for the texture and function of the natural world, without an intensity of engagement almost impossible in the absence of early experience, people will not devote their lives to its protection...
Why Kids Need Nature
Interview with Richard Louv, author of “Last Child in the Woods” by Scholastic Parent and Child Editorshttp://www.scholastic.com/parents/resources/article/parent-child/why-kids-need-nature
Interview with Richard Louv, author of “Last Child in the Woods” by Scholastic Parent and Child Editorshttp://www.scholastic.com/parents/resources/article/parent-child/why-kids-need-nature
...Problems associated with alienation from nature include familiar maladies: depression, obesity, and attention deficit disorder. Kids who have direct access to nature are better learners. Exposure to nature has been shown to reduce stress and increase attention spans...
...Even parks are manicured — there may be a nice smooth soccer field or a baseball diamond but no rough edges. Rough edges are the places children gravitate toward to explore, where they find rocks and weeds and bugs. Efforts to provide nice-looking and safe outdoor spaces are well intentioned, but they give kids the message that nature is not something you go out in to get your hands dirty...
