Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder (52 page)

4
. Tell your children stories about your special childhood places in nature. Then help them find their own: leaves beneath a backyard willow, the ditch behind the house, the meadow in the woods, the turn of a creek. In Washington State, the Wilderness Awareness School calls this the “sit spot,” recommending, “Let this be a place where you learn to sit still—alone, often, and quietly. . . . This will become your place of intimate connection with nature.”

5
. Help your child discover a hidden universe. Find a scrap board and place it on bare dirt. Come back in a day or two, lift the board, and see how many species have found shelter there. Identify these creatures with the help of a field guide. Return to this universe once a month, lift the board and discover who’s new.

6
. Revive old traditions. Collect lightning bugs at dusk, release them at dawn. Make a leaf collection. Keep a terrarium or aquarium. Go crawdadding—tie a piece of liver or bacon to a string, drop it into a creek or pond, wait until a crawdad tugs.

7
. Engage grandparents. They often have more free time, or at least more flexibility, than parents do. And most grandparents can remember when playing outside in nature was considered normal and expected of children. They’ll want to pass that heritage on to their descendants.

8
. Encourage your kids to go camping in the backyard. Buy them a tent or help them make a canvas tepee, and leave it up all summer. Join the NWF’s Great American Backyard Campout. To sign up, go to
www.nwf.org
.

9
. Be a cloudspotter; build a backyard weather station. No special shoes or drive to the soccer field is required for “clouding.” A young person just needs a view of the sky (even if it’s from a bedroom window) and a guidebook. Cirrostratus, cumulonimbus, or lenticularis, shaped like flying saucers, “come to remind us that the clouds are Nature’s poetry, spoken in a whisper in the rarefied air between crest and crag,” writes Gavin Pretor-Pinney in his wonderful book
The Cloudspotter’s Guide
. To build a backyard weather station, read
The Kid’s Book of Weather Forecasting
by Mark Breen, Kathleen Friestad, and Michael Kline.

10
. Make the “green hour” a new family tradition. NWF recommends that parents give their kids a daily green hour (
www.greenhour.org
), a time for unstructured play and interaction with the natural world. Even fifteen minutes is a good start. “Imagine a map with your home in the center. Draw ever-widening circles around it, each representing a successively older child’s realm of experience,” NWF suggests. “Whenever possible, encourage some independent exploration as your child develops new skills and greater confidence.”

11
. Adopt the “sunny day rule.” One father reports: “Even though it causes dissension and complaining at first, I’m serious about it. If it’s raining and cold outside, they know I’m no Captain Bligh. I’ll let them watch TV. But if it’s a beautiful day, there’s no excuse for growing roots on the sofas. Outside with you, I tell them. Go! Go build something!” (
www.familyeducation.com
) Or even when it does rain, pour outdoors. Show your kids the joys of puddle-stomping, ditch-damming, leaf-boating. After all, there’s no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes.

12
. Take a hike. With younger children, choose easier, shorter routes and prepare to stop often. Or be a stroller explorer. “If you have an infant or toddler, consider organizing a neighborhood stroller group that meets for weekly nature walks,” suggests the National
Audubon Society. The American Hiking Society offers good tips on how to hike with teenagers. Involve your teen in planning hikes; prepare yourselves physically for hikes, and stay within your limits (start with short day hikes); keep pack weight down. For more information, consult the American Hiking Society (
www.americanhiking.org
) or a good hiking guide, such as John McKinney’s
Joy of Hiking
.

13
. Invent your own nature game. One mother’s suggestion: “We help our kids pay attention during longer hikes by playing ‘find ten critters’—mammals, birds, insects, reptiles, snails, other creatures. Finding a critter can also mean discovering footprints, mole holes, and other signs that an animal has passed by or lives there.”

14
. Go for a family walk when the moon is full. “There’s a whole new set of animals, sights and sounds out there,” counsels the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (
www.tpwd.state.tx.us/kids
). “What you need: flashlight. Directions: Listen to animals calling. Owls and bats are looking for prey. Watch for things glowing, like worms and fungus on trees.” And look up at the stars.

15
. Keep a “wonder bowl.” When Liz Baird, originator of Take a Child Outside Week, was a little girl she would fill her pockets with natural wonders—acorns, rocks, mushrooms. “My Mom got tired of washing clothes and finding these treasures in the bottom of the washer or disintegrated through the dryer,” Liz recalls. “So she came up with ‘Liz’s Wonder Bowl,’ and the idea was that I could empty my pockets into the bowl. I could still enjoy my treasures, and try to find out what things were, and not cause trouble with the laundry. I also suspect Mom would sneak in and remove the things that were rotting in the bowl!” Liz still has a wonder bowl in her office.

16
. Trump the iPod with the nPod—develop hidden powers. Learn to use all of the senses
at the same time
, to sit under a tree and consciously listen to every bird song and bug call, to watch, to be aware of what the body is touching, what the nose is smelling, what nature is broadcasting. In 2005 researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, put college students in a grassy field wearing blindfolds and sound-muffling headphones; surprisingly, most students could follow the twists and turns of a thirty-foot trail of scent.

17
. Go digital. Try wildlife photography—appropriate for small children, teenagers, and adults. Digital cameras are portable, decreasingly expensive, and save money on film. True, wildlife photography can become costly, but in the beginning, using a small digital camera to take photos through one eyepiece of your binoculars can work well.

18
. Encourage your kids to build a tree house, fort, or hut. You can provide the raw materials, including sticks, boards, blankets, boxes, ropes, and nails, but it’s best if kids are the architects and builders. The older the kids, the more complex the construction can be. For understanding and inspiration, read
Children’s Special Places
by David Sobel.
Treehouses and Playhouses You Can Build
by David and Jeanie Stiles describes how to erect sturdy structures, from simple platforms to multistory or multitree houses connected by rope bridges.

19
. Adopt a tree. (Go ahead, hug it.) Pick an existing tree or plant a special one to help mark important family occasions—a birth, death, or marriage. The Take a Child Outside campaign (takeachildoutside.org/activities) suggests taking pictures of the tree in its first snow or after a big windstorm. Make bark rubbings
using crayons and paper; record what animals use the tree. Plant its seeds. If the tree dies, save some leaves or branches as remembrances. Antioch University New England professor David Sobel reports research that suggests a fascinating gender difference: boys tend to enjoy a generalized appreciation of the woods; girls are more likely to build a relationship with a favorite tree.

20
. Build an igloo or snow cave; go sledding, snow tubing, or snowshoeing. Snowshoes (no lessons or lift tickets required) are available in children’s sizes, but the Rodale Institute, at
www.kidsregen.org
, offers easy instructions for making your own from cardboard boxes. As young people grow, they can graduate to downhill and cross-country skiing or snowboarding. For information about snow caves and igloo-building, see
How to Build an Igloo
by Norbert E. Yankielun.

21
. Dig a backyard pond or establish a water garden on a porch or patio. Many nurseries and online vendors sell aquatic plants that do well in shallow pots filled with pebbles and water. Add a goldfish or other small fish to keep mosquitoes from breeding in the water. Frogs and turtles are also welcome. A few duckweeds, which look something like miniature lily pads, will entice other creatures to come near.

22
. Go for gross. “Our last trip to the beach was a naturalist-led hike sponsored by the YMCA,” says Amy Pertschuk, who, with her husband, is raising two small children on a houseboat in Sausalito. “But my son and his friends spent the better part of the day doing something even better: collecting slimy seaweed. They decorated a driftwood house with it. If seaweed is not readily available, substitute anything so yucky that you have to hook it with a stick and carry it three feet ahead of you. Bring a change of clothes.”

23
. Keep a nature journal. Good guides on nature-journaling are available to help children, teenagers, and families record their outdoor discoveries in words, drawings, and photographs—among them
My Nature Journal
by Adrienne Olmstead and
Keeping a Nature Journal
by Clare Walker Leslie and Charles E. Roth. Check with your bookseller. An instant nature journal is free to download from
www.greenhour.org/content/activity/detail/1525
.

24
. Plant a garden. If your children are little, choose seeds large enough for them to handle and that mature quickly, including vegetables. Whether teenagers or toddlers, young gardeners can help feed the family, and if your community has a farmers’ market, encourage them to sell their extra produce. Alternatively, share it with the neighbors or donate it to a food bank. If you live in an urban neighborhood, create a high-rise garden. A landing, deck, terrace, or flat roof typically can accommodate several large pots, and even trees can thrive in containers if given proper care.

25
. Go on a moth walk. Mix overripe “fruit, stale beer or wine (or fruit juice that’s been hanging around too long), and sweetener (honey, sugar, or molasses)” in a blender, suggests Deborah Churchman, in the journal
American Forests
. Go outside at sunset and spread the goo on a half dozen trees or on unpainted and untreated wood. Come back with a flashlight when it’s dark, she advises, and see what you’ve lured. Depending on the season, you’ll find moths, ants, earwigs, and other insects.

26
. Help restore butterfly migration routes. Plant seeds of indigenous pollinating plants that provide nectar, roosting, and food for caterpillars. Hollyhocks, for example, are host plants for the painted lady butterfly, lupine for the Karner blue butterfly, and milkweed for monarchs. See Audubon’s guide (
www.audubonathome.org/butterflies/
);
an international database of host plants for butterflies and moths (
www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/projects/hostplants
); and the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign (
www.pollinator.org
).

27
. Raise butterflies—from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to emerging monarch. The Web site for Chicago Wilderness’s Leave No Child Inside initiative tells how to do it:
www.kidsoutside.info/activities/btrfly.htm
.

28
. Spot snakes and other wildlife on a nighttime nature drive. In the spring or fall, especially after a warm rain or when the road warms and holds the daytime heat, drive slowly on a deserted road and watch carefully in the path of your car’s headlights. You and your kids may be able to identify snakes, geckos, toads, salamanders, kangaroo rats, and other nocturnal animals attracted to the heat of the road, depending on geography and season. But be cautious, not only of poisonous snakes but of other cars.

29
. Find a great camp—day, week, or summer. The American Camp Association (
www.campparents.org
) offers a guide and online database of more than 2,400 accredited camps, including camps focused on providing experiences in the natural world. With help from the Sierra Club and other sponsors, the National Military Family Association offers free summer camps to thousands of children of deployed military families through Operation Purple (
www.nmfa.org
).

30
. Go harvesting. In past decades most children had family connections to farming—grandparents who still farmed, for instance. That connection can be echoed today by picking berries and other fruit or vegetables on commercial farms or in orchards open to the public. Consider joining a local food co-op; some invite the public to help with the harvest.

31
. Take a family vacation at a state or national park; go tent camping or rent a cabin. For a shorter outing, participate in one of the family outing programs offered by local and state parks, such as Connecticut’s Great Park Pursuit (
www.nochildleftinside.org
). Some programs offer fishing lessons, hiking events, and geocaching treasure hunts (
www.geocaching.com
).

32
. Encourage older children to become citizen scientists, and become one yourself. Volunteer at a wildlife rehabilitation center or other wildlife care facility. Help restore habitat and monitor rare and endangered species through natural history museums, state and national parks, and wildlife protection groups. In California’s Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, for example, volunteers on mountain-tops spot and record endangered bighorn sheep. Several states offer master naturalist and nature-mapping training.

33
. Go birding—urban or suburban, rural or wilderness. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology (
www.birds.cornell.edu
) offers, in English and Spanish, the Celebrate Urban Birds program for youngsters, focusing on sixteen species of birds often found in urban neighborhoods. Young people can post their bird sightings onto satellite maps and track bird populations in their own neighborhoods (
www.birdpost.com
). Participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count (
www.birdsource.org/gbbc/
) or Project FeederWatch (
www.birds.cornell.edu/pfw/
).