Children and Nature

When I was a sophomore in college, I had the opportunity to volunteer at Martin Luther King School in Berkely, CA in their Edible School Yard. If you clicked on the link, you read how cool it is and what a great way it is to teach kids about nutrition, the land, and the importance of the environment  It also fosters their creativity, lets them get their hands dirty, and gives them ownership of the project. While I was there, the kids made artichoke hearts in a bed shaped as a heart, created a pathway out of bricks, composted their own soil, and built a shaded outdoor seating area so they could have lessons with the gardener  Not only did they learn how to grow food, but they also were taken into the kitchen and taught how to prepare nutrition meals. I was so impressed by this program, so I thought I would share it. I started looking for something like that here in St. Louis. Because the midwest is a bit colder during the traditional school year than California, we do not have as much opportunity for programs such as this to be integrated into curricula, but there is some. The Green Center, for instance, has a vegetable garden project with six the U. City Schools. Between work and school I haven't had a chance to check it out yet, although I have volunteered with the Green Center for some of their other projects and they do a lot of cool stuff.

I also just recently started this extremely interesting book called, Last Child in the Woods, by Richard Louv. The book discusses the devastating trend of children being inside and being cut off from nature. He discusses some of the many advantages to being outside and experiencing green space -- In one chapter, he focuses on the making of tree houses and how much a child learns about physics, mechanics, and general common sense from the experience - things that shouldn't necessarily be, or possibly cannot be, learned in a classroom. Anyway, I'm not finished with the book, and I'm sure I will have more to say on the subject once I'm done. In the meantime, I encourage any one who has kids, or is planning to have kids, to check out this book. It would also be nice to discuss the book and see what you all think.

"When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he
finds it attached to the rest of the world." --John Muir