How to Help Kids Get in Touch with Nature

Ways to Give Children an Appreciation for the Great Outdoors

Dec 2, 2008

Children are spending more time than ever indoors playing video games, watching television and surfing the Internet, causing them to slowly lose touch with nature.

Kids who don’t spend time outdoors miss out on the valuable opportunity to bond with nature. There are a few things parents can do to help children learn to respect and appreciate all of the wonderful things the natural world has to offer.

Plant a Vegetable Garden with Kids

Gardening with kids is not only fun, it teaches science concepts, helps families bond, and shows youngsters how all things work together in nature to help sustain life – even the creepy crawly critters.

Children need to reap the rewards of their gardening efforts the first time around – so start off with vegetable selections that are easy to grow. Radishes, cherry tomatoes, and green beans grow without much maintenance. Once the kids become more comfortable with their experiences in the garden, fruits and vegetables that are more challenging to grow can be incorporated.

Take Kids on a Camping Trip

Camping is a great way to give kids the chance to experience nature first hand. Do a little research and select a nice campsite. Pack only the necessities. The purpose of the camping trip is to give children an appreciation for nature, so try to keep the trip as outdoorsy as possible. Leave the video games, computers, iPods, and television sets at home. Cell phones should be taken on the camping trip for emergency purposes only.

Create a Nature Collage

Doing a nature collage with kids is a fun way to help them gain an appreciation for the great outdoors. Accompany your kids on a nature walk around the yard, neighborhood, or the local park to collect materials for their project. Twigs, blades of grass, pine cone pieces, and dirt make excellent materials for nature collages.

Venturing outside of your backyard means children have to be supervised closely to ensure they don’t pick up hazardous items off the ground such as needles, glass, or discarded medications.

Once the collage materials have been collected, bring them back to the house and allow the children to glue the items on a sheet of card stock. When the collages dry, kids can display them on their favorite wall.

Encourage Children to Spend Time playing Outdoors

Let your youngsters get in touch with nature by spending their free-time running, jumping and spinning carelessly in wide open spaces. Playing outside reduces anxiety in children, enables them to release excess energy that can lead to disruptive behavior, and gets their creative juices flowing. Outdoor play is a great form of physical exercise for children and it also helps them rest better during the night.

When children spend time bonding with nature, they not only reap the physical and mental benefits of it, they grow a deep found respect for the earth and all the life it sustains.

The copyright of the article How to Help Kids Get in Touch with Nature in Early Childhood Development is owned by Charlina Stewart. Permission to republish How to Help Kids Get in Touch with Nature in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.