Don’t miss another sunset.
In past decades, when summer rolled around, parents told their children, “Go outside, and don’t come home ’til the street lights come on.”
In most neighborhoods, those days are unlikely to return anytime soon. Today, parents fear strangers and strange lawyers and nature itself. Though some of this trepidation is warranted, particularly in inner-city neighborhoods, much of that fear is ramped up by news and entertainment media. Meanwhile, an emerging body of evidence is illuminating the great benefits of nature experiences to children’s psychological and physical health, and their ability to learn.
Richard Louv.
What’s a parent to do? Certainly some of us can enroll our kids in a program — Scouting, a nature center, a summer camp, right? But the truth is that there aren’t enough programs to go around, and they’re not always an affordable option even when they’re available.
So Chip Donahue, of Roanoke, Va., has a suggestion.
A few weeks ago, Donahue, a second-grade teacher and father of three children (sev... Read more
