Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder, Louv, Richard [best free novels txt] 📗

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