This post was originally published on the Children and Nature Network by Heather Kuhlken, founder and director of the non-profit Families in Nature. It was republished here with permission.
It is difficult to get out into nature right now, with access to state and national parks, school gardens, and wild places far from home all limited or cut off. And at the same time, getting outside with your children has never been easier or more important to do. Since I was a small child in the 1970s, this is the slowest the world has moved. Despite the fear, danger and anxiety of this global health crisis (which I also feel acutely because I am at higher risk having asthma), and the stress of trying to figure out how to lead our children’s distance learning while working from home, I have also never felt so hopeful about the things we are learning from this experience, as families slow down, stop their overcommitted schedules, and spend time together.
Time in nature increases focus, creativity, cooperation, and learning.
I am the founder and director of the non-profit Families in Nature. I am also the parent of three boys between 10 and 18 years
old who have homeschooled intermittently while I work full time and manage my staff from home. I have spent years trying to balance working in the same house at the same time as teaching three kids in three different grades, two of which have learning differences. In many ways, the sheltering in place that we are now doing feels very familiar to me and to my children, so we have adjusted fairly easily. Though in years past, we did not also have our access to nature and the grocery store limited, and we did not have the at-times-overwhelming stress of being afraid that one of us or our extended family or community will get sick. I will come back to those massive sources of stress. First, I want to offer some support on working while managing your kids and their learning at home, since it is a structure I have willingly chosen several times over the past decade.
The key to teaching your children at home while you are also working from home is nature. Nearby Nature has never been so important as now, when most of us don’t have access or have extremely limited access to local, state and national parks, when we are staying home to keep our communities safe from infection.
One of the best tools to help you through this time is to find nearby nature.
For many, that is your own backyard. For families that live in apartments, nearby nature may be in a shared space where you will need to stay six feet away from other people in the green space. It could also be a window garden, porch or even a corner of the room that is filled with potted plants. Your place of nearby nature may not even be a place you previously thought of as nature, but small amounts of nature can be found almost anywhere. If the nature closest to you is your backyard or porch garden and it doesn’t feel like or look like “nature” to you or your children, then your first project as a family might be to transform that space into one that does feel like “nature” to you. You could move pruned sticks into a pile to create wildlife habitat or you could build a birdhouse together with materials around your house to attract birds that are building nests in the beginning of spring. A broken pot could be a “toad abode” by turning it upside down and putting it in a shady spot. You could even use your recycling to build a bird feeder. You could consider making your yard into a National Wildlife Federation Backyard Habitat like we did. So, identify a place that can be your nearby nature, then challenge your family to transform it into a space that feels like nature to you and your children.
The second task that will help your family through “sheltering in place” is to set aside a (preferably large) block of time that your children are not allowed to use their screens each day.
Their eyes and brains and creativity need a break from screens for part of every day (as do yours). Learning to put down a screen is an enormous life skill for this generation of children who have and will likely always have access to screens. And it benefits parents to take screen-free breaks during the day as well.
Small amounts of nature can be found almost anywhere.
My third tool for balancing working from home with caring for children who are also at home is siblings.
This is challenging if you only have one child, but only children also tend to be more capable of (and used to) creating fun independently. For families with multiple children, this time of sheltering in can give them a beautiful opportunity, once they adjust to being together all day every day, to make memories together that they can keep forever. Challenge your children to create something together. Trust them to cooperate. When your children work together on a project, you can get your own work done. Consider moving your laptop to your nearby nature spot so you can keep an ear on what they are doing, or enjoy some of the benefits of nature yourself even if your focus is on your work. Sheltering in place can be an enormous and very unique opportunity for family connection, creative play, cooperation, and a drastically slower pace.
Once you have a place to encourage your children to go play, you’ve designated siblings as the ideal (and available) playmates, and you have set aside some daily screen-free time, you can use your nearby nature space to help you work and them to learn. Time in nature increases focus, creativity, cooperation, and learning. When children (and parents) are given the space and time to be creative, they come up with some of the most amazing things. Children will naturally learn if their curiosity is engaged, and almost every encounter with nature can provide a discovery or lesson disguised as play. While school is being taught remotely or drastically reduced due to COVID-19, time in nature can supplement your child’s learning. And this is true even when school is in session as normal. Families in Nature is releasing parts of our Ecologist School Guidebook which is currently under publication by Texas A&M University Press. The Ecologist School Program is designed to foster nature connection in toddlers through adults within the context of family experiences in nature. The program is organized in a way that imparts a well-rounded, holistic knowledge of ecology in open-ended experiential lessons that feel more like play than learning.
The key to teaching your children at home […] is nature.
During this time of global crisis, FIN would like to support you and your family while you are staying at home by giving you ideas to get out into nature, to encourage siblings to play and learn together, and to support or supplement your children’s science education. Over the next few months, we will be giving you 6 lessons per week from our Ecologist School Guidebook, which contains over 1400 lessons, in addition to information on subjects such as how to teach hope and how to teach all ages together. This informal science education program, which I created from almost three decades of teaching in nature, allows you to earn badges in science by learning in nature together. The lessons are intended for all ages all together and most can be done in your own backyard, or even in your house, with minimal materials. The lessons and information can be found at https://familiesinnature.org/ecologistschool and you can share your photos and stories by emailing us at info@familiesinnature.org or tagging us on Facebook @familiesinnature.org or on Instagram @familiesinnature. We will continue to add new lessons each week.
As the world is paused and stress and anxiety swirl around everyone, everywhere, try to find moments of peace with your family to play, learn and connect, to create memories together and notice the enjoyment you can have together even during this time of crisis, with the help of nature.
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