Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder by Louv, Richard (the two towers ebook .txt) 📕

mark important family occasions—a birth, death, or marriage. The Take a Child Outside campaign (takeachildoutside.org/activities) suggests taking pictures of the tree in its first snow or after a big windstorm. Make bark rubbings using crayons and paper; record what animals use the tree. Plant its seeds. If the tree dies, save some leaves or branches as remembrances. Antioch University New England professor David Sobel reports research that suggests a fascinating gender difference: boys tend to enjoy a generalized appreciation of the woods; girls are more likely to build a relationship with a favorite tree.

20. Build an igloo or snow cave; go sledding, snow tubing, or snowshoeing. Snowshoes (no lessons or lift tickets required) are available in children’s sizes, but the Rodale Institute, at www.kidsregen.org, offers easy instructions for making your own from cardboard boxes. As young people grow, they can graduate to downhill and cross-country skiing or snowboarding. For information about snow caves and igloo-building, see How to Build an Igloo by Norbert E. Yankielun.

21. Dig a backyard pond or establish a water garden on a porch or patio. Many nurseries and online vendors sell aquatic plants that do well in shallow pots filled with pebbles and water. Add a goldfish or other small fish to keep mosquitoes from breeding in the water. Frogs and turtles are also welcome. A few duckweeds, which look something like miniature lily pads, will entice other creatures to come near.

22. Go for gross. “Our last trip to the beach was a naturalist-led hike sponsored by the YMCA,” says Amy Pertschuk, who, with her husband, is raising two small children on a houseboat in Sausalito. “But my son and his friends spent the better part of the day doing something even better: collecting slimy seaweed. They decorated a driftwood house with it. If seaweed is not readily available, substitute anything so yucky that you have to hook it with a stick and carry it three feet ahead of you. Bring a change of clothes.”

23. Keep a nature journal. Good guides on nature-journaling are available to help children, teenagers, and families record their outdoor discoveries in words, drawings, and photographs—among them My Nature Journal by Adrienne Olmstead and Keeping a Nature Journal by Clare Walker Leslie and Charles E. Roth. Check with your bookseller. An instant nature journal is free to download from www.greenhour.org/content/activity/detail/1525.

24. Plant a garden. If your children are little, choose seeds large enough for them to handle and that mature quickly, including vegetables. Whether teenagers or toddlers, young gardeners can help feed the family, and if your community has a farmers’ market, encourage them to sell their extra produce. Alternatively, share it with the neighbors or donate it to a food bank. If you live in an urban neighborhood, create a high-rise garden. A landing, deck, terrace, or flat roof typically can accommodate several large pots, and even trees can thrive in containers if given proper care.

25. Go on a moth walk. Mix overripe “fruit, stale beer or wine (or fruit juice that’s been hanging around too long), and sweetener (honey, sugar, or molasses)” in a blender, suggests Deborah Churchman, in the journal American Forests. Go outside at sunset and spread the goo on a half dozen trees or on unpainted and untreated wood. Come back with a flashlight when it’s dark, she advises, and see what you’ve lured. Depending on the season, you’ll find moths, ants, earwigs, and other insects.

26. Help restore butterfly migration routes. Plant seeds of indigenous pollinating plants that provide nectar, roosting, and food for caterpillars. Hollyhocks, for example, are host plants for the painted lady butterfly, lupine for the Karner blue butterfly, and milkweed for monarchs. See Audubon’s guide (www.audubonathome.org/butterflies/); an international database of host plants for butterflies and moths (www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/projects/hostplants); and the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign (www.pollinator.org).

27. Raise butterflies—from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to emerging monarch. The Web site for Chicago Wilderness’s Leave No Child Inside initiative tells how to do it: www.kidsoutside.info/activities/btrfly.htm.

28. Spot snakes and other wildlife on a nighttime nature drive. In the spring or fall, especially after a warm rain or when the road warms and holds the daytime heat, drive slowly on a deserted road and watch carefully in the path of your car’s headlights. You and your kids may be able to identify snakes, geckos, toads, salamanders, kangaroo rats, and other nocturnal animals attracted to the heat of the road, depending on geography and season. But be cautious, not only of poisonous snakes but of other cars.

29. Find a great camp—day, week, or summer. The American Camp Association (www.campparents.org) offers a guide and online database of more than 2,400 accredited camps, including camps focused on providing experiences in the natural world. With help from the Sierra Club and other sponsors, the National Military Family Association offers free summer camps to thousands of children of deployed military families through Operation Purple (www.nmfa.org).

30. Go harvesting. In past decades most children had family connections to farming—grandparents who still farmed, for instance. That connection can be echoed today by picking berries and other fruit or vegetables on commercial farms or in orchards open to the public. Consider joining a local food co-op; some invite the public to help with the harvest.

31. Take a family vacation at a state or national park; go tent camping or rent a cabin. For a shorter outing, participate in one of the family outing programs offered by local and state parks, such as Connecticut’s Great Park Pursuit (www.nochildleftinside.org). Some programs offer fishing lessons, hiking events, and geocaching treasure hunts (www.geocaching.com).

32. Encourage older children to become citizen scientists, and become one yourself. Volunteer at a wildlife rehabilitation center or other wildlife care facility. Help restore habitat and monitor rare and endangered species through natural history museums, state and national parks, and wildlife protection groups. In California’s Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, for example, volunteers on mountain-tops spot and record endangered bighorn sheep. Several states offer master naturalist and nature-mapping training.

33. Go birding—urban or suburban, rural or wilderness. The Cornell Lab of