Children Need Nature

In his new version of Caring Spaces, Learning Places: Children’s Environments that Work, Jim Greenman offers this plea for why “children need a childhood rich with nature”�?

“Is there that much harm if the outdoors becomes simply a passageway to be hurried through or viewed from a window, or merely a site for exercise or picnics? Our development as human beings is stunted without wide experience in the natural world. How do we become wise or spiritual without understanding our ecosystem and our place in it? How do we become sensual without an outdoor life and an appreciation for hot, wet, fragrant, silky, resilient, oozing, hard and soft, rough and smooth states of matter? How do we become physical and develop a sense of freedom without exposure to wide-open places to run and leap and climb?�?/P>

Jim Greenman will be an active participant in the Working Forum on Nature Education for Young Children in October, 2006 in Nebraska City, Nebraska.

Contributed by Exchange, The Early Childcare Leaders' Magazine Since 1978