Take a child outside week - Sept. 24 - 30th

If you are like me, you learned much of your love of gardening from your parents or someone else who took you outside to share the wonders of gardening, nature and wildlife with you when you were a child.

Unfortunately, with our busy lifestyles and so many electronic gadgets that keep us indoors, many of today's children spend very little time outside.

Take A Child Outside Week is a program designed to help break down obstacles that keep children from discovering the natural world. The Take A Child Outside Week website has many wonderful suggestions to help get your kids outdoors, from lying on blankets examining the trees to teaching a child to whistle using blades of grass (remember doing that as a child?)

Or here is a suggestion of my own that can be used in any yard or landscape:

Have a scavenger hunt in your yard (can also be carried out at a local park): Wake up early and take a quiet walk around your yard with a notebook in hand. Look for at least ten wonderful, curiosities of nature that aren’t easily noticed and make a list of them. Perhaps you will see some caterpillars dining on a host plant or a beautiful spider web stretched across two tree limbs or a tiny little tree frog hidden in the leaves of a flower. Make a list of your finds (but not their locations). Give a copy of the list to each of your children or other participants and have a scavenger hunt in your yard. Whoever finds all the items first wins!

Whatever you do to celebrate Take A Child Outside Week, make sure you let the child in YOU come out and play!