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!
