Kids, Mud, Bugs: Bringing Back the Great Outdoors

Nature nurtures, even in the depths of winter. One hundred and fifty years ago, psychologist Herbert Spencer asserted in his book Principals of Psychology, that children play simply to discharge excess energy. Spencer's claim became common wisdom, leading schools and communities all over the world to build playgrounds that allowed little space for imaginative play. Since Spencer's time, we've discovered that children play because developmentally they must, that it is in large part through play that children learn. And more and more studies are now showing that playing outdoors, in nature, is one of the best, most healthy, most nurturing ways to learn and grow.

Schools and communities wise enough to heed this new understanding are now looking at the paved and sterile play areas provided to children, and realizing that because they stifle anything remotely resembling nature, these playgrounds stifle children. Small wonder that kids in growing numbers have retreated from the ersatz nature grown-ups supply in the form of modern playgrounds, to the great indoors, with its myriad outlets and screens. There, their imaginations can soar! Or can they?

According to a November '09 article in The New York Times, a school in Saratoga Springs, New York has broken free of cement and rubber and monkey bars, instituting a "forest kindergarten" for ages 3 1/2 to 6. The kids spend three hours each day outside in a 325-acre state parkland and forest, regardless of the weather!

More and more schools are planting gardens and instituting unstructured time outdoors for their young students. Many teachers, administrators and parents have been inspired by Richard Louv's important book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder. Louv has been a driving force behind the burgeoning environmental education movement, creating the vibrant Children & Nature Network (C&NN) to assist parents, teachers and communities in the effort to reconnect children with nature.

Let's hear it for worms! Stay tuned for more on kids and dirt...

Photos: Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times