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If you are a parent, the first thing you do is to begin to spend more time outdoors yourself. Set a good example for your children. Lounging in the backyard is OK, but starting a garden with vegetables and flowers is better.
Next, take your children with you. Let them plant some seeds or seedlings. Explain to them how plants use sunlight as food, how trees turn our carbon dioxide into oxygen, or how bees pollinate flowers.
If you can, take a few weekend trips that involve nature, rather than going to an amusement park. Go camping. Teach kids how to build a fire, how to find the Big Dipper in the sky, how to find safe drinking water in the river. (If you don’t know these things, this is a great time to learn right alongside your children.) Even a trip to a beach can be a good learning experience if you don’t spend all day lying on a blanket surfing Facebook. If you can find a beach with tide pools, these are great learning experiences for children. See how many crabs you can spot in an hour, stick your fingers inside a sea urchin, and admire the different colors of starfish. Take your kids to the Grand Canyon, a public aquarium, the Great Lakes of Michigan; any vacation that gets you out in nature is a good one.
If you don’t yet have children, be sure you spend at least some time outside each day (weather permitting). You can go walking through a nature park, hiking, anywhere as long as you are outside and that you aren’t spending that time looking at your cell phone or tablet.
In fact, during harsh winter weather when going outside is sometimes downright dangerous, having at least one day per week when you turn off all electronics is a good idea (Find out dangers of electronics). Make it a fun family night, not a punishment. Play board games by candlelight, tell scary stories, play hide and seek inside the house, or even a good old fashioned game of charades, anything that doesn’t involve a screen should be welcome.
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This isn’t a problem someone made up in order to sell a book. There is even a group called No Child Left Inside Coalition that actively works towards getting children to spend more time outside and actively learn from their environment. They are working on a No Child Left Inside Act, which would increase environmental education in schools, more than just attending a biology class in high school or growing a plant from a seed inside a jar in grade school.
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