Connecting Children To Nature

For those of us in the outdoor recreation arena, Richard Louv's book Last Child in The Woods was the best thing since sliced bread. A combination of factors - electronic gear, fear of stranger danger, urbanization - have created a generation of children who never experience nature and rarely even play outside. If you're reading this blog, you probably are already interested in state parks so you are probably the exception and I'm preaching to the choir. Of course, those of us in Outdoor Recreation were excited because Richard Louv's book was being looked at seriously by educators and politicos and many states and the Federal government have embarked on campaigns to do something to reconnect children to nature.

I wanted to share a recent blog post from Richard Louv that shows optimism for the movement. We all could use some optimism these days! You might check out some of his earlier blogs that are linked to this post. http://www.childrenandnature.org/blog/

Virginia State Parks works hard to offer programming to introduce children AND adults to nature. We have a number of 101 style programs for camping, hiking, outdoor cooking, gps use at our parks as well as a full line of nature and historical programming. Check them out at http://www.dcrintra.state.va.us/dcr_forms/events/VieweventPublic.cfm. You can query by park, dates, or type of event.