During the workshops about outdoor education I give, I get many interesting inputs from the discussions I have with my students.
At the very beginning of my workshops, I try every time to reflect together with the participants on the reasons why the relationship between children and nature has been disturbed that much during the last decades.
Actually, nature nourishes us and can be our source of energy and balance. But why more and more children nowadays feel apart from it?
The answers are many. We mainly identified a certain lack of education on environmental issues in the children, but also among their parents. This lack of education leads more and more to a bigger distance between children and nature. Distance which leads to fear and more distance.
So the big question is: how can we get more educated on environmental issues, apart from reading about it?
Nor children and neither their parents look really at nature. How can you know something that you even don’t look at? And why should you protect something that you even don’t know?
Furthermore I think that cognitive knowledge isn’t enough, we need an emotional connection to nature. We need to love nature and all the animals living out there.
When is the last time you actively listened to a twitter of a bird? So I suggest you to take your children and go out of the doors for a walk!
Written by Sonia Simpatico - JUMP team
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