Teaching your kids to love nature.
By Lisa Niver Rajna
“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep
and suck out all the marrow of life, to put to rout all that was not life and
not when I had come to die Discover that I had not lived.” Henry David Thoreau
Not all of us can make a commitment to nature like Henry David Thoreau to go live on Walden Pond, but we do not have to go to such lengths to inspire our children to love nature. By creating wonder and a connection to the environment we can all protect our planet.
We can even share seeds and caterpillars with our children without even going very far outside! As Janine M. Benyus states in Biomimicry:
Bringing children back into nature and nature back into childhood is a job for teachers and parents and friends willing to take a child outside for a lark. There need not be an ‘official’ park involved; finding a place where green things grow, even if it’s a crack in the sidewalk, is enough.
Spookie Grilled Cheese: What kid doesn’t love a grilled cheese sandwich. But this one up’s the Halloween anty by cutting out your favorite spooky shape in the middle making the perfect filling meal before the little ones head out for a night full of candy and fun.
You all know the family. The one in which the siblings seem to magically get along, support each other, work well together, and talk through difficult moments with little to no yelling, or homicidal threats. You also know there is a reason you probably only know one family like this. It is a rarity. It doesn’t exist in nature in large numbers. Parents aspire to have that sense of familial calm and sibling cohesion, and may feel that it will always be beyond their reach. Then, a new sibling is brought into the mix, and that aspiration for familial magic seems like an ever-more-distant hope.
Have you unpacked your child’s backpack yet from the last day of school? What does one do with the backpack contents when it’s finally unpacked? With certainty, that stack of artwork the teachers sent home is in there and most moms will simply add it to the pile of artwork collected throughout the years.
The school year is approaching and that means busier, bustling days.
What do these three things have in common? Well, they’re all on our first day of school checklist. And that third word—Confidence—can’t be found in the back-to-school section at Staples.
Back to school time is upon us, which is a great opportunity to make sure your child is ready from a health perspective. There are new requirements this year for adolescents for vaccines. It is also a great time to refresh on illness prevention while being at school.
America is facing a real epidemic. The incidence of childhood obesity and Body Mass Index (BMI) has tripled over the past forty years. Childhood obesity is a primary concern of the nation and the healthcare community. It is estimated that over 30% of our nation’s youngsters are overweight and 15% are obese.