You can still get outside and play, especially if you have to work all day

April 30, 2012 | Leave a comment

It's fundamental for our to kids develop a love of nature they can carry throughout a lifetime.

By Mel Lefebvre, Communications Assistant

When was the last time you had that funny, dizzy feeling after rolling down a hill, munched on an apple picked fresh off a tree, or flew a kite? For many of us, these make up the happy memories of childhood, but we've cast these activities aside in exchange for adult responsibilities, like sitting all day.

To make sure kids are getting healthy doses of nature to last them a lifetime, the UK's National Trust is encouraging kids, age 11 ¾ and younger, to check things off a list of 50 things to do outside.

Some of the 50 activities include climbing up a big hill, skimming a stone, running around in the rain, and making a grass trumpet. But we think these things should be done on a regular basis by the young and young at heart. You can still play, especially if you have to work all day.

It's fundamental for our to kids develop a love of nature they can carry throughout a lifetime. That's why the David Suzuki Foundation has created a new education guide that gets kids outside to learn from nature. With lessons on biodiversity, where our food comes from, and where our waste goes, the Connecting With Nature guide helps educators capitalize on every child's curiosity about nature, and is the first step in creating the environmental stewards of the future.

Experiencing nature on a regular basis is, unfortunately, becoming rarer as technology infiltrates our lives. This is a scary trend, because we will only fight to protect what we love and understand. If we spend a lot of our free-time watching TV or playing video games rather than in the great outdoors (even if that's a walk around the neighborhood), we're not schooling ourselves in the ways of the natural world.

Getting young people interested in nature and replacing screen time with green time is what the David Suzuki Foundation is hoping to achieve through Connecting With Nature. Helping young people develop this love of nature is key to understanding that we are all deeply interconnected and interdependent on the natural world, and each other.

So, shut down your computer, gather up the kids and grab your coat. Start crossing items off your list... I think I'm going to go look inside a tree or climb a big hill.

Here's the National Trust's list of 50 things to do in nature. Feel free to add to the list!