Get Outside and Walk in the Woods

On average, American children spend four hours daily watching television and playing online games.

We believe some balance is needed, balance which includes being out in nature.

Contact with nature can enhance creativity, bolster mood, lower stress, improve mental acuity, well-being, cultivate social connectedness, and promote physical activity. It also has myriad educational benefits for teaching and learning.

As our old friend, Thoreau, told us many years ago, “I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least – and it is commonly more than that – sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.”

But beyond his superb talents as observer and naturalist lay Thoreau’s passion to explore deeper meanings in nature. “The hen-hawk (red-tailed hawk) and the pine are friends,” he wrote in his Journal in 1859. “What we call wildness is a civilization other than our own.” Writing in his classic book, Walden, about the ties between people and nature, he says, “Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it.” And he adds, “We need the tonic of wildness, — to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen [American coot] lurk and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.”

At Sequoia’s Treehouse, we can’t think of a better way to describe our feelings regarding children and nature-based education.

Have you signed up for summer camp yet? Details can be found on our website.