The Benefits of Nature

Here’s the thing: you really don’t need us regurgitating how important nature is.  We have all seen the studies, a new one of which seems to be posted by some university, at home and abroad, about every other week.  We all know that being out in nature is good psychologically. We all know it improves our physical well-being, and we all know it improves our cognitive skills.

And every article about the benefits of nature will basically say the same thing.

What an article cannot capture, however, is the look on the faces of children as they stroke the flank of a horse for the first time, or the oohs and aahs of a child when they watch a seed, which they planted weeks earlier, sprout and begin to reach for the sky. It is impossible for a scientific study to adequately replicate a child’s sense of awe during a snowfall, or the wonder inherent in splashing through a mud puddle.

Science has its place, and we are certainly thankful for those academic studies, but for us at Sequoia’s Treehouse, we don’t need charts and graphs to confirm what we see daily with our students as they find enrichment in Nature’s Classroom.