by Lynn Brunelle, author of Camp Out! and Emmy-winning writer for Bill Nye the Science Guy

Remember when we were kids and our parents would say, “Go outside and play!” Those were words to live by. And as kids my brother and I took those words to heart and spent pretty much every waking hour that wasn’t school time outside puttering and playing. We caught polliwogs and watched them transform as if by magic from swimmy little creatures into leggy, hoppy ones.

We gathered leaves of every shape and color. We hammered rocks to break them just to see what was inside. We looked for animal tracks, watched bugs, gathered seeds and created experiment after experiment to test things like the heat of the sun and the power of water.

We made artwork out of sticks and stones and sand and left our masterpieces to the elements. In short we explored, discovered, experimented and learned a whole heck of a lot about the world. And we also gained an appreciation and respect for nature and the bigger picture of wildness that we fit into.

Nowadays we don’t have enough of that unstructured outdoor time set aside for our kids. We’re scheduled up the ying-yang and because we’re such an increasingly urbanized society sending kids to play outside on their own maybe isn’t even a possibility. So what to do?

Are we depriving our kids of the amazingly rich and valuable experiences that simply being outdoors can offer them? Maybe. After all you can’t just talk about how the wind rustles through the leaves or how the snow sounds when you crunch through it, can you? And how big is a bear footprint anyway? And how beautiful the sound of a cricket orchestra is as the sun begins to set. Or what dark really looks like or what rain smells like, or how it might have been for our ancestors to live off the land and with the land.

The thing is, it doesn’t have to slip through our fingers. We can give our kids this valuable discovery time. Go on: Get out and go camping! It doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be as easy as pitching a tent in the backyard or as involved as planning a backpacking trip. Just get them outdoors. Let them feel the sand between their toes. Let them see how things work in nature. And give them some fun things to try.

There is a list of great outside activities for kids from Lynn in our kid section Kids’ Rock!

Lynn Brunelle is the author of Camp Out!, a collection of terrific activities for camping with your kids.

Image by Alisha Vargas, 1/2009. Creative Commons license.

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