Children engage with nature

Creating and managing places where children engage with nature

Creating and managing places where children engage with nature, offers a set of guidelines for those who create, manage or promote development of nature spaces in the everyday environments of children, youth, and families, especially in urban/suburban communities. The goal is to attract kids and families outdoors to interact directly with nature.

Children must spend more time outdoors—for their good health and the health of our planet. If children don’t move enough, their bodies will not develop in a healthy manner. If children don’t grow up engaged with nature, chances are they will never understand human dependency on the natural world.

Nature play is defined as a learning process, engaging children in working together, to develop physical skills, to exercise their imaginations, to stimulate poetic expression, to begin to understand the workings of the world around them.