Reconnecting Children with Nature in Nebraska City
Last week’s Working Forum on Nature Education for Young Children at Arbor Day Farm couldn’t have been more exciting, or more inspiring.
You see, as part of our ongoing mission to plant more trees, the Arbor Day Foundation also works every day to find ways in which we can inspire that next generation of tree planters and environmental stewards. Teaching young children about nature in meaningful ways – connecting them with nature early in life – is vital to this process, and it’s becoming harder and harder in a world where our children spend more and more time indoors.
The Working Forum is one way we’re hoping to make change. In 2006, the World Forum Foundation, with the support of the Arbor Day Foundation and the Dimensions Foundation and many others, brought hundreds of early childhood educators, outdoor designers and landscape architects to Arbor Day Farm for the first Working Forum on Nature Education.
The Working Forums, held all over the world on a variety of topics related to early care and education, are a project of the World Forum Foundation (with the support of many, including the Arbor Day Foundation). The WFF, based in Seattle, Washington, promotes dialogue and exchange of ideas relating to the education and care of young children - it also hosts the World Forum on Early Care and Education, a broad-based international meeting, every two years.
At the 2006 Working Forum in Nebraska City, a movement was born. Over 250 early care providers, designers and landscape architects shared their vision and ideas for new, better outdoor spaces for our children. Attendees left Nebraska City with concrete plans to bring positive outdoor spaces to children in cities all over the world. Also, at the gathering in 2006, the Nature Action Collaborative for Children was born - the NACC, a coalition of many organizations devoted to nature education, has emerged as a way to provide a tool for communication and resources to people everywhere who are devoted to reconnecting children with nature.
Over the next two years, the plans from the 2006 Working Forum unfolded worldwide. In Scotland, Nepal, Mexico, Korea, and all across the U.S. – everywhere, people found new ways to bring nature to children who are losing more natural interaction every day.
This second Working Forum was all about continuing the work, and sharing stories of success – as well as finding the best ways to move forward even more effectively into the future. Wrote John Ferak in the Omaha World-Herald:
“If 19th century naturalist Henry David Thoreau were growing up today in America, would he spend 30 hours or more each week watching television, using a computer, listening to his headphones or talking on a cell phone?
More than ever, say some scholars, there’s a widening disconnect between children and nature.
About 300 educators, environmentalists and landscape design architects gathered this week at the Lied Lodge & Conference Center as part of a symposium to discuss topics relating to children and nature…” Read more.
Nearly 300 people from 27 nations spent three days working together to make sure action continues to beget action. Hours were spent outdoors among the Nebraska prairie grasses, wildflowers and trees, planning what the future would hold and demonstrating innovation for early education (such as the use of clay, leaves and other natural materials by Roxana Salazar, pictured above, when she works with young children in La Paz, Bolivia).
Attendees continued to build on the formation of the NACC, and many endorsed a “Call to Action” written as an overall mission statement for the outdoor education of young children.
The 2008 Working Forum was all about ongoing action — the fun didn’t stop in Nebraska City. The push to connect children with nature is quickly becoming a global movement, the good stories abound, and they made the second Working Forum a resounding success. Stay tuned for some of those stories, right here, in the weeks to come.
