I thought this article was interesing so I also included this

By Richard Louv on August 25th, 2011
WANT YOUR KIDS TO GET INTO HARVARD? TELL ‘EM TO GO OUTSIDE!
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First of two in a series

September is back-to-school month, and the chanting begins: Drill, test, lengthen the school day, skip recess, cancel field trips, and by all means discourage free time for (gasp!) self-directed play.

Is that approach working, particularly in science learning? Not so well.

A few months ago, I met with a dozen biology professors at North Carolina Central University. They were deeply concerned about the dramatic deterioration of student knowledge of what’s out there: these students can tell you all about the Amazon rain forest, but nothing about the plants and animals of the neighborhoods in which they live.

When researching Last Child in the Woods, I heard a similar complaint from Paul Dayton, a prominent oceanographer and professor in the Scripps Marine Life Research Group at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla. Dayton is a harsh critic of a trend in higher education, the movement away from traditional biology toward the kind of molecular sciences and bioengineering that can produce products in the lab that can be patented by research universities.

The ethical issues of that process concern him, but what worries him even more is the growing ignorance of nature that he sees in young people.

“In a few years there will be nobody left to identify several major groups of marine organisms,” he said. “I wish I were exaggerating.”

During a later visit with Dayton, we were looking out of his window at the famous Scripps Pier. I asked him if he had ever thought to engaging a nearby high school. Maybe Scripps could bring the students from that school to the pier or even out on the Scripps explorer ships.

“I tried that.” He said one school administrator’s response was, “Oh, no, we’ve become so sophisticated in the teaching of science, that our students don’t have to go outside anymore.”

That attitude is more common than some of us would like to believe.

Last November, two Oregon State University researchers, writing in American Scientist, made the case that “an ever-growing body of evidence demonstrates that most science is learned outside of school.” In “The 95 Percent Solution,” John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking write, “The ‘school-first’ paradigm is so pervasive that few scientists, educators or policy makers question it. This despite two important facts:

Average Americans spend less than 5 percent of their life in classrooms, and an ever-growing body of evidence demonstrates that most science is learned outside of school.”

Falk and Dierking contend that “a major educational advantage enjoyed by the U.S. relative to the rest of the world” is its out-of-school learning landscape, including museums, libraries, zoos, aquariums, national parks, 4-H clubs, scouting, and, I would add, nature centers, state and local parks, and the nearby nature of our neighborhoods. They add, “The sheer quantity and importance of this science learning landscape lies in plain sight but mostly out of mind.” Rather than increasing school time, perhaps we should be investing in expanding quality, out-of-school experiences…”

Emerging research, some of it specific to out-of-school learning, some of it to the impact of time spent in natural environments on cognitive functioning, support that contention. A 2009 report by the National Research Council, Learning Science in Informal Environments: Places, People and Pursuits, “describes a range of evidence demonstrating that even everyday experiences such as a walk in the park contribute to people’s knowledge and interest in science and the environment…”

As for the research on nature experience and learning, that too is expanding. (More about that in Part Two) Many of the available studies describe correlations rather than cause and effect. But parents and educators certainly have enough evidence to act.

Out-of-school educators are already taking action, individually and programmatically. Consider Lori Kiesser’s program, Inside the Outdoors, in Orange County, California, which serves 150,000 children each year with a nature-based STEM education afterschool program. A growing network of grassroots volunteers and professionals, natural teachers and pediatricians work every day at getting kids and their families connected to nature.

Many of us hope that the tide is turning, that educators, parents and young people, too, are becoming more aware of the value of out-of-school experience and self-directed exploration and play, especially in natural settings.

Want your kids to get into Harvard? Tell ’em to go outside.

_____________________________

Richard Louv is the author of THE NATURE PRINCIPLE: Human Restoration and the End of Nature-Deficit Disorder and LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. He is Chairman Emeritus of The Children and Nature Network.
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Course Resourses

http://www.playbasedlearning.com.au/

http://progressiveearlychildhoodeducation.blogspot.com/

I wanted to add these last few sites and movies that I thought everyone would find interesting. I included the book Last Child in the Woods. This book is about how important it is for children to get outside and play. We don't do this enough

This book Raising Cain is amazing. It talks about the difference between raising girls and boys. Before reading this I did not realize how much gender made a difference.

http://drjeanandfriends.blogspot.com/







I also wanted to include www.drjean.org
She is an amazing woman with amazing ideas that really do work. She is my small obsession.

NAEYC. http://www.naeyc.org

Zero to Three: National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families. http://main.zerotothree.org
http://www.unicef.org
http://www.fpg.unc.edu
http://worldforumfoundation.org
http://acei.org
http://www.dec-sped.org
http://www.hepg.org
http://www.cec.sped.org
http://www.erikson.edu
http://www.acf.hhs.gov
http://www.wested.org

“Adults find their voice as a result of doing this work; they reclaim and heal things that happened in their childhood that maybe no one helped them work with when they were younger. The passion to create a safer more just world is there.”

I really really love this

"Instead of playing house, I wanted to play teacher. I would place my dolls in a row and I would pretend to be the teacher. As I grew up I wanted to continue to be a teacher, I had a built in passion that I wanted to make a real contribution in the world. To fix all the injustices in the world." (Louise Derman Sparks)

"I'm not here to save the world, I am here to make a difference in the community that I am working in."(The Passion for Early Childhood)

Special Olympics athletes are spokespersons for freedom itself - they ask for the freedom to live, the freedom to belong, the freedom to contribute, the freedom to have a chance. And, of all the values that unite and inspire us to seek a better world, no value holds a higher place than the value of freedom." Eunice Kennedy

Lyndon Johnson's Speech on Headstart

Mr. Shriver, ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests:
On this beautiful spring day it is good to be outside in the Rose Garden. Of course, the White House is a place where when you go outside you are still inside.
In that same vein, I would note that the Rose Garden is a garden without roses today, and the Fish Room is now a room without fish. But there is one compensation--open nearly any door here in the West Wing and you are liable to run into Sargent Shriver, and sometimes you will find him in more than one room at the same time.
This is a very proud occasion for him and for us today, because it was less than 3 months ago that we opened a new war front on poverty. We set out to make certain that poverty's children would not be forevermore poverty's captives. We called our program Project Head Start.
The program was conceived not so much as a Federal effort but really as a neighborhood effort, and the response we have received from the neighborhoods and the communities has been most stirring and the most enthusiastic of any peacetime program that I can remember.
Today we are able to announce that we will have open, and we believe operating this summer, coast-to-coast, some 2,000 child development centers serving as many as possibly a half million children.
This means that nearly half the preschool children of poverty will get a head start on their future. These children will receive preschool training to prepare them for regular school in September. They will get medical and dental attention that they badly need, and parents will receive counseling on improving the home environment.

Read more at the American Presidency Project: www.presidency.ucsb.edu http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26973#ixzz1plxkllf8

Childhood Web

I also wanted to mention the clothes line. This was a magical place for me. When my grandmother would hang her clothes with the wooden pins I would bury my face in her sheets and smell the sun as they dried. Myself and my sister would play hide and seek or pretend this was a fort. I can also remember feeling the cold wet sheets on a really hot day. This was one of my favorite memores.

The Red Piano

In
my grandmothers basement sat this red piano. Me and my sister would sit in her basement for hours and  bang on the keys, we would lift the back open and explore the inside. It always amazed me that my grandmother never came downstairs and fussed at us. She let us explore. My grandmother let us be children. This was really important.

This is how the people who were in my life still impact me now

When I was
 23 I left New Jersey. I left all the people I knew behind and started a new life in Frederick Maryland. I think since growing older we have moved further apart. At 89 my grandmother decided to move on her own to PA. She calls and checks on me, I send her steaks in the mail and chocolate bunnies on Easter. My sister has children of her own now and I play the role of the "fun aunt". I speak to them more than I speak to her. My mother tries to call me once a week to see how I am doing. The man above is the one that had one of the biggest impacts on my life and I did not mention it in a previous post. This is my father who I have not spoken to since I was 17. He left when I was seven and never looked back. I think I struggle today to still find identity in who I am and where I belong because of this. I conclude that I think not all impacts from people in your childhood are positive but they are necessary in order for other things to be explored.

My childhood web

This is who raised me. The City. I lived in this park as a child. The man in the truck would bring me lunch after a long day of playing. I knew every store owner, shop keeper and homeless person. I knew where to get free painters caps, who to ask for slices of pizza or what shop owner thought we stole. I was here all day. I think this qualifies for someone who was really important in my life

I had friends care for me when I was a kid.

One of the biggest influences in my life were my friends. My life was disrupted and I was misunderstood, I could always depend on these guys.

Me as a kid and my mom. I don't see alot of resemblence

My grandmother raised us

My grandmother was a very important part of growing up. She was the one who taught me to always wear an undershirt under my shirt. That cheese and crackers were best eaten when you were in bed watching Dallas and how much fun a really big basement was with a big red piano. My grandmother is the reason that I am a teacher now.

Personal Childhood Web

This is my sister. She cared deeply about me as a child. She was always by my side following me everywhere I went. We are really close in age and had a hard time getting along. I looked back now and wish I would have let her tag around a little more. The picture of is mom holding the fish. She really did try to make me feel special. We didn't have alot of my money and I remember one day she filled my room it seemed like a million Barbies. She always did her best to put food on the table. We never went hungry. My brother also meant alot to me growing up. He was born when I was 13 and I just became a little mother hen. My brother made me feel like a complete person for the first time. Some of my greatest memories in my childhood is taking him for icecream. I miss that little boy.

My favorite Quote

I know you did this

These were some of my favorite things as a little kid

Discussing Willy Wonka

Today on the bus we discussed Willy Wonka. I can't remember how we started on this subject but we started discussing the "Old Fashion Version" to the Tim Burton. We agreed that the lickable wall paper would be the most delicious thing to have and falling in a pool of chocolate would be the most horrible. Being attacked by squirrels came into close second followed by being a giant blueberry. We talked about if we would ever befriend any of these children. I think that it is really great that this is not only an incredible book but this is the only remake of a movie that I can remember that the children actually enjoyed seeing both.

This made me cry

I love this

The little girl who had no one

When you work in this industry long enough you see alot of children from different backgrounds. There was one little girl in particular who had no one. Her mother and father had given her up to her grandmother, the grandmother then passed her to parent in the center that I worked at. This child was in the toddler and every parent that walked through the door she attached herself to leg and cried. This was the first time in my career that I had seen another human being who had no one. I didn't make the connection until later in my career because she had no one she attached to everyone. I ofter think about where this little girl is today.

This is my all time favorite book

This has been my favorite book since I was a little girl. I read it to the four year old class now. I loved grover when I was little and he still holds true today. This book made me feel as though he was personally speaking to me and now I can see children exerting their power when I read it. I think when you truly love a book and then read it, this is when the book truly comes alive. I now give the book my voice.

Me Now

This is my favorite quote. It is from Yertle the Turtle

This reminds me of every field trip I take

This is me on the right when I was a little girl. I fell and hurt my arm on the monkey bars. My grandfather bought me McDonalds.

I wanted to add some examples of children's writing

Children really love their pets so no surprise this is the unit they picked for their after school program. My favorite thing about the bottom picture is that love is mentioned more than three times.

An expression of who I am

I thought this was really great of my kids. They worked with a friend and traced their bodies. They then decorated it. I am really proud of them. This says a lot about who they are.

This is one of my favorite things in my room and I think I will keep it forever. Children throughout the day hand me pictures that they had made. I love them all but do not have room to keep them all. I think someone in the class noticed.:)

These are pictures of my library. In my world everything is a work in progress.