Today’s blog takes us to the Children and Nature Network where you will find the following posts (and more):

The first of these begins:

“Over the last decade, the Parks and Recreation Department (PARD) of Austin, Texas, has been a leader in the rapidly expanding grassroots movement of organizations dedicated to getting more kids outside and educating parents, teachers and healthcare providers about the benefits of frequent connections with nature. When the Cities Connecting Children to Nature (CCCN) Initiative — a partnership between the National League of Cities and the Children and Nature Network — was launched, Austin’s Children in Nature movement was poised to take the next step to elevate its message and work toward a more impactful interdepartmental and cross-sector scale citywide. …”

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Here’s something else to note: Children & Nature Network’s Research Library achieved an important milestone recently when it published its 500th article summary.  When Richard Louv wrote Last Child in the Woods he only had a couple dozen studies on which to base his arguments, but CN&N review and summarise about that number every month.  Louv said, in response to this milestone.
“It was part of our dream from the beginning to be the one place where anyone in the world could find the bulk of the research on this issue, to bring it out from behind the firewalls and make it useful to the people who need it most.”
 Here’s some of the latest output:
Children’s Voice
  • Engaging children and youth in open space planning produces meaningful outcomes
  • Children play an active role in indigenous society’s changing relationship with the environment
Environmental Attitudes and Behaviours
  • School-garden program promotes positive attitudes toward the environment
  • Students who engage in gardening and lawn-care gain understanding and develop positive attitudes toward bees
Social Justice
  • Learning for sustainability requires a social justice approach applicable to both humans and the more-than-human world
  • Early childhood pedagogy based on relationality rather than separation could resist an extractive relationship with the more-than-human world

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