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Nature and Gifted Children

"Do you remember playing outside?  Maybe you remember leaving home on a summer morning and not returning except for meals and bedtime.  Kids now are much less likely to have such a personal connection with nature.  Yet many reasons exist why a connection to nature is crucial for children: Physical development, Cognitive development, Social development, Green development, Spiritual development..." Judy Molland, Get Out!: 150 Easy Ways for Kids & Grown-Ups to Get Into Nature and Build a Greener Future

Also visit Spirituality, Social / Emotional, Sensitivities, Counseling and Dabrowski's Theory...
  ...and Social Stuff in Hot Topics!, Social/Emotional books for our kids...

Geocaching: The sport for gifted kids of all ages

By popular demand, the sport that is sweeping the World!  Get outside and learn the basics, create your own caches, study geography with trackable geocoins, and more... Read Geocaching 101: How to find your first cache and get started today!

 

Get Out!: 150 Easy Ways for Kids & Grown-Ups to Get Into Nature and Build a Greener Future by Judy Molland

Want to learn more about nature? Experience the world in new ways? Go green and make the world a better place? Want the same things for the kids in your life?  Get Out! is chock full of ideas to help families, classroom teachers and group leaders achieve these goals and more!
 

Children & Nature Network’s Research and Studies

Children are smarter, cooperative, happier and healthier when they have frequent and varied opportunities for free and unstructured play in the outdoors.  Here's the research to support those claims, including Faber Taylor and Kuo's important research to the understanding of the impact of nature on people's lives, and specifically to the well-being of children...
 

How children lost the right to roam in four generations by David Derbyshire

In four generations, children's unsupervised roaming has gone from 6 miles to 300 yards. But with ample research showing stress, depression and anxiety are reduced and mental health improved with time spent in nature, what does this lack of exposure mean to our kids?  ...
 

Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv 

Today's kids are increasingly disconnected from the natural world, says Louv (Childhood's Future; Fatherlove; etc.), even as research shows that "thoughtful exposure of youngsters to nature can... be a powerful form of therapy for attention-deficit disorder and other maladies." Instead of passing summer months hiking, swimming and telling stories around the campfire, children these days are more likely to attend computer camps or weight-loss camps: as a result, they've come to think of nature as more of an abstraction than a reality...