Tools, resources and moral support
Parents and caregivers are critical influencers in the lives of children, and within the children and nature movement. In 2020, with schools and daycares around the world closed due to COVID-19, parents often became the main coordinators and curators of their children’s learning and play while trying to manage working from home and the myriad other challenges brought on by a global pandemic.
In the early days of the pandemic, we launched a rapid-response website, FindingNature.org, which featured a dedicated section for families with resources from experts in the children and nature movement as well as practical tips from parents as they found ways to support children’s learning, health and well-being through nature connection. All of these resources, including a conversation with Richard Louv on ways to access nearby nature and a webinar on family nature play, were migrated to the Families section of our new website, launched in late 2020.
We updated our Family Nature Club Toolkit, which offers everything families need to organize and lead a Family Nature Club in a safe and thoughtful way, including planning guides, tips, ideas, checklists and ready-to-use forms. And, after convening and learning from a group of Washington D.C.-based community organizations, we developed Family Engagement posters to support their efforts to connect families to nature.
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What if parents, grandparents and kids around the country were to band together to create nature clubs for families? What if this form of social/nature networking were to spread as quickly as book clubs did in recent decades? We would be well on our way to true cultural change.
