Wildlife Encounters For Kids: School Activities Are Vital
Do you think children are too closeted these days? Do kids spend too much time inside in front of screens? Would many be better off enjoying the outdoors and spending some quality time in nature? Perhaps, it is due to our predilection for living in crowded big cities, rather than in more regional parts of the country? Limited access to the wide outdoors and the 21C in the grip of a digital device fever, combine, to make our children indoor Dick and Dora’s. Wildlife encounters for kids: school activities are vital, then, to help our youngsters engage with real life on this planet.
Getting Out of the Classroom is a Healthy Pursuit
The extraordinary wealth of school activities now available, like never before is a great boon for our school children. Bush walking, national parks, beach trips, Indigenous Australia orientation activities, wildlife zoos, science excursions, cultural display exhibitions and horticultural sessions – these are just a few of the many things to do. Sitting on bottoms in classrooms all day is not healthy for our young people. Endless digital searches through websites marketing kids’ activities is only the beginning of the adventure. We all need to do more, to get up off our chairs to exercise and engage with real life. School activities are vital for learning and inspiration, if the next generation are going to flourish.
Understanding & Respecting Wildness
Wildness is something we intellectually admire from a distance, We, as Homo sapiens, left wildness behind thousands of years ago. We have domesticated pets, livestock, cereal grains, and our environments. The recent coronavirus outbreak is thought to have originated in China via wild animal to human transfer. Perhaps, from a bat or something similar, in a region, where a large human population abuts wildlife. Wildlife can be dangerous; the clue is in the name ‘wild’. Nature is beautiful but it can kill you. Wildlife excursions for kids do need to be properly monitored.
A little bit of wildness is a good thing, as is a safe relationship with nature. Remember that we live mostly inside our own minds and that our conception of wildness is very much on the tame side. A gradual progression into activities involving nature is recommended, rather than taking young kids caving in Thailand. Leave the mountain climbing and the free falling to those with many years’ experience and training. Our kids desperately need more contact with the real world, but it requires skilled guidance to support their forays into nature. Baby It’s a wild world!