Let The Kid Guide: Putting Nature Back Into Our Lives

Magic happens when parents set aside agendas and allow children to engage with the world around them. They wander in the backyard or along a sidewalk, never in a straight line or with a consistent cadence. They pause, squat, put their face in a bush or stick their hands in the dirt and always emerge with a treasure and a smile. Sometimes their faces crinkle with a question and broaden into giggles when the unexpected occurs. They throw and stomp, grab and squeeze, smell and listen, always testing, always learning. The sensory play in which they engage is vital work of knowing themselves and their world.

What we’ve learned from them is that we don’t need a lesson plan for the day or an exhaustive gear list for an outing, simply the willingness to open the senses and open the imagination. Let the Kid Guide: Putting Nature Back into Our Lives provides an approach as well as activities for families to harness and unleash these natural tendencies. As parents we must trust our children and allow them to lead explorations in an unstructured way. Children also need our support to ensure their innate ability to connect to the natural world doesn’t fade.  

Richard Louv’s landmark work on Nature Deficit Disorder enlightened parents on how screens interfere with children’s connection to natural places, resulting in a number of behavioral and health issues. This and numerous studies about the positive effects of nature play compel us to get outside, and yet in our busy lives it is difficult to venture out. Why? We were pros as kids. What are we forgetting as adults; how can we help our children now?

Let the Kid Guide is a response to these questions. Many guides will tell you where to go with your family. However, what are you supposed to do when you arrive? How will you get out the door with a child dragging his feet? Join seasoned educators, Lisa Kosglow and Margot Angstrom, and whimsical visual storyteller, Sarah Uhl, as they share their approach and activities that cultivate a sense of wonder in the natural world, trigger creativity and gather everyone playing outside, together.