• Hold a family hiking day once a month.
• Encourage more outdoor minded field trips at your child’s school.
• Plan games and activities that encourage outdoor time such as bird watching, rock collecting, plant identification, nature scavenger hunts, and more.
• Get involved in your local community garden, or if you have the means, planting a garden at home.
• Plan green travel – i.e. for family vacations, plan a camping trip vs. a trip to a resort.
• Get the kids involved in nature minded art projects and crafts.
• Check out books from the library on nature topics.
• Do a family community clean-up day in a local park or other outdoor area.

Lastly, get involved with a group or program that supports a life-long love of nature and outdoor activities such as…

• No Child Left Inside
• The Girl Scouts
• Children & Nature
• Nature Explore
• Camp Fire USA
• Earth Scouts
• 4-H
• Nature Rocks
• American Hiking Society

Post from: Tree Hugging Family

If you like a manicured yard, that’s fine, but if you leave one small corner a little wild, it’ll attract cool creatures like worms, snails, and pillbugs that kids will like to see. Creatures like these enjoy a little cover – so a pile of leaves, a few more weeds than normal, and so fourth encourages visits.

Make sure to go native to attract the wild. If you grow only non-native plants, fewer animals like birds and insects will visit. Native is not only a sustainable way to grow but it’s attractive to local wildlife.

Hang up a DIY recycled tire swing or make a recycled tire sandbox so that kids can get wild and active with play.

Create the sort of garden that actually attracts the wild to your yard. For example, a butterfly garden or place a birdbath and birdhouses around for flying friends.

Make it utterly fun with a wild sunflower playhouse, a pizza garden, bean teepees and more. Kids love an adventure and if you give this to them in your yard, they’ll be more inclined to go outside. See 10 Fun Organic Gardening Projects for Kids for ideas.

[image via stock.xchang]

Post from: Tree Hugging Family

Placing seeds: Put a few seeds at a time in a medicine cup so they don’t go nuts.

Pulling deadheads: I remember popping off my mom’s deadhead flowers as a kid; and it was pretty fun. You can let little ones pull off dead flower heads, dingy leaves, or even have them pull up dead plant. Give them a pair of kid friendly gloves.

Worm hunting: Worms help your garden and many kids are ready to help (not my son – squeamish) but most. Let them bring the worms to you.

Rock collecting: When I’m outside and Cedar doesn’t want to be, I tell him to collect rocks. Now in his case, he’s always liked collecting rocks. He has books about it, and a pretty big collection by now. If your child is not interested in rocks have them collect sticks, ladybug (carefully), or any other outside object.

Watering: Give kids a little can that pours slowly, so you don’t end up with poor drowned plants.

Busy work: There’s tons of busy (non-essential) tasks a child can do in a garden with a tiny hand shovel. Any kid will shovel dirt back and fourth between a pot and the ground, kids like to pretend to plant things (sticks, a single flower) in a pot, or allow them to be a little more useful and loosen dirt in an area for you.

What do you let your little one help with in the garden?

Click here to learn about all the current contests, themes, and green challenges going on at Tree Hugging Family in May 2008

[Image via stock.xchng]

Post from: Tree Hugging Family

“This is my daughter, Savie, and my dog Halley playing the creek here in AZ. We have a campsite up in the Chiricahua Mountains. We go there every year to the same site and they have so much fun there, and as you can see they are enjoying themselves.”

Kids and dogs and creeks – oh my. Too cute. This little one is loving the water.

This next one is my favorite..

The “Hey, you got me by surprise” shot!

As always we love to see families out in nature, having a great time. Pets too. If you’d like to send us pictures of your tree hugging, nature lovin’ family you can contact us here.

[photos via Kisha]

Post from: Tree Hugging Family

In New York City, asthma is the leading reason for hospital admissions among the 15 year old and younger set. Research looked at where these children live, and were able to directly correlate less trees in the immediate environment with more asthma admissions. This research held up even after factoring in sources of pollution, socioeconomic status and population density.

Researchers note that tree density itself may not be entirely related, it may also have to do with the fact that children in tree heavy neighborhoods may play outside more often or the trees may improve air quality. Obviously more research is needed, but it’s a cool study all the same. It gives us yet another good reason to plant trees, and to encourage outdoor play.

The study was published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

[photo via Jennifer Chait's fuzzy neighborhood park series]

Post from: Tree Hugging Family

It’s not a realistic campaign. While I agree with the reasoning, I don’t much agree with how they’re trying to pull this whole, get the family together or get moving or what have you.

First off they lie, or at least exclude decision making processes:

From the TV Turnoff Network: “All TV is passive, sedentary and non-experiential. Most viewers tend to watch show after show–not individual programs. Instead of watching a documentary about birds, go out (with binoculars if you have them) and see how many real birds you can identify in your neighborhood. The purpose of National TV-Turnoff Week is to leave behind judgments about the quality of television and focus instead on creating, discovering, building, participating and doing.”

ALL TV is passive. Really? All of it. I think that’s a stretch. We learned things on home shows that we used to build our house (not passive). Cedar wants to join a jump rope team when he’s old enough and is already doing hip hop dance – every single day (not passive), and why? Because he watched Jump In on TV. If you’re going to call for a ban, at least be honest and consider that some people use the TV to their advantage in useful ways.

I hate the implication that humans can’t make good decisions when exposed to something that’s potentially harmful.

Is TV turnoff week realistic?:

There are other broad claims they make as well. However, one of my biggest issues with TV turnoff week goes back to the whole, it’s not realistic situation. Asking people to turn of the TV for a whole week is not a normal way to learn how to make change. In most cases folks won’t keep that TV off. They might for a while. In fact, the TV site claims that 90% of the folks who participate in turnoff week don’t return to their old TV laden habits. That said, how many are participating? That 90% is a pretty small number if the TV turnoff forums are any indication.

They’re asking for people to make huge leaps all at once instead of incorporating less TV on a normal sort of schedule. In my experience, large leaps don’t tend to hold up. In a completely bizarre switch, TV turnoff week goes from asking folks to make this broad jump, to asking people to make too minor of changes. Like the Family Dinner Night:

“Have you picked your night? Each one of us is picking a night, that cannot change. Pick yours and after dinner, pull out a board game, a deck of cards or something else to do and make a night of it.”

A dinner. One dinner? I’m sorry, but if you’re only eating one dinner, one meal a week together, there’s a much bigger issue at hand then television. Something besides TV is gonna have to give. You should be having far more meals together each week than one.

Learning by negatives:

Learning by negatives is also a big pet peeve of mine. I don’t agree with negatives to make a positive. If a child considers TV a positive in their world, then taking it away to teach them a lesson in fitness, family time, better grades, what have you, is a negative way to do so. A better and actually more realistic way to pull off this lesson is to simply incorporate outdoor time, family dinners, exercise, and togetherness into your life, before, or without taking anything away.

Is TV an easy thing to blame?

Trust me, your kids would rather be with you, doing fun things then watching TV – I’d bet on it. Your kids would rather eat with you than watch a movie. If this is not true in your house, if your kids don’t want to be with you, then however harsh it sounds, it’s your fault. As a parent you make the big choices. You make the choices from day one that define how your kids feel about family time, TV time, and most other issues. If your kids are reluctant to hang out, it tells me that so are you, and you need more than TV turnoff week. You need major changes in your household.

If TV turnoff week got you thinking about this fine, that’s a good thing that TV turnoff week has accomplished, but it’s not TV that’s the issue. It’s our family actions that are to blame. We talk about spending time with our kids a lot here. One because that’s how it should be. And two, the only way our children pick up our green actions is by being with us, by doing.

30 ideas for family activities:

1. Make Your Own Natural, Colorful Dyes – Great Kid Nature Project
2. Play dress up – let the littles totally raid your make-up and clothes
3. Make Your Own Solar Light!
4. Color
5. Green audit your trash as a family
6. Play board games
7. Nature Themed Autumn Craft
8. Build A Plant Maze!
9. Go fishing
10. Make some paper
11. Read together
12. Take a sign language class
13. Cook a meal
14. See what other other families are doing
15. Homemade Organic Paint Soap for Kids
16. Play with clay
17. Study water – and do some experiments
18. Bake cookies or cupcakes
19. Five Fun Ways to Reconnect with Nature
20. Go bike riding.
21. Go On A Treasure Hunt
22. Join Journey North
23. Build a playing card castle
24. Start a garden
25. Search for rocks
26. Get outside
27. Get a pet
28. Volunteer to build a house
29. Go swimming
30. Volunteer to keep the planet clean

There are at least a hundred more ideas on this blog alone related to activities and actions you can take as a family. Not to mention countless others beyond this one little blog. Honestly, you don’t even have to do anything dramatic – just hanging out around the house, doing everyday tasks together works. Don’t just celebrate TV turnoff week to see if you’re up to some random challenge. Make the challenge about your whole world. This is your life, your children’s lives, time you can’t get back. All in all, my biggest issue, I suppose, is that we can do so much better then TV turnoff week.

What do you think?

[photos via stock.xchng]

Post from: Tree Hugging Family

See how right I am – just beautiful. Shawna notes that these shots, “Are from a camping trip we went on this last weekend to South East Utah. It’s called Buck Horn Wash! Very beautiful!” I agree.

Many parts of Utah are exceptionally beautiful. We’ve been there often and Cedar loves visiting. It’s a great family friendly state to visit with plenty of get up and go activities. During our trips there Cedar managed to sled, ice skate, and ski, all before he was five years old, and you cannot beat the summer scenery – I highly recommend you plan a family trip there. Winter or summer.

Look at these great kids!

You can tell that these are kids comfortable with being outside and loving every minute of it – which of course is what we’d like to see all kids doing.

Also FYI, Shawna has a new blog that looks like it’s shaping up to be a great resource for green families. The blog, Nature for Kids – looks like it’ll be covering outdoor activities and tips for easing outdoor adventures. My favorite page there is the Leave No Trace page – a great resource for green families. If you’ve never heard of Leave No Trace you’ll LOVE it. Even new, I’d say that Nature for Kids is worth a visit – especially since there are even more cool pictures to see there.

Big hugs to Shawna and her family for sharing their beautiful photos. Don’t forget, if you have photos of your family out enjoying nature, or doing any sort of green family activity, send them in, because we’d love to share them with everyone here at Tree Hugging Family. No worries if picture taking isn’t your best skill. I post my photos here – and you can’t get much worse than mine. We like all photos. 

[photos via Shawna - aka tree hugging parent]

Post from: Tree Hugging Family

Today, get up and find one reason to get outside and enjoy nature.

Need an idea? Here are 25 good ones.

1. It’s wet, it’s cold, find some eco-frendly coats and gear up.
2. Go on a winter scavenger hunt.
3. Hit the local zoo. see how the animals act differently in the cold months. Which animals are out more or less? Bonus, the zoo will be empty — enjoy the peace and quiet.
4. Play Extreme Leaves!
5. Attract winter birds. Even build your own winter bird feeder.
6. It feels less cold outside when you get that blood pumping. Grab a big bucket of chalk and play hopscotch. See how many variations you can try.
7. If you have a local waterfall park go visit. Waterfalls are drastically different in the winter and summer. Most people visit in the summer. Why not see both sides. Below is Cedar on a hike we took at Silver Creek Falls in Oregon last January — he had a great time and this is a child who refuses to wear a real winter coat — so it was cold. But he slid on ice and had fun all the same.

8. Plant a winter garden.
9. Go caroling tonight.
10. Hiking in winter can still be fun. Sure it’s cold but you can learn to do it right.
11. Collect the items for and then make a holiday winter wreath.
12. Make the most of winter stargazing.
13. Go sledding.
14. For the brave — winter camping! Less spiders more fun.
15. Collect the items for and then make a winter kissing ball. A kissing ball is a similar but different sort of tradition than plain mistletoe. Usually it involves a potato, winter evergreen sprigs, and of course kissing.
16. Build a bonfire.
17. Make snow angels. You too — not just the kids.

18. Learn to make a traditional Japanese paper boat. Make many. Find a nice clear winter stream or pond and go sailing
19. Make a family time capsule. Go for a secret hike in the woods and bury it. Second plan; bury it outside at your house but stay outside afterwards and play a winter game of catch.
20. Hit the beach; if you live near one. Empty, cold, different and still. Winter beaches are loads of fun. Bonus — wet sand never blows in your eyes.
21. Try snowshoeing; it’s one winter sport that’s perfectly emission free.
22. Bundle the kids up in blankets toss them in a red (or other colored) wagon and go on a night walk to see the Christmas lights.
23. Plan a winter picnic.
24. Snowboard responsibly. Get a sustainable harvest wood board from Venture Snowboards or a recycled option from your local used sports equipment store.
25. Go to the park. Yes it’s cold but the park’s still there. Just different. Your kids will still have a great time simply being with you outside.

Bonus idea; plant a tree — there’s never a bad day for this.

What’s your family’s favorite outdoor winter activity?

Post from: Tree Hugging Family