teaching children to love nature

Teaching children to love nature is something that is very important to me. Today, Kalista, is going to share her outdoor adventure with you. She’s a Canadian wife and mama to 3 beautiful (with many, many more to come!) little ones, a student, a do-it-yourselfer, a halfway homeschooler and a wannabe homesteader living a simple and full life on a limited budget with as small a carbon footprint as she can manage!

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Hello! I’d like to thank Emily for having me on her blog! I’m still new to the blogging world and this is my very first guest post! I’m excited (and very nervous) to share with you!

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While reading post after post about snow last week, I decided I should take the kids out and soak up what little warm weather we had left. So I packed all three of them up and took them to one of the hiking trails close to our house. Normally when we go hiking, my husband and I are the leaders with the kids in tow. Today, I decided to follow them. We had no agenda and nowhere to be so we took our time and just enjoyed the great outdoors. Watching them do their thing without my interruptions was such a treat for me! I realised that it isn’t very often that they get to explore outside on their own terms.

My husband and I try to live an eco-friendly lifestyle. We try to model earth-friendly behaviours for our children in the hopes that they too will grow up to care about the environment. As I watched my children run from tree to tree, soaking it all up, I realised that they can’t care about something they don’t know.

We don’t have to teach our kids to love nature. They are born with an innate fascination with it. Take a child on a hike through the woods and watch them eagerly soak up everything around them. Acorns and pine cones are objects to be treasured, trees and flowers are studied in great detail, birds and small animals are spotted with excitement.

We should be nurturing their love of nature from day one! We should give them as many opportunities as we can to be outside. We should encourage them to learn from their environment because it certainly does have a lot to teach us. Maybe if they spend more time enjoying what Mother Nature has to offer as children, they’ll treat her with more respect as adults.

How can we hope to save our planet if we don’t allow our kids to get to know it? If we don’t nurture their curiosity, they can’t grow up to respect the earth. If they don’t respect it, why would they bother trying to save it?

So while canvas bags and organic produce are all great (I really do, that isn’t sarcasm!), maybe the best thing we can do to save the environment is to spend time learning to love it.

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Thanks, Kalista, for sharing this great post. I agree, we do need to nurture their curiosity and encourage our little ones to explore the world and treat it with respect! To learn more about Kalista, check out her blog!

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