7:00AM BST 16 Jun 2014
1 Comment
It was at my children’s joint fourth and fifth birthday party that it dawned on me how much the outdoors can appeal to the young. I had organised a brilliant clown, Oodly Doodly the Fenland Fool, to come and entertain.
For all his magnetism, the guests completely ignored him, piling instead into our garden pool, where they had a great time catching fish, netting water beetles, hurling water weed and paddling. They went home wet and filthy, so I was not the most popular mother that week.
Children today seem to spend most of their time in the man-made rather than the natural world. They go to school by bus or car, and then spend hours in classrooms. At home, they spend yet more hours indoors, watching television, and rarely come into contact with mud, leaves or grass all day.
But being indoors is not good for them. Studies show that children who spend a lot of time in front of screens rather than interacting with people are worse at communicating and have lower attention spans.
(source link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/gardenprojects/10898829/Garden-activities-for-the-children-this-summer.html)
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