Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/wonder----nacc-newsletter/5023285/
What Does Every Child Need?
The reflections shared in this edition broadly reflect the Nature Action Collaborative for Children Universal Principle:
We believe nature-based spaces should be accessible to all abilities.
According to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, children have the right to live and play in environments that stimulate their healthy development and fullest potential. Many people believe that nature is an essential aspect of these environments for children.
Environmental psychologist Louise Chawla has written extensively about childhood, nature, and ecstatic memory. Encounters with the natural world that foster a sense of wonder, Chawla found, constituted multiple dimensions of freedom and imagination. Freedom is evident both physically and as a state of mind. Of the problems facing our planet and the chaos of our own busy lives, it might seem naïve to place ‘cultivate wonder’ at the top of a list of priorities. Yet the power of beauty and the awe nature inspires is essential in everyone’s lives.
Read the following reflections and ask yourself, “What do you think children have a right to?”
Why Not Nature?
Olivia Wilmot, Jamaica
I chose to host the “NaTuRe is the Best Teacher Summer Kamp” because I’ve had profound life-changing experiences of the healing and beauty of ...