This document provides 3 easy outdoor activities families can do together in the fall:
1. Alphabet Hunt - Look for letters of the alphabet in nature like branches forming letters.
2. Nature Detectives - Give kids a list of natural items to find and observe in nature.
3. Leafy Fun - Do leaf-themed games and crafts like a leaf rubbing or leaf matching game.
Diane Knight of Fuquay Varina, NC put together these slides showing how she and her family turned their backyard into a haven for wildlife and certified it with the National Wildlife Federation at http://www.nwf.org/gardenforwildlife.
Wildlife in a Warming World: Confronting the Climate Crisis examines case studies from across the country illustrating how global warming is altering wildlife habitats.
Diane Knight of Fuquay Varina, NC put together these slides showing how she and her family turned their backyard into a haven for wildlife and certified it with the National Wildlife Federation at http://www.nwf.org/gardenforwildlife.
Wildlife in a Warming World: Confronting the Climate Crisis examines case studies from across the country illustrating how global warming is altering wildlife habitats.
Check out this Lesson Plan!
This lesson plan encourages students to explore our surroundings through our senses. What can you see, hear, smell,
and touch on a walk around your school forest or neighborhood park?
This lesson provides strategies for K-5 teachers and youth leaders who wish to take their students outside to learn about the world around them.
With nothing much to do during the lockdown, people are constantly living off the internet. This constant use of smartphones and laptops causes a negative impact on our health.
Check out this curated list of fun things to try during quarantine while logging off from the internet.
Share these activities with parents to help them support their child’s development. These activities will benefit children from 2-months to 5-years old.
Check out this Lesson Plan!
This lesson plan encourages students to explore our surroundings through our senses. What can you see, hear, smell,
and touch on a walk around your school forest or neighborhood park?
This lesson provides strategies for K-5 teachers and youth leaders who wish to take their students outside to learn about the world around them.
With nothing much to do during the lockdown, people are constantly living off the internet. This constant use of smartphones and laptops causes a negative impact on our health.
Check out this curated list of fun things to try during quarantine while logging off from the internet.
Share these activities with parents to help them support their child’s development. These activities will benefit children from 2-months to 5-years old.
Harnessing nature to protect our communities.
"Natural Defenses in Action" highlights the important role that natural and nature-based approaches can play in reducing the mounting risks to our communities from weather and climate-related natural hazards. The report highlights how properly managed ecosystems and well-designed policies can help reduce disaster risk in ways that are good for both people and nature. "Natural Defenses in Action" profiles a dozen case studies that highlight best-in-class examples of how natural defenses are being put to use to avoid or reduce risks from flooding, coastal storms, erosion, and wildfire. It illustrates that harnessing nature to protect people and property is not just a good idea—it already is being done across the country!
A new report from the National Wildlife Federation looks at how 20 species that depend on a healthy Gulf are faring in the wake of the BP oil spill. The full extent of the spill’s impacts may take years or even decades to unfold, but Five Years & Counting: Gulf Wildlife in the Aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster examines what the science tells us so far.
Climate change already is having significant impacts on the nation’s species and ecosystems, and these effects are projected to increase considerably over time. As a result, climate change is now a primary lens through which conservation and natural resource management must be viewed. How should we prepare for and respond to the impacts of climate change on wildlife and their habitats? What should we be doing differently in light of these climatic shifts, and what actions continue to make sense? Climate-Smart Conservation: Putting Adaptation Principles into Practice offers guidance for designing and carrying out conservation in the face of a rapidly changing climate.
Addressing the growing threats brought about or accentuated by rapid climate change requires a fundamental shift in the practice of natural resource management and conservation. Traditionally, conservationists have focused their efforts on protecting and managing systems to maintain their current state, or to restore degraded systems back to a historical state regarded as more desirable. Conservation planners and practitioners will need to adopt forward-looking goals and implement strategies specifically designed to prepare for and adjust to current and future climatic changes, and the associated impacts on natural systems and human communities—an emerging discipline known as climate change adaptation.
The field of climate change adaptation is still in its infancy. Although there is increasing attention focused on the subject, much of the guidance developed to date has been general in nature, concentrating on high-level principles rather than specific actions. It is against this backdrop that this guide was prepared as a means for helping put adaptation principles into practice, and for moving adaptation from planning to action.
MAKING CONSERVATION CLIMATE SMART
The fate of our wildlife and wild places depends on steps we take now to prepare for and cope with the growing impacts of a changing climate. While managers traditionally have looked to the past for inspiration, increasingly we will be faced with future conditions that may have no historical analogs.
Although climate adaptation will have costs, the cost of inaction—through continuing with business as usual—is likely to be far higher. Furthermore, the sooner we begin the task of planning for a climate-altered future and taking meaningful adaptation action, the more successful these efforts ultimately will be. It is imperative that natural resource managers begin to act now to prepare for and manage these changes, in order to provide the best chance for cherished conservation values to endure. Putting climate-smart conservation into practice can make a difference for sustaining our nation’s diverse species and ecosystems well into the future. Indeed, protecting our rich conservation legacy depends on our rising to this challenge.
This National Wildlife Federation report details how 14 Gulf wildlife species are faring in the wake of BP's 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf. Since the tragedy, NWF has closely monitored the harm done to wildlife and important habitats in the Gulf and along the coast. Though the full impacts of the oil spill remain unknown, this summarizes what we know so far, and what restoration still needs to be done. http://www.nwf.org/fouryearslater
Be Out There takes an in-depth look at how to balance screen time with green time in the report, Friending Fresh Air: Connecting Kids to Nature in a Digital Age. Here, we offer insight on how to use technology you already love and still connect your kids to nature.
Offering sufficient outdoor time improves the overall health of our children while lengthening attention spans, diminishing aggressiveness, improving test scores and ultimately advancing learning. This guide addresses those concerns.
National Wildlife Federation (NWF) created the Be Out There movement to give back to American children what they don’t even know they have lost: their connection to the natural world. In the process, NWF aims to help reverse alarming health trends and help families raise happier, healthier children. Signs everywhere show the spirit of the movement taking hold.
For more information, go to www.beoutthere.org/join
2. Nature Detectives
WHAT YOU’RE DOING ANYWAY: Watching an older sibling’s
soccer game
HOW YOU CAN “BE OUT THERE”: Instead of tolerating
refrains of “I’m bored!” challenge kids to become nature
detectives in search of “natural” items.
ADDITIONAL SUPPLIES: Paper, pen or pencil
Write up a list of items to locate, such as the list below. Tell
your children that if the item has the word “collect’’ next to
it, they may take it with them. If the item has the words “de-
scribe and note location” next to it, they should write down
where they found the item and leave it where it is.
• Blade of grass longer than your index finger (collect)
• Acorn cap (collect)
• Leaf on the ground (collect)
• Pine cone (collect)
• Twig longer than your thumb (collect)
• Plants or insects in a sidewalk crack
(describe and note location)
• Signs of birds or birds themselves
(describe and note location)
• Signs of mice, squirrels, or other small Moment
mammals—or the mammals them-
selves (describe and note location) Your child comes home from school
clutching new-found treasures: three
• Two different kinds of seeds (collect) crumbly leaves, a wilted flower, two
acorns, and a dirt-encrusted rock.
TIP: Instead of putting them on the
kitchen counter, in a drawer, or —
gasp! — in the trash, display your
child’s treasures in a creative way:
start a nature ”museum” on a table,
shelf, or windowsill.
Did You Know?
EXTRA HINT: Limit the number of playing outside may help your child’s vision.
items that can be displayed at one recent studies find that kids who get
time to keep things manageable. regular outdoor time are less prone to
nearsightedness and the need for eyeglasses.
PHOTOS: TOP: RICHARD MAACK BOTTOM: CHARLIE ARCHAMBAULT
3. Leafy Fun leaf memory. Collect leaves from
trees and shrubs, and use them to play
a memory game.*
WHAT YOU’RE DOING ANYWAY:
Raking leaves in your yard 1. First, find eight to 12 pairs of match-
ing leaves. (Two oak leaves, two maple
HOW YOU CAN “BE OUT THERE”: leaves, etc.)
Get the whole family to help with the
lawn cleanup. Make it fun with some 2. Glue or tape each leaf you collect
leafy games! to an index card.
ADDITIONAL SUPPLIES: Index cards, 3. Spread out all the cards, face down.
tape (“Leaf Memory”); shopping bag,
4. Take turns flipping over two cards,
sheets of blank paper, black or brown
one at a time. If you get a match, keep 2. Pull a leaf out of the bag and see if
crayon (“Tree-mendous Match-Up”)
those cards and take another turn. family members can match it with the
type of tree it came from.
leaf labyrinth. Rake paths through 5. The player with the most pairs at the
end wins. 3. If you take some paper and a crayon,
fallen leaves in a spiral or maze pattern,
everyone can also make bark rubbings
and then follow the trail.
Tree-mendous match-Up. Even of some of the trees. Just press the
leaf Spelling. Rake leaves into if you live where leaves don’t fall, you
can take your family on a “leaf lookout”
paper to the bark and rub the crayon
lightly over it. A crayon stub rubbed on
names or initials.
during this time of year.* its side works great for this activity.
leaf angels. Make an autumn ver- 1. Gather several leaves, each from a 4. Encourage family members to
sion of a snow angel: Have everyone lie different type of tree in your neighbor- compile a tree book, complete with the
down in the leafy lawn and do jumping- hood or park. Put the leaves in a bag leaves, the names of the trees the leaves
jack movements with arms and legs. and head out with your family. come from, and their bark rubbings.
leaf Jumping. Conduct a contest to
see who can create the biggest pile of
leaves. Then take turns taking running
jumps into the winning pile!
Everyone
can help rake
up all those leaves,
and play some
games, too!
* To help you and your kids identify trees for this activity, a good resource is First Guide to Trees by George A. Petrides.
4. Take a Moon Walk
WHAT YOU’RE DOING ANYWAY: The A shining full moon turns an ordinary
sun just went down—but the kids still
have plenty of energy to burn before
night into something special. Shad-
ows stretch into strange, long shapes.
Did You Know?
bedtime. Silvery light touches everything with Climbing trees, playing in the mud, and
magic. It’s a perfect time to explore.
HOW YOU CAN “BE OUT THERE”: going on nature scavenger hunts can
Take a moon walk. Try to get away from the city lights so make kids healthier. doctors say an
the moon won’t be outshone. Take a hour of outdoor play a day helps ward
Ready for an adventure? During the next flashlight for safety, but keep it tucked off childhood obesity and diabetes.
full moon, take the family on a walk in a pocket to use only when you really
around a well-lit area of your neigh- need it. The longer you stay out in the
borhood. Or, see if your favorite wild dark, the better your night vision will
Moment
place is open to the public during the become.
evening. In fact, many nature centers,
parks, and ski resorts conduct special Listen for hooting owls, wind in the
full-moon hikes. If you miss the full trees, and other night sounds. Lie With a blank piece of paper in front
moon, the night or two before or after, down and look up at the starry sky. of her, your child looks up at you and
the moon will still be shining brightly. Enjoy the calm and quiet. asks, “What should I draw?”
TIP: Go for a walk together, and then
have your child draw a map of your
Mark your family calendar! Full neighborhood—using only natural
landmarks. This will heighten his or
moons this fall are on September 23, her observation skills and can be the
first step in creating a “field guide” to
October 22, and November 21. the nature in your neighborhood.
PHOTO: GARY M. STOLZ/USFWS
Join National Wildlife Federation’s Be Out There™ movement, which inspires families to spend daily time
outdoors together for their increased health and happiness. Find out more about the benefits of spending
time outside and get free outdoor activities for the whole family. Visit www.BeOutThere.org.
EDITOR: ANNE KEISMAN ILLUSTRATIONS BY JACK DESROCHER