You will find little disagreement among experts that children today in all age groups are spending too much time behind screens and too little time outdoors. Busy working families, a lack of green space in neighborhoods, more exciting indoor activities and neighborhood safety concerns are just a few of the contributing factors. The concern is that a generation with no connection to nature will result in people who are primarily sedentary and have little concern about the environment and the world around them.

Thanks to the generosity of the National Recreation Foundation, NRPA’s Green Parks – Green Kids program promotes and enhances environmental education for children by park and recreation agencies. The program provides grants to five park and recreation agency programs in 2013 to increase the number of children participating in regular, outdoor environmental education. Agencies use a variety of nature interpretation and environmental education curricula. The best practices from each program will be identified and shared with park and recreation programs in fall 2013.

The 2013 participating agencies are:
City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, California
City of Fort Lauderdale Parks and Recreation Department, Florida
Boston Parks and Recreation Department, Massachusetts
Genesee County Parks and Recreation Commission, Michigan
Morris County Park Commission, New Jersey

Los Angeles
Administered at Griffith Park, one of the nation’s largest urban parks, the Urban Wildlife Program (UWP) is an environmental education program designed to raise the level of urban youths’ environmental interest and awareness through actively experiencing the wonders of the natural outdoor world, learning about the urban forest ecosystems, and understanding how they ultimately affect our life and environment. The UWP combines local history, hiking, crafts and team building to carry out the program’s objectives. National Association for Interpretation-certified park rangers lead participants in a four-hour outdoor nature experience. Persons with disabilities are able to participate in the program, as reasonable accommodations are made with prior arrangements.

Participants are transported by school bus from their community recreation center to and from the Griffith Park Visitors Center. The program begins with a 15-minute orientation to welcome participants and outline the program’s curriculum and policies. Participants are then led on a 30-minute interpretive nature hike in Griffith Park to learn about the history of the park, the indigenous Tongva tribe, plant and wildlife identification, “leave no trace” principles, and fire ecology. Following the hike, participants engage in an activity making animal tracks or plant native seeds to take home. The program continues with an outdoor team-building activity where participants learn more about fire ecology and prevention, as well as emergency rescue techniques. To reinforce comprehension of the concepts learned, participants reenact emergency rescue scenarios and how to safely extinguish fires. At the end of the session, participants are asked to identify three native plants and animals each and review how they can individually reduce, recycle and reuse.

Fort Lauderdale
The Kids Ecology Corps’ mission is to inspire young people to make environmental action part of their everyday lives and the lives of those around them. KEC has reached more than 100,000 young people from pre-K through high school, offering unique hands-on presentations and eco-action programs that educate children and youth about: reducing, reusing and recycling to keep our oceans clean; the importance of trees; the role replanting our coastal wetlands plays in beach conservation; water conservation; pollution prevention; energy conservation; and protecting local natural habitats for native wildlife.

Boston
ParkSCIENCE, a series of educational workshops, is designed to teach children that science is fun and can be experienced everywhere around them. Interactive experiments and demonstrations challenge children’s cognitive skills and invite them to ask questions, hypothesize, gather and weigh evidence, and then draw conclusions. Events include three ParkSCIENCE Children’s Festivals, ParkSCIENCE Wildlife in Massachusetts, ParkSCIENCE with New England Aquarium, ParkSCIENCE Nature Walks with Mass Audubon Society, SciNArt in the Park, and Arnold Arboretum Maple Collection and Rhododendron Dell walks.

Genesee County
For-Mar Nature Preserve and Arboretum is one of the facilities owned and operated by the Genesee County Parks and Recreation Commission. The For-Mar on the Road (FMOTR) summer nature programs were first offered in 2004 in the county parks as a way to introduce For-Mar to more people. FMOTR consists of two specific educational opportunities for children and families: free in-school opportunities and a summer parks program.

The goal of the in-school portion of FMOTR is to offer free in-school field trips that bring the For-Mar educational experience to third- through fifth-grade classrooms. In-school programs are fun and educational environmental science programs designed to reinforce science standards and concepts, with an emphasis on the importance of nature, health, physical activity, nutrition and outdoor education. All in-school programs are aligned with the State of Michigan’s science requirements and meet the needs of Genesee County school curricula. Last year, staff provided programs to 99 classrooms, reaching 2,618 students all over Genesee County. So far this year, naturalists have already provided 163 programs, reaching an estimated 4,252 students.

The goal of the summer nature-based program is to offer free programs in area parks, both through the traditional FMOTR daytime programs for children ages 3-12 and a new Citizen Science evening series for families. Summer programs were created with fun outdoor hands-on activities and games that make science and outdoor education concepts come to life so that they are easy to understand and enjoyable at the same time. FMOTR will offer more than 220 programs in the parks this summer.

Morris County
The Morris County Park Commission has already scheduled nearly 400 kids for its environmental education programs, some of whom have come this spring. Schools have chosen a variety of lessons, but all involve hands-on experiences with nature as well as time on the trails. Many have also chosen to have a live animal extension, where a native corn snake and box turtle are brought out, to talk about adaptations, why wild animals should not be pets and other lessons. The lesson titles include Amazing Adaptations, Apple Cidering, Backbone Bonanza, Backpack Field Trips: I ♥ Trees and Math in the Garden, Bird-Brained, Blazing the Way, Bulbs — Plant in a Package, Cool Creepy Crawlies, Ecosystem Exploration, Fantastic Forest, Get Lost, Great Swamp Ecosystems, Hiking through History, Lenape Life, Maple Sugaring, Monarch Mania, Nature Detectives, Nature Nuts, Plants Around Us, Propagation — No Seed? No Problem, Rock On!, Seeds — Where it All Begins, Sense-ational, The World in the Water, Trees — In Your Own Backyard and Whose Home?