Discover the Nature Explore™ Families' Club

Do you enjoy sharing nature with kids? Why not start a Nature Explore™ Families' Club? This outreach project is a collaborative venture of the Arbor Day Foundation, Dimensions Educational Research Foundation, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension.

"The GOAL of the Nature Explore Families' Club is to inspire children and their families to connect with the natural world and spend quality time together outdoors."

It's easy to get started. You can download a zip file from the Arbor Day Foundation. Along with copies of flyers and other promotional materials to advertise your new group, you will receive the Nature Explore™ Families' Club Kit. The kit includes facilitator notes and worksheets for the kids on nine topics like Get to Know a Tree, Animal Signs, and What Can You See in a Cloud?

These activities would be great for a group of young children. I have a friend who has been regularly taking a gaggle of preschoolers on nature walks and I think the materials would be perfect for her group.

Enjoy your time outdoors!

Walk your way to mental clarity

Photo credit: Leon Brooks

Do you want to improve your ability to concentrate? Take a walk!


But wait! Don't just walk anywhere.






In the paper "The Cognitive Benefits of Interacting With Nature" (Berman, et. al, 2008), published in Psychological Science, the authors discuss how a walk through a natural setting can refresh your brain. A walk in the city seldom does; it requires too much directed attention. Car horns force you to focus on not getting run over. You have to consciously ignore billboards, ringing cell phones, and other mentally jarring intrusions just to get some peace. Natural settings, on the other hand, give your brain some much needed breathing room. You might see and hear interesting things, but they aren't urgently forcing your brain to pay attention.

(Mama Joules' digresses: OK, so I have to wonder about this. What if your natural setting isn't so peaceful? Maybe you are hiking through an untamed forest complete with stinging insects, the threat of extreme weather, and the potential for attacks by large hungry wildlife? Would you still feel refreshed and restored afterward?!)

The authors conducted a study among college students and sent them for walks under different conditions. The students were able to concentrate better on a memory test after a walk along a wooded path (as opposed to the densely populated city street). This effect held true even if the participants were in a bad mood or the weather was foul.

So, the next time that you or your child are stuck on a hard problem -- be it homework, a tax question, or how to seat your relatives at the dinner table so that they won't fight over the rolls -- take a time out and go for a walk in the park.

(But take my advice: If you're seeking solace and mental restoration, go for a relatively tame natural setting. No bears!)

Holiday greetings to the Earth and beyond!

We're getting ready for Christmas here at Mama Joules and some of our close friends are celebrating Hanukkah. At our house, it's a wonderful time of preparation and joy. So, imagine if you were stuck 220 miles above the Earth at the International Space Station. That's the situation of Expedition 18 Commander Mike Fincke and Flight Engineers Sandra Magnus and Yury Lonchakov. So, NASA has created a special webpage so that we can send holiday greetings to the crew. Visit NASA Postcards to the International Space Station, pick from one of four designs, and send your message into space! (To learn more about the space station, check out What is the International Space Station?).

The International Space Station, taken from the Space Shuttle Discovery on Oct. 25, 2007Photo credit: NASA

Happy Holidays to all!