All you need to go birdwatching is a pair of binoculars, although a field guide to help you identify the various species can be nice too. Head into your backyard, the park or a nature trail and start looking around.

It can be pretty surprising to see the variety of birds you can find in your local area. Kids love seeing birds, especially when you spot a really brightly colored one that you don’t see every day.

Head out on a family walk and collect leaves as you go. You don’t have to go anywhere special to do this; pretty much any neighborhood is going to have a good variety of leaves you can pick up.

Leaves can be collected and glued to pages, or used in craft projects. You can teach your kids how to identify various leaves, something mine find truly fascinating.

Of course, you’ll need to know something about leaves yourself. You don’t want to go hiking off on a trail and find out you’ve picked poison oak or poison ivy. That’s not a fun way to make a day memorable… until you can laugh about it some years down the line.

I first heard about Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv a year or so ago. It promptly went on my wish list, but I never got around to buying it. Now I have the updated version, and I was just amazed by it.

It’s a really good read.

Of course, it may have helped that the author is from my area. One of the people he spoke with in the book grew up along Tecolote Canyon in San Diego, where I grew up. My sisters and I hiked there often.
The topic is also near and dear to my heart: encouraging children to get outside and play. Backyards are a good start, but better is if they can get time out on a hike, in the forest, along a creek and so forth.

Now, I’ve said before I think the back yard is a better “babysitter” than the television ever was. That’s just been my experience. Television teaches children that they don’t need to pay attention for long periods. Playing outside, they focus for much longer periods.

While nothing’s been proven scientifically, Last Child in the Woods notes many cases where parents report their children behave much better after playing in the natural world. Many people think it helps with symptoms of ADHD.

There are also some very good points about how much harder it’s getting to find people who really understand the basics of natural science. It’s not as popular a topic of study as other areas, such as biotech.

What I really appreciated, however, was the last part of the book. It’s called the Field Guide to the Last Child in the Woods, and it has some great suggestions. There are 100 actions you can take to get more in touch with nature, for example, such as starting a garden.

The book is well worth the read. I’m going to try to get my husband to read it too. It’s not his usual style, but given how much he loves hiking and being outdoors, I think he’ll go for it.