Playtime isn’t just about playing. It is the way mammals discover and develop innate skills.
With green sprouts emerging and spring weather taking hold, now is a good time for parents and caregivers to encourage children to take a major interest in outdoor recreation.
Fortunately, the Pittsburgh region has lots of organized outdoor activities and enough backyards, parks, hiking-biking trails, undeveloped woodlots, rivers, lakes and streams for every family to choose when, where and how outdoor play can contribute to their kids’ physical and mental acuity.
Bird watching, coloring
Interest in going outdoors begins indoors. Wildlife watching through the back window is a great way to start. As children develop, bird watchers can advance to filling feeders and building bird boxes. Learning to identify species can lead to involvement in environmental projects like the international Great Backyard Bird Count and grow into a lifelong avocation.
And familiarizing kids with what’s out there before it finds them can eliminate unplanned encounters that may send them back inside forever.
In January, award-winning Pennsylvania outdoors writer, illustrator and photographer Linda Lou Steiner of Venango County published a multi-tier resource that encourages preschoolers, grade-schoolers, tweens and young teens to confidently take that first step out the door.
For children from infancy to about second grade, her “Eastern Wildlife Coloring Book” (Linda Lou Steiner, $7.99) is 64 pages of wildlife sketches to be colored more or less within the lines. Illustrations of wildlife from chipmunks to dragonflies have great crayon potential and older kids who know that black bears aren’t entirely black can choose among the colored pencils.
Wildlife biographies accompanying each illustration are written in an entry-level tone that doesn’t talk down to kids who are strong readers. Steiner’s animal descriptions and more advanced Wildlife Extras keep the book accessible to the middle school crowd, who will enjoy coloring some of nature’s most elaborately hued creatures — the brook trout, monarch butterfly, wild turkey and ring-necked pheasant.
“All the wildlife they’re going to see when they’re outdoors — fish, birds, insects, salamanders, even a beneficial snake,” said Steiner. “Learning how to color them, I think, makes [kids] become more interested in how to recognize them.”
Neuron
connections
Steiner is concerned about a generation of children who have largely lost contact with the natural world.
“The cellphones that I see so many kids on, almost to the exclusion of everything else, that’s not the real world,” she said. “Don’t look at a sunset on the cellphone, go out and see a sunset.
“We need to let kids be kids, free-range kids who fall down, get up, get dirty. Risk taking is really important to the human animal. They have to go out and do things.”
Just as muscles grow stronger through exercise, physical experiences cause the formation of new electro-chemical connections among neurons, mapping a unique circuitry in each growing human brain. Self-awareness, personal safety, empathy, following rules, ceding control to others, learning to win as well as lose and other interpersonal skills are explored and developed during the social activity of playing.
While exchanging live-streaming karate kicks on a Nintendo Switch has its value, shared, unstructured playtime in an outdoor setting is nature’s way of building a new human psyche.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention prescribes one hour or more of physical activity each day for children and adolescents. Most of those 60 or more minutes should involve aerobic exercise of moderate to vigorous intensity and include spirited physical exertion at least three days a week.
Angela Hanscom, a pediatric occupational therapist and founder of Timbernook, a research-backed outdoor play program, recommends three hours of rigorous outdoor activity per day for children, a figure that is consistent with recommendations from other child development specialists.
Extra benefits
Lo Zemanek, a Pittsburgh mom with a toddler, said she can see the “excitement and wonder” in her daughter’s eyes whenever they share new outdoor experiences. Not surprising for the director of youth education at Venture Outdoors, a nonprofit group that organizes outdoor activities throughout the region.
“There are benefits to getting outside even for young babies. Remember the sunscreen,” she said. “New surroundings, even in your backyard, can help to promote cognitive development and encourage brain stimulation.”
Venture Outdoors programs dozens of activities year-round structured to accommodate the age-based abilities and interests of participants. Short walks on easy paths allow preschoolers to see and explore gardens, build stick forts and embark on nature scavenger hunts, said Zemanek.
Six to 8 years old is about the right time to introduce supervised fishing. At that age, fishing includes occasionally dropping child-size rods on the shore and chasing dragonflies, catching lightning bugs and turning over stones in search of crayfish.
Team building activities like bike riding and geocaching are right for kids ages 9-12, Zemanek said. At 13-15, teens are thinking for themselves and trying to connect concepts they learn in school to what they see in the world. They want to make their own decisions, like whether to go on Venture Outdoors’ overnight camping trip or participate in its water assessment science project.
Zemanek said kids 16 and older participate in adult adventures like caving, rock climbing, horseback riding, high ropes and backpacking.
“There’s no shortage of evidence that points out the benefits of spending time outside for kids,” she said. “When they have an opportunity to be in nature, it increases their physical movement, helps decrease stress, supports problem solving and can foster unique peer interactions that improve social relations.”
Go fish
On May 3, Venture Outdoors will begin its annual free supervised fishing program (no license required, loaner rods and tackle, free live bait). TriAnglers runs 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Wednesdays through summer on the Allegheny River’s North Shore.
When looking for an age-appropriate outdoor activity for kids, it’s hard to top fishing. As soon as preschoolers can work the reel on a 3-foot Spiderman fishing rod, they’re ready for the water. Encourage them to touch the worm. Ask them to hold their fish and return it to the water.
Some anglers find escape by kicking back in a folding chair, listening to the splashing water and watching a bobber. Others get the heart pumping by wading against the current, walking among hot spots or paddling on the waterways. Few things raise the heart rate like a big fish on the line. As anglers mature they find the escalating levels of fishing acumen, expertise and savvy never end.
Steve Hegedus of the Tri-County Trout Club said fishing derbies — single day kids-only events on heavily stocked waters — are a great way to ease young ones into the outdoors. Most of those separate age ranges to make the distribution of prizes for size and quantity more equitable. Tri-County Trout Club sponsors the annual Burrell Lake Park Kids’ Fishing Derby scheduled for June 10.
“Recent research suggests that even brief periods of time in nature have the ability to improve people’s moods and increase their happiness,” he said. “You constantly hear that kids today need to ‘unplug’ and take a break from their electronics. At the Fishing Derby they can focus on the outdoors and what it has to offer for a few hours.
“Our hope is that the experience of enjoying the fresh air, seeing some wildlife and maybe catching a few fish will inspire their appreciation for nature,” Hegedus said.
Feeling life at the end of the line is a unique sensation, a visceral connection to the natural world that can help to develop a lifelong respect for the environment and a better understanding of the purpose and practice of conservation.
“Once children develop this appreciation,” said Hegedus, “it can spur their natural curiosity and interest to learn more about the natural world.”
