Quotes we love!

“We long to see them fly but put them in chairs. We say, “Sit down, stay still, stop moving all day." Don't we know that keeps them from thriving?
Children can learn with or without textbooks. With or without classrooms. But they need sunshine and breezes and trees to climb in. They need stories and make-believe and time for reflection. Less toys and lessons, gadgets and screens. More playing and exploring and skinned up knees. Not to mention digging for worms and butterfly wings. Open the doors and let the world be your guide. Wonder is waiting. Childhood is now.” ~ Ainsley Arment | Wild + Free

"Self-education through play and exploration requires enormous amounts of unscheduled time—time to do whatever one wants to do, without pressure, judgment, or intrusion from authority figures. That time is needed to make friends, play with ideas and materials, experience and overcome boredom, learn from one’s own mistakes, and develop passions.” ~ Peter Gray 

“Encourage your child to have muddy, grassy or sandy feet by the end of each day, that’s the childhood they deserve.”

~Penny Whitehouse

“Children more than ever, need opportunities to be in their bodies in the world – jumping rope, bicycling, stream hopping and fort building. It’s this engagement between limbs of the body and bones of the earth where true balance and centeredness emerge.” ~ David Sobel

“The problem-solving that occurs in play may promote executive functioning—a higher-level skill that integrates attention and other cognitive functions such as planning, organizing, sequencing, and decision-making. Executive functioning is required not only for later academic success but for success in those tasks of daily living that all children must master to gain full independence, such as managing their belongings and traveling to unfamiliar places.” ~Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine

“Restore balance. Most kids have technology, school and extracurricular activities covered. It’s time to add a pinch of adventure, a sprinkle of sunshine and a big handful of  outdoor play.” ~Penny Whitehouse

“Let the children be free; encourage them;

let them run outside when it is raining;

let them remove their shoes when they find a puddle of water;

and when the grass of the meadows is wet with dew,

let them run on it and trample it with their bare feet;

let them rest peacefully when a tree invites them to sleep beneath its shade;

let them shout and laugh when the sun wakes them in the morning.”

~ Maria Montessori

“Children cannot bounce off the walls if we take away the walls.” ~Erin Kinney

“Learning, thought, creativity and intelligence are not processes of the brain alone, but of the whole body.” ~Carla Hannaford

“As a child, one has that magical capacity to move among the many eras of the earth; to see the land as an animal does; to experience the sky from the perspective of a flower or a bee; to feel the earth quiver and breathe beneath us; to know a hundred different smells of mud and listen un-selfconsciously to the soughing of the trees.”  ~Valerie Andrews

“Don’t wait until your child’s school understands how important green time is for their growing minds.  Today, leave the homework untouched, in favour of outdoor play and real-world learning.”~Penny Whitehouse

“There's a generation now that didn't grow up in nature. Some of these adults are parents and they know that nature is good for their kids but they don't know where to start.” ~Richard Louv

“It’s time to return to childhood, to simplicity, to running and climbing and laughing in the sunshine, to experiencing happiness instead of being trained for a lifetime of happiness. It’s time to let children be children again. .” ~ LR KNOST

“If we want children to flourish, to become truly empowered, then let us allow them to love the earth before we ask them to save it. Perhaps this is what Thoreau had in mind when he said, “the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think the same is true of human beings.” ~David Sobel

“When you're sitting in front of a screen, you're not using all of your senses at the same time. Nowhere than in nature do kids use their senses in such a stimulated way.” ~Richard Louv

"A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful, is dimmed and even lost  before we reach adulthood." ~Rachel Carson

“An environment-based education movement--at all levels of education--will help students realize that school isn't supposed to be a polite form of incarceration, but a portal to the wider world.” ~Richard Louv

“The average American child can recognize 1,000 corporate logos, but can’t identify 10 plants or animals native to his or her own region.” 

“A large portion of the human evolution has taken place in nature. Nature connection is intrinsic to our behaviour, and is inscribed into our genetic code. It’s only during the last 200 years or so, that we have reduced our interaction with the outdoors. Going back to nature can bring us to a heightened state of sensory awareness and a feeling of alert calm. It is akin to a feeling of returning home and gives spontaneous rise to peace and happiness.”

“What a joy it is to feel the soft, springy earth under my feet once more,    

to follow grassy roads that lead to ferny brooks    

where I can bathe my fingers in a cataract of rippling notes,    

or to clamber over a stone wall into green fields that    

tumble and roll and climb in riotous gladness!” ~ Helen Keller

"There is no need for forced lessons, lectures, assignments, tests, grades, segregation by age into classrooms or any of the other trappings of our standard, compulsory system of schooling. All of these, in fact, interfere with children’s natural way of learning." ~ Peter Gray

“Keep your children wild ― don’t make them grow up too fast. Let them spend their days in the sunshine using their imagination. They are the change! Those wild children daydreaming in the sunshine will grow into grounded adults with minds and spirits capable of creating a better future.” ― Brooke Hampton

“Children learn best through their everyday experiences with the people they love and trust, and when the learning is fun. And the best place for these experiences is outdoors, in the natural world.” ― Center for Families, Communities, Schools and Children’s Learning.

"Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating." ~ Wendell Berry