Kinark Outdoor Centre Family Nature Days

The Kinark Outdoor Centre has developed an interactive program for families that generates a fundamental awareness of their natural word and a connection to nature.

Kinark Outdoor Centre is facilitating half day nature connection programs for families in their own neighborhoods. This program will engage both parents and children in outdoor activities, exploring their own community’s natural sites and re-connecting both parents and kids with nature. A nature day can be made up of many different activities;

Nature Days and Nature Clubs for Families is a great way to get involved, and get the benefits of time in nature. Nature is all around us. It abounds in rural settings and wilderness, but it’s even available where we may least expect to find it—from backyards, city neighborhoods, and rooftop gardens to suburban parks and walking trails. And the good news is that there are lots of ways to connect with nature—and to create lifestyles in which frequent experience in the natural world is a fundamental part of children’s lives. Kinark and The Children & Nature Network (C&NN) has drawn on the best available research, common sense, and parents’ direct experiences to develop the Children and Family Nature Days and the C&NN Nature Clubs for Families Tool Kit: Do It Yourself! Do It Now! We hope it inspires you to get your own family and friends outdoors for many happy, healthy adventures together.

“What if parents, grandparents, and kids around the country were to band together to create nature clubs for families? What if this new form of social/nature networking were to spread as quickly as book clubs and Neighborhood Watches did in recent decades? We would be well on our way to true cultural change.”

— Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, and Chairman, Children & Nature Network

Background

The Kinark Children, Families and Nature Initiative is based on values and an understanding that has been integral to the provision of service by the agency for close to forty years. It builds on the growing body of research and ‘no child left indoors’ movement in North America that is spearheaded the Children and Nature Network. The initiative is driven by the recognition that if Kinark is to continue to support the needs of our existing clients and to engage those families who have yet to seek out social services, we must partner and work with all the resources available in the communities we operate. We recognize that:

Time spent out doors and participating in recreational activities that take place in natural settings supports and maintains physically and mentally healthy children and families.

Facilitated opportunities for families to experience activities in a natural setting are important stepping stones for many families to get started and to integrate active and outdoor experiences into their everyday lives. This is especially true for those families that face social-economic, physical, mental and developmental challenges.

The opportunity to network and interact with other families is a key component of engaging families and maintaining participation.

Primary Goals