Website of the Week: Discover the Forest

Discover the ForestHow did you spend your summer? We spent most of it outside between trips to the park, day camp, and regular visits to the pool.

With school starting, kids will be spending more time indoors than out. Our school system has many merits but I am concerned that Little Miss Techie’s time for outdoor physical activity at school is quite limited. Preschool’s extended play in any kind of weather and weekly walks will be replaced by PE class that meets once or twice a week and a half hour recess.

As a parent and a teacher, I believe that time outside is necessary to the development of the whole child. Kids need time outside to run, stretch, and get the wiggles out regardless of how old they are. To make up for the lack out outside time at school, we’ll continue to hoof it to our neighborhood park, hit the trails for some fall weekend hikes, and do some backyard exploration.

One resource that I plan on using is the Discover the Forest site to explore different parks in the DC Metro area. Created by the US Forest Service and the Ad Council as part of their “Where the Other You Lives” campaign, Discover the Forest helps families find local parks and will help us locate other area parks that we haven’t been to yet.

Discover the Forest is gorgeous and a pleasure to use. It’s simple interface makes it easy to find what you are looking for quickly. Start by clicking on the Where to Go tab at the top right of the screen. This link takes you to a map where you can enter zip code or city and state to help you locate parks on a Google Map within the site. Click on a park location to get the address, phone number, website, and a brief description.

Next to Where to Go, is the What to Do tab. What to Do helps provide ideas on what to do on an outdoor adventure such as leaf rubs, tracking animals, learning to use a compass. You can also print The Book of Stuff to Do Outside for additional ideas for your child’s outdoor education.

The site is part of a public service announcement campaign to encourage tweens to get outside and re-connect nature by experiencing it first hand. According to the Ad Council, the amount of time U.S. children spend outdoors has declined 50% in the past 20 years, according to the Ad Council.

It’s so important that our kids learn about, understand and spend time in nature. With a healthy and curious relationship with the world around them, our children are more likely to feel responsible for its well-being.

You can obtain additional materials for your budding naturalists and conservationists from the Why tab in the upper right corner of the screen. There are resources to teach children about being smart in nature, being good to nature, and be safe in nature.

I was not compensated for writing about the Where the Other You Lives campaign or the Discover the Forest site. It is simply a fabulous resource that I hope you find helpful for your outdoor adventures.