Saving Our Childern from Nature-deficit Disorder cont'd

The term 'loose parts' was first described by Nicholson he was referring to toys and how children use these tools to be creative, as previously stated with the Tonka Toy vs the Cardboard Box.

In nature children are very creative from using the den they have built as a castle or anything they want it to be, to exploring the woods as if they are on some great adventure, while the computer can be seen as a vast tool which can be applied in infinite 'loose parts' Lauv (2008) points out that these loose parts are made up of 0 & 1's in other words a binary code.

Lets compare this to nature's code.

We learn from nature by connecting with it, using all our senses. It is believed that our DNA contains memory and each cell in our body also contains memory from which we learn, it is not just our brain that teaches us, nature as Louv states is our "richest source of loose parts."

I personally believe nature is our greatest teacher, it allows us to be creative, for example I once watched a group of young boys who I had taken out tracking, spend time with a track, these were kids who apparently had short attention spans, yet they spent in all, around twenty minutes looking at this one track, disguising amongst themselves what they thought could have happened, the questions they were asking and acting out were 'what happened here', 'what is it telling us', and 'what can we learn from this?

When I go swimming I try to move through the water creating as few concentric rings as possible when I do this I am transported to a completely different world, its almost as if you are are becoming the same as the water, while I totally enjoy the Internet it still does not give me this sense of wonder and awe, such as seeing a young roe deer staring back at me, watching from a short distance away and in them few minutes there is a connection a sense of trying to discover each other. The children who sat on the track in the classroom without walls find it hard to concentrate in a classroom with walls and often became disruptive and yet here they were completely immersed in what nature was presenting them with.

Why?

Is it because we have an innate relationship with nature?

I believe this is exactly the case, the boys not only tracked the footprint on the ground but they also tracked each other exploring their relationship with each other, they were tracking their surroundings by going off to look at other areas where the trail could have gone and when they did not find anything they came back to their last definite sign and started over again.

They were tracking each others questions and actively seeking out the answers, they showed no signs of frustration at not finding the answer to their questions. They were tracking on so many levels and yet in school they struggled to do this.

More to come, check back later...