Kiddipedia
If the life experience of living through a pandemic has taught us anything, it’s to appreciate what’s important in life.
Slowing down to enjoy quality time outdoors in the elements was most definitely one of them. For many, it awakened the primal instincts ingrained within us as a reminder of our deep-rooted connection to mother earth and all living things.
Today we will re-awaken some of those reminders, in particular about how they relate to the wellbeing and education of our children.
We’ll be speaking about the benefits of the outdoors and what lessons it provides children, along with how and why we should continue to integrate daily outdoor activities into our lives to experience the natural world post-COVID and beyond.
To talk to us about this today we welcome our special guest, Sally Gillespie.
Sally is a writer and lecturer in the fields of eco-psychology and climate psychology. She gained her PhD at Western Sydney University, researching the psychological experience of engaging with climate issues. She then wrote her book Climate Crisis and Consciousness: Reimagining our world and ourselves (Routledge) to make what she learned accessible to the general public.
We ask Sally questions including:
- How has the COVID experience changed families’ relationships with the outdoors?
- What does the outdoors teach our young ones?
- Can time spent in the outdoors help boost children’s academic performances, if so how?
- What can our children learn through outdoor activities and play?
- How can parents increase children’s outdoor learning?
- Do you think it’s important that we continue having conversations like this as a reminder that these problems are not a quick fix, and need consistent attention and diligence?
- Do you think with everything we’ve lived through in 2020, bushfires, drought, climate disruption, and the COVID-19 pandemic, that there has been a shift in consciousness about the need for action to protect the environment, or not?
For Sally’s full article, please go to: https://kiddipedia.com.au/outdoor-education-the-school-for-life/
For further info on Sally:
https://twitter.com/SallyMGillespie
