Cultivating a Love of Nature in Kids so that They Want to Protect ItPosted by Lazar M. on July 8th, 2017 Kids today are growing up with a much different childhood than the previous generations, spending more time tapping on the screens of mobile devices instead of running freely outdoors. As reported in theNew York Times, a Kaiser Family Foundation study shows that today’s kids have much more screen time than previous generations, on average 7 hours per day (and 13 hours per day for Latinos and African American youth). Those aged 8 to 18 years spend more than 7.5 hours per day with such devices, compared with less than 6.5 hours per day five years ago, (when the study was last conducted). As a result, kids are spending much less time outdoors and especially in nature, they are getting worse grades and are less satisfied with their life. You may think that saving the environment falls on the shoulders of the biologists, ecologists, engineers, and other specialists who work in the environmental field. Kids spend less time appreciating nature and don’t understand how important our earth is and the issues the environment is facing. Small actions can have a big impact, and there are small lessons we can teach kids so that they can start loving nature from a young age. Presenting Pacha Pacha’s Pajamas: A Story Written by Nature, is an environmental children’s book and musical that speaks to the connectedness of the world and through illustrations that come to life, shows children what they can do. Pacha’s dreams take the children on an adventure where they talk to animals and find ways to help. Interestingly, it seems the first virtual reality product was a book. Researchers have found the brain makes little distinction between reading about an experience and the experiencing of it in waking or dream life; the same neurological regions are stimulated. In Pacha’s dream, she meets a whale in distress, frantically splashing around and crying for help. Pacha doesn’t know what’s wrong but a kind hummingbird figures out that a plastic bag is stuck in the whale’s blowhole and pulls it out. Pacha realizes what a huge impact humans have on marine life and how she can help whales and other marine creatures swim freely - that is, cut down on plastic and make sure it does not become sea trash! Children Can Lead with Your Support Children have a wonderful instinct of wanting to lend a hand and this environmental kid’s book is a great stepping stone for you to talk with them about how they can start taking care of the world. A good way is to explain how places like the park, the ocean, and anywhere in nature are all habitats. If you litter, a plastic bottle for example, it doesn’t just disappear but instead it lands in someone else’s home. Pacha, lifted by parental support, can teach children how to love nature, keep the earth clean and continue growing the habits of caring for nature. Children can spread the message of how human actions affect the animal world. You can go over some ways to approach someone who is littering and encourage them to treat the planet like we are connected to Mother Nature. Anytime you or your child do even one little thing, it can have a huge impact on another life. The small actions can have a lasting effect as they add up to create a massive positive change. An Animated Book With Diverse Voices Pacha's Pajamas is also an Animated book or children's book dance; ZBook technology brings the illustrations to life. Hovering our Pacha Alive app over the black and white illustration of the whale with Pacha brings the scene to life with the voices of Bay Area musicians: Japanese-American rapper Lyrics Born and youth artist Ashlie Cortez. (These are just two of a large and very diverse collection of artists in the Musical.) Amaze your friends - download the IOS App or Android App, point them at the the b/w whale, and watch some meaningful characters jump off the page. Find out more about Pacha Order your copy of Pacha’s Pajamas today!http://pachaspajamas.com/pachas-store/books/animated-book/ Download the app to see Pacha’s world come to life Like it? Share it! More by this author |