It’s official, outdoors is healthier

Science and indeed biology plays a part in all our lives. My love of the subject has always driven me to find out more, often resulting in the answer, posing another question. The more you delve the more you realise we still have so much to learn.

As a newly elected affiliate member of the Society of Biology, I now receive the quarterly magazine in which their was a report of a study on the connections between a child’s well-being, and the great outdoors.

In this study it has been found that children now play outside exactly half the time kids did in 1990, and that because of this, not only are they missing out on nature, but their health is suffering as exercise levels have dropped to an all time low.

Now here is not the time to delve to deep,  but the point being made is it is not just health that suffers. Discovery, sport, competition, interaction, happiness, imagination, improvisation, communication, decision-making, are all part of a child’s outdoor life, and more importantly shape them into the person that they become. All of these things not only make a healthier child, both in mind and body, but they are important in making the connection to nature, and the role it plays in all our lives.

As a result outdoor learning is again now in the spotlight, it has been found that kids are not making that connection to nature.

In an effort to rectify this The National Trust, Wildlife Trusts, and R.S.P.B  are among a number of organisations promoting outdoor learning. This is of extreme importance because kids have a natural curiosity when it comes nature, and as the magazine put it, I wonder how many if any of them kindled of love of science, whilst playing a xbox.

My guess, not many!