BackYard Nature Center

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/17/well/live/dirt-health-benefits.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb

Get Dirty. It’s Surprisingly Good for Your Health. Go on, grab a handful of soil or hike a muddy trail: It can benefit everything from your mood to your microbiome.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/05/well/mind/outdoor-therapy-depression-anxiety.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb

Therapists Trade the Couch for the Great Outdoors Mental health practitioners are hiking, camping and braving the elements with their clients — all in an effort to help them connect with the Earth, and with themselves.

Removing Buckthorn & S'mores at the SKOKIE LAGOONS for MLK DAY with Glencoe Youth Services free for students grades 4 and up

MLK DAY- NO SCHOOL
MONDAY, JAN.15TH
SKOKIE LAGOONS
10AM-12PM
GRADES 4TH and up FREE
--
JOIN Glencoe Youth Services for this MORNING OF SERVICE Project on NO SCHOOL MLK DAY as we help our friends at the Backyard Nature Center take down invasive buckthorn! This event is FUN and a good workout! If you like USING BRUSH CUTTERS and HAND SAWS, BUILDING CAMPFIRES and EATING S'MORES while surrounded by the beauty of Mother Nature then this is the activity for you. THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO STUDENTS IN GRADES 4 AND UP! REGISTER at

MLK DAY SERVICE EVENT...CUTTING BUCKTHORN AND MAKING S'MORES AT SKOKIE LAGOONS! JOIN Glencoe Youth Services for this Service Project as we help out our friends at the Backyard Nature Center take down invasive buckthorn! If you like using brush cutters and hand saws, building campfires and eating s'mores all while surrounded by the beauty of Mother Nature then this Monday activi...

https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=712789574216159&id=100064553685334&mibextid=aE13LE

Boozhoo! (Hello)

This week, the Ojibwemowin (Ojibwe language) Word of the Week is Maajitaan Agwajiing (Go outside).

These warm summer days will be gone before you know it.
Maajitaan agwajiing! Sit on the beach, hike a trail, go for a swim, look for animals, or paddle a kayak. Take the time to explore and experience the outdoors.

It is important not just to see these words but to hear them.
Listen to Maajitaan Agwajiing and practice saying the phrase here: https://ow.ly/IBTh50PxMaf

𝙂𝙞𝙜𝙖𝙬𝙖𝙖𝙗𝙖𝙢𝙞𝙣 𝙢𝙞𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙬𝙖𝙖 (I'll see you again) next Sunday!



[NPS Photo/ A. Hernandez]

SOCIAL MEDIA’S “NATURE PROBLEM”

By Safina Center Writer-in-Residence Paul Greenberg

Social media is harmful for mental health. Is it also eroding our relationship with nature? Photo by Grant Ritchie on Unsplash.
This month, the Surgeon General finally sent out an official warning to parents that “there is growing evidence that social media use is associated with harm to young people’s mental health.” For those of us with teenagers, this has been self-evident ever since our children started harassing us to have their own iPhones. The social distancing of the COVID era is a trifle compared with the institutionalized distance that “social” media puts between parent and child. More and more the world of real-time, in-person communication has the air of an accessory to teenage life. The real world, for adolescents, lives on their phones.



I mention all this here on the site of an organization dedicated to giving voice to nature because social media has done the same sort of short-circuiting to the relationship between people and nature as it has to the relationship between parents and children. While there is no reliable data that links disengagement with the natural world with the rise of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, one need only take a doom scroll through nature “influencers” to see an immediate problem--the people doing the posting share their experience of nature so you don’t have to.



Being present with nature takes effort. For those of us living in urban environments to swap city for country there is the planning, the schlep, and all the associated hassle. But there is a more subtle aspect of it all that social media seems to intensify. Namely, that, to the hyper-clicker, unfiltered time spent quietly in non-human dominated ecosystems is boring. Time moves differently in an interconnected web of living things. Some movements are so slow as to be technically unobservable. The slow recolonization of ground cover after a forest fire. The flow of glaciers over the course of a year. Others are inconvenient, expressing themselves only at times you might miss: the hatch of mayflies off a brook at dusk; the changing of the night shift to the day as barred owls find their roosts and songbirds propose their first melodies of the day. Of course, the ambitious nature influencer will capture all that for you (and with a good camera too!) Sleep in, the socials seem to say. We’ve got this.



Except, and this is the big except, experiencing the natural world isn’t really about just seeing things. “Nature” does its magic when it invades all our senses and invites us to feel a sense of connectedness. Social media purports to connect us to one another and give us windows to the “awesome”. What we really need is to find interconnections on our own terms and feel our way toward awe.



Awe. That rarer and rarer emotion that makes us feel small without feeling diminished. An emotion that a California-Irvine study showed can expand our worldview and help us “forego strict self-interest to improve the welfare of others.” That same study showed that subjects who regularly contemplated objects of awe even changed their perspective on time, feeling they had more time available, were less impatient, and preferred experiences over material products.



In other words, a space-time shift that is the exact antithesis of social media. A space-time that invites true connectedness that is anything but boring.
MAY 25, 2023

The beauty of being out in nature is not just what we see but what we hear.
Let’s value this audio benefit to our senses and not let climate change make these sounds disappear

How climate change is muting nature’s symphony From warbling loons to chirping toads, rising temperatures threaten some of the Earth’s most iconic sounds.

Leave a comment here as well, and let us at BackYard Nature Center know how you feel when you spend time in nature.

https://www.facebook.com/579690866/posts/10159991355145867/?d=n

Connecting with nature and spending time outdoors can have a huge, positive impact on your mental health and wellbeing. 💚

Whether you live in the countryside or the city, you can find a piece of the natural world everywhere. And if you’re unable to find a nearby area, bring a bit of greenery inside with a leafy house plant or open the window to let the sun gleam through.

Let us know in the comments, how spending time in nature makes you feel 👇

This may be an odd post for a “get outside and enjoy nature organization”, but the first step for many parents is let your child have time to be bored, to use their imagination, and have them step outside into there own backyards without any agenda.

https://www.fatherly.com/parenting/wealthier-kids-depressed?utm_campaign=fatherly&utm_content=1656722820&utm_medium=owned&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR1oHquRdmY3ZMun54ZncYkdhcoKD-kO29hLAPNmjBKuSeLFuzBYjJMrxsM&fs=e&s=cl

Why Wealthier Kids Are Time Poor and Depressed Sociologist Annette Lareau outlines how we parent along class lines, and what it means for our kids' futures.

Just saw this book in a book store… this is why BackYard Nature is around… the HUGE importance of engaging with nature!

There are so many good suggestions of getting children out in nature, it’s hard to grab just one.

What Sweden Teaches Us About Parenting and the Outdoors Nine tips gleaned from the Swedish parenting playbook

Some small changes in your yard and gardens can be a haven for birds, and insects and a win for biodiversity!

Meet an Ecologist Who Works for God (and Against Lawns) A Long Island couple say fighting climate change and protecting biodiversity starts at home. Or rather, right outside their suburban house.

Watch the video!!!! Nature connects us!

The World Needs More Adventure Field Trips Why? Because when more kids reap the benefits of time spent in nature, the world will be a better place