Nature Rocks Homer's annual Family Farm Day in Alaska brought over 200 people - young and old - out into the sunshine this month!

 

Family Farm Day Gives Kids Dose of Vitamin "N"…

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IditaNature is just around the corner - it starts in just 3 days...on Saturday, March 2nd, just like the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race! Challenge your kids, family, friends, or students to spend as many minutes outside as the Iditarod is long in miles...so 1,150 minutes or 17+ hours over two weeks. If they meet the challenge, the reward can be whatever you dream up. Prizes of outdoor gear or doing something fun together in nature: go out for…

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We don't have many neighborhoods in Homer. We're a small, spread-out, Alaskan town with many large yards and few sidewalks sandwiched between the ocean and a shrubby bluff of sandstone. On the outskirts of town, few people make an effort to gather with distant neighbors, and kids are rarely seen playing together in groups outdoors. Where houses are close together, next-door neighbors hardly interact with or even get to know each other. The vacant lots, side streets, and climbing trees… Continue

IditaNature is just around the corner - it starts Saturday, March 5, just like the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race! Challenge your kids, family, friends, or students to spend as many minutes outside as the Iditarod is long in miles...so 1,150 minutes or 17+ hours over two weeks. If they meet the challenge, the reward can be whatever you dream up. Prizes of outdoor gear or doing something fun together in nature: go out for ice cream,…

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Researchers are studying whether outdoor light somehow changes the way our eyes grow and have found that time spent outdoors in childhood is important to our vision. Read more at the NPR website:

Medical Detectives Focus On Myopia
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122374802
You can listen to this story, too.

This year, the Santa hired to visit and pose for pictures with children at our annual Nutcracker Faire in Homer, Alaska [and who's been working this faire for years] proved himself one of our area's strongest advocates for outdoor play. He was overheard by a parent asking her son...who'd just asked him for a bunch of electronic toys...if he played outside much. When the young many replied, "Yes, I play outside a lot," Santa said, "That's great, because it's very important to do that. Be sure to… Continue

Two weeks ago Martin LeBlanc - C&NN Vice President, NLN mentor and incredible, inspirational advocate for connecting youth with the outdoors - visited Alaska for a whirlwind 3-day speaking tour in Fairbanks, Anchorage and Homer. In all three communities he eloquently presented on the issue of nature-deficit disorder to students (some younger than he'd imagined) and members of the general public. In Homer, where I live, Martin expertly shared this… Continue

"Nature-deficit disorder” has made it into the Journal of Mammalogy [90(2):265–269] - THE NATURAL HISTORY CONUNDRUM REVISITED: MAMMALOGY BEGINS AT HOME by Peter D. Weigl (Department of Biology, Wake Forest University, Winston–Salem, NC 27109, USA)

Check it out at:
http://www.mammalogy.org/pubjom/OpenAccess/Weigl_2009.pdf