Despite how far away summer may feel, the time is coming for parents to start thinking about where their children will spend those warm months. When deciding how kids should spend their free time, it’s worth thinking back to your own childhood. What if I told you that the fort you built, or the stew of mud and sticks you made, taught you how to problem-solve? That the ball field or empty lot where your friends met up helped prepare you for a future board meeting?
Since the 1970s, research has shown that children’s exposure to the outdoors has tremendous effects on their well-being. Following World War II, suburban sprawl slowly erased the patches of wilderness and in-between spaces that once stitched our cities together. Forests were replaced with lawns, and children began spending more time indoors. Yet nature plays an important role in childhood development, offering space for privacy, play, risk, and refuge.
When kids are outside in places where they can interact with trees, varied topography, and earth they can shape, such as building forts or mini-landscapes, they are learning about their abilities, limits, and confidence in relation to the natural world. They are building a framework for how they will later engage with the complexities of adulthood. And science agrees. Children with access to the outdoors show higher indicators of well-being, improved attention spans, better balance and coordination, lower rates of depression, and increased empathy. Even simply seeing greenery has been shown to improve concentration, impulse control, and delayed gratification in teenagers – magic!
When choosing a summer camp or school, selecting one with diverse outdoor spaces: places with trees, uneven ground, and room to explore, can have a lasting impact on a child’s health, and maybe your own as well.
If you are a student yourself and are passionate about the outdoors, apply to the Natural Resources Careers Camp and/or the Urban Forestry Careers Camp where you can spend a week with likeminded youth and continue the life-long journey of natural stewardship and education.
Resources:
- Agostini, Francesca, Marianna Minelli, and Roberta Mandolesi. “Outdoor Education in Italian Kindergartens: How Teachers Perceive Child Developmental Trajectories.” Frontiers in Psychology 9 (October 12, 2018). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01911.
- Chawla, Louise. “Benefits of Nature Contact for Children.” Journal of Planning Literature 30, no. 4 (July 22, 2015): 433–52. https://doi.org/10.1177/0885412215595441.
- Kuo, Ming, Matthew H. E. M. Browning, Sonya Sachdeva, Kangjae Lee, and Lynne Westphal. “Might School Performance Grow on Trees? Examining the Link between ‘Greenness’ and Academic Achievement in Urban, High-Poverty Schools.” Frontiers in Psychology 9 (September 25, 2018). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01669.
Photo Credit: Whitt, Jordan. Kids Children Free Stock Image. Accessed February 8, 2026. https://stocksnap.io/photo/kids-children-8T9Y244TK8.
