Welcome to Maine Family Times
Kristy Meisner Ouellette, Extension Educator

Welcome to the Maine Family Times, a newsletter from the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. This newsletter is for families with children aged five through eighteen. In this issue, we will learn ways that nature can nurture families.

What were you favorite things to do when you were a child? Watch the clouds?  Play outside?  Make a fort?  Ride your bike from sunrise to sunset?  If you ask this same question to most children today, their answers are very different. Children do not spend as much time outdoors. The average American child spends an estimated 1,500 hours per year watching television, playing video games or working on the computer. As a society, we are raising the first generation to be disconnected from nature.

In Maine, we live in one of the most accessible states in the nation to connect to our natural world. Below are some tips to engage your family in what nature has to offer.

l Be a cloud spotter or star gazer!  Take your family outside, put
      down a blanket and watch the clouds or the stars. Look for shapes,
      animals, or name the constellations! Let your imagination run wild!
      The possibilities are endless.

l Start a nature collection of acorns, shells, rocks, twigs, lightening
       bugs, or flowers.

l Go camping in your own backyard.

l Create your own family rules about playing outside. Each day
      provide your child with at least one hour of unstructured outside play
      and connection to the natural world.

l Dig in the dirt. Bring a shovel and a bucket and explore your world.

l Put up a bird feeder and watch the feathered friends who visit.

Many parents notice that when children play outside, they have improved attention spans and improved well-being and overall health, all from being outdoors. This natural resource is available to all families all the time. Best of all, it is free. Remember: nature can nurture!

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"Everything in nature contains all the power of nature. 
Everything is made of one hidden stuff." 
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Go Outside and Play Every Day!
Kristy Meisner Ouellette, Extension Educator

Now that you’ve started to think about the ways nature can nurture you and your family, what are you waiting for? Go outside and play! Outside play does not have to be organized. Let the sounds, smells and sights of the world outside guide your family’s experience.

Planning in advance will help you have successful outside experiences.  Most often you will not need any special equipment, but you and your family might put together a backpack of supplies to hang beside the door so that you’re ready to head outside at a moment’s notice. See “Explorer’s Kit” below for ideas about items to include.

Prepare for the great outdoors by dressing for the season: Winter: coats, hats, mittens, boots. Spring and Fall: rain jacket and mud boots. Summer: sun hat, sunglasses, and sneakers.

Another thing to gather is information about local community resources. Where are the nearby parks and trails?  How about nature centers with family-friendly programming?  Also share this information with teachers or childcare providers.  Let them know how important it is for children to go outside every day.

Have fun!  Enjoy the world that is around you!  Remember to make time to play outside every day!

 

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Explorer’s Kit

l Magnifying glass
l Binoculars
l Plastic bags and containers for collecting
l Field guides
l Notebook and pencil to record what you see
l Camera
l Water bottle
l Sunscreen
l Bug repellent
l Band-aids
l Blanket/tarp for sitting on the ground or for building forts

© National Wildlife Federation, Green Hour, http://www.greenhour.org

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Growing up Green

Reasons and Resources for Eating Local Foods

Ellie Libby, Extension Educator

Have you been wondering how to improve your child’s food choices while helping your local economy at the same time? Many schools across the country are doing just that by using the cafeteria, the school’s biggest classroom, to improve nutrition, teach students about local food systems and turn the tide of childhood obesity.

The Farm to School movement is growing in Maine with gardening projects, farmer visits, cooking and taste testing programs sprouting up in schools in every county. The Maine Department of Education Child Nutrition Services has created a farm to school listserve to provide agencies, farmers and other interested community members with a way to communicate and build connections between farmers and schools. To join, check out this page: http://www.maine.gov/education/sfs/farm.html.

Why eat local, fresh foods?

Taste the flavor!
 

At a farmer’s market, farm stand or through a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm, you get produce at its freshest, usually harvested within 24 hours. Foods you find in a supermarket may have been picked weeks ago and were grown with shipping and storage in mind.

Start your own vegetable garden this year. There are lots of resources to help beginning gardeners. Call your local Extension office for more information: www.extension.umaine.edu
 

Know what is in your food.

Food safety issues have been in the news lately. When you buy local foods, you have a chance to speak with the farmer/producer and ask them questions about their food safety practices. When you know your grower, you know where your food comes from!

For a look at the fast food industry and its effects on our health, read “Chew On This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food” by Eric Schlosser.

Develop relationships.

When you buy foods from a local farmer, you get to know the person who grows your food. You also meet others from your community who share your interest in healthy, local food choices.

This children’s book highlights farm activities: “All Around the Farm” by John Deere (K-4th grade).

Know the seasons through food choices.

Our great-grandparents knew all about seasonal eating. From dandelion greens and fiddleheads in the Spring to root crops and “keepers” like apples and winter squash in the Fall, they celebrated the changing seasons with the foods available at that time.

Read “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” by Barbara Kingsolver for one family’s year of seasonal eating including some of the family’s favorite recipes.

Discover new foods and food combinations.

Have you ever tried “root crop” lasagna? Growing your own food or buying food from a local farm lets your imagination be the lead in exploring and tasting new foods. Many CSA farmers also offer recipes. Check out one of these web sites to find a CSA near you:
http://www.getrealmaine.com
www.mofga.org/Default.aspx?tabid=653
www.localharvest.org/csa

For fruit and vegetable related recipes, jokes, poems and much more for ages “4-12 and beyond” read “The ABCs of Fruits and Vegetables and Beyond” by Steve Charney and David Goldbeck.

Explore your community.

Each year, the Maine Department of Agriculture hosts an Open Farm Day where you can tour farms throughout Maine. Check out this website for dates and open farms: http://www.getrealmaine.com/visit/open_farm_day.html

You may also want to join a community garden. Read “Seedfolks” by Paul Fleischman for an inspiring story of one community’s transformation.

Help our environment and our local economy.

Purchasing locally-grown food is a simple way to use less fossil fuels for food transportation and to keep our spending dollars in our communities. It also helps support our farmers so they, in turn, can afford to keep their farmland in production and not sell it for development.

This children’s book highlights the process of local bread-making from sowing through baking: “Bread Comes to Life: A Garden of Wheat and a Loaf to Eat” by George Levenson.

Enjoy a healthy life!

Gardening together is a wonderful way to get physical exercise and help children understand our connection with the earth.

Cooking the produce you gather with your children gives them the skills for a lifelong interaction with healthy meal production.

For more food education information, read: “Nourishing Choices: Implementing Food Education in Classrooms, Cafeterias, and Schoolyards” by Eve Pranis.

Adapted from www.100milediet.org/why-eat-local

These resource suggestions are provided purely for educatinal purposes. No responsibility is assumed for any content. No endoresement of authors or publishers is intended, nor is criticism of unnamed authors or publishers implied.
 

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For more information on Farm to School efforts regionally and nationally:

l National Farm to School Network: www.farmtoschool.org

l Vermont Farm to School Food Education Every Day: www.vtfeed.org

l MOFGA’s Maine Harvest Lunch page and other resources:
      http://mofga.org/Resources/MaineHarvestLunch/tabid/817/Default.aspx

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Outside Time: Good for You and Good for Your Family!
Leslie Forstadt, Child and Family Development Specialist

When was the last time you took a walk, played tag outside with your
kids, or watched a sunset?  If you answered, “yesterday,” great, keep up the good work!  But if you said, “I’m so busy shuttling kids from one event to another that I haven’t had time to slow down.”  Or if you said, “I can’t remember the last time I did one of those things,” it may be time to look at how you are giving yourself time to be outside.

We are all busy; there is no doubt about it. According to the American Time Use Survey, on an average day, most families have one or both parents working during the day, and leisure time takes up about five hours. Leisure time includes reading and exercise, but the biggest chunk of that time is spent inside, watching television. What are you doing with your time? The secret to getting outside more is finding little moments to grab the chance to play outside. Chances are there is some time each day to spend outside with your kids or maybe without them.

Get outside time with your children. When you all get home at the end of the school and work day, make a date to walk around the neighborhood together. Instead of going your separate ways once you get home, take the time to get outside. When your children go outside to play, do you take that time to do chores? Try to change your routine by getting your children to help with the chores before you all go outside to do something. Maybe the chores can wait. Perhaps you can all play tag, or you may choose to play separately, exploring gardening or seeing what animals you can find in your back yard.

Get outside time by yourself.  If you have family time arranged and it’s time for yourself that you are looking for, take just ten minutes a day to go outside and sit with your eyes closed. Try to get to a location that has trees and is off the beaten path. Listen to what you hear, and what you smell.

You may have to go out of your way to get outside, or it may as simple as a shift in your daily routine. For example, if you have an inside workout routine that you do regularly, take it outside. If you can’t leave your children with another adult, they may be able to join you in a stroller or on a bicycle.

If you work in an office building, take 15 minutes at lunch time to go outside and get fresh air.

There are many good suggestions of games to play with children in nature (see accompanying articles in this issue of Maine Family Times), but you must remember to nurture yourself as well. If you love sunrises, try to see at least one each week. If you like to climb mountains, get connected with your local recreation club. Take a walk to go to the bank or the post office. Take a walk just to take a walk. Bring a bike to Acadia National Park and explore. Nurture yourself in the beauty and peace that being outdoors can provide. It will make you calmer, and you might be a more fun parent! Your kids may not always jump at the chance to go play with mom or dad, but they’ll appreciate it, and so will you.
 

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For more information on educational programs in your area, contact your county Extension office.