Where Do The Children Play?

O.K. I’m dating myself but I’m sure you’ve heard of the peace lovin singer/song writer Cat Stevens. And who hasn’t heard of Dr. Seuss? One of my favorites books of his is The Lorax, while published 38 years ago the environmental message still rings true today.

What do the two have in common? Well check out this link before you read further:

I want to ask you, where do your children play?

Recently I’ve been thinking about my insane self-inflected schedule and wondering what effect this has on my children.

At the same time I started examining how, in this fast paced life, do I try and include a piece of nature each day in our lives as we busily rush from one thing to the next.

Like me, you probably have a day that goes something like this: Rush through breakfast, do the last minute prep for the day that you were too tired to do last night, hurry the kids out the door. My older son gets himself to school (via a bike thankfully). For my younger son, I either fling open the van door as I fly by the school on my way to work or he walks/bikes himself to school as I, in an anxious panic to get to the computer, try to squeeze in my work day before they return from school.

My working day is spent in front of the computer, usually doesn’t include breaks and theirs is spent inside the four walls of the school. After school is homework, sometimes programs where we shuffle yet again in a vehicle, home for supper prep, then lunches for the next day, and flop into bed exhausted.

Where, how, in our busy lives can we inject a bit of nature in our day?

Aside from changing our routines, which is a subject matter for another article, we can look at the environment in which we work and play.

Take a look at your local school grounds and ask the “Where Do Our Kids Play” question again.

You might argue that school children “get outside” at recess, and so there is the nature connection.But have you really examined your child’s school ground lately? Most of them resemble parking lots – barren, partly asphalted, typically devoid of any trees or vegetation other than turf grass and a play structure that only fits one class at a time.

It’s a bit of a stretch to call it nature, dare I say hardly an environment that might give our children a sense they’ve had a break.

We’re lucky in Comox Valley as we have school grounds that are situated in some truly amazing settings but they are far from being fully utilized. Some of these examples include École Puntledge Park School (a salmon bearing stream right on their grounds, how awesome is that???), Huband Park Elementary, Lake Trail Secondary, Lazo and Brooklyn to name a few. What an untapped source of green space in our cities and towns!

There are even a few schools that have either started food gardens and shade plantings like École Robb Road, Valley View and Puntledge.

There are so many benefits for our children and for the environment in having greener school grounds but lets look at just one aspect – Trees.

By simply allowing for appropriately placed trees on school grounds we can allow shade for our children, reduce cooling costs for our buildings and can reduce air temperatures. Shade trees reduce building costs by 15-20%. Children spend about 25% of their school day on the school yard where the danger of UV is a real issue. Research shows that 1 in 7 children will develop skin cancer in their lifetime and approximately 80% of lifetime exposure to sun occurs before the age of 18.

Cities have been referred to as urban heat islands for some time now as they are generally warmer than the surrounding areas. School yards have been identified as a heat island within a heat island.

A recent studied showed that the air temperature of un-shaded surface temperatures on school grounds were about 20 degrees hotter than the air temperatures. On a typical spring day of 25 degrees, we’re sending our children out to play in the searing conditions of 45 degrees. So where do your children play and is that acceptable?

Maybe its time to revisit Dr Seuss’s message from The Lorax and think about planting some trees, After all …“UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. Sad to say, but, it’s not”

The Comox Valley School District 71 has a greening policy which allows for tree planting and other greening initiatives. If you’re interested in such ideas, talk to your child’s principal, PAC or DPAC reps and check out www.evergreen.ca and Trees For Tomorrow where you can find grants for school ground greening and funds for tree planting.