Outdoor Family Vacations: Disengaging the Electronics Without Shutting Off the Fun
from an article by Joy Scott

Televisions, VCRs, video games, boom boxes and head sets. . .these items are considered standard equipment with youth today. Who can blame them when we adults are surgically attached to our cellular phones, fax machines and palm pilots? Yet when my family goes on vacation, the idea is to leave all electronics behind and enjoy the natural scenic wonders of the new locations we visit. Otherwise, why bother to even leave home? Our kids haven't always seen it that way. They have run the gambit of bored and grumpy to enthusiastic fellow planners.

Building interest in nature even before heading out the front Door
Enthusiasm is infectious, and it has helped to build a little enthusiasm before a departure date with a few choice videos. No, I'm not referring to travel shows on tape. An example of the kind of video that attracts children's attention is Kristen's Fairy House -- a fun little story about an aunt and niece who vacation together in the pastoral setting of an off-coast island. Everywhere they go, they find fairy houses that other children have built out of non-living things found in nature. They also build a fairy house and watch as a frog and other animals visit their house. What makes this story so fun is that it prompts my own children to plan fairy houses on upcoming trips. At the beach they have built their fairy houses of drift wood, sea weed and shells, whereas in the mountains their building materials consisted of natural crags in rocks with pinecone entry pillars. Each review of the video brings to light a fairy house nuance they previously missed and decide to try when they build their next fairy house.

The newly released companion book Fairy Houses, which inspired the video, is a great take-along story to read to young children around the camp fire.