By: centraljersey.com
The lure of the outdoors in spring is undeniable. On those early warm beautiful days, we all may get stricken with spring fever. You know spring fever. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines spring fever as "the feelings of languor, rejuvenation or yearning that may affect people at the advent of spring." Those students aren’t the only ones looking longingly out the windows.
Outside, I poke the barren ground of my garden and visualize the lush and tasty green that I will coax from the earth. My son and I plant pansies and he notes that "now the other flowers will have company when they come up." He joins some neighbors riding bikes and other kids are skateboarding, playing ball and jumping rope creating a joyous music of children having fun.
You will also find children running about, checking out the wild edges of the neighborhood. I see some gathering long, crooked sticks, perhaps to start the first fort of the season. Another, possibly on a mission against unseen foes, wields a shorter stick like a sword and calls to his friend "Come on, let’s get them." Some younger neighbors are slipping in between some bushes in front of their house – staking claim to a bush house and the whole secret world it contains. The trail at the end of our street through the overgrown meadow wears a new serpentine groove with the fresh imprint of children’s bike tires. It is spring that has brought the children outdoors.
In springtime it seems that a child’s sense of wonder gets stirred anew. Each child, no matter where or when they are born has the gift of a sense of wonder within them. Nowhere does this sense of wonder bloom so brightly as it does in nature.
My son is noticing the flowers blooming in our yard and on the school ground – dandelion, common chickweed. Pennsylvania bittercress, and ground ivy. Most adults know these plants as weeds yet my son is simply fascinated by their tiny flowers. His sense of wonder illuminates them as the ambassadors of spring.
A small stream courses through my neighborhood and into the community park. Children launch stick boats to travel downstream to some unknown destination. They follow their boats past fresh-scented patches of onion grass and the perfect "handprints" of wandering raccoons. They tend their boats with long sticks when they get stuck in rapids or caught in the swirl of a little eddy. They wonder where the boats are going.
While this just looks like play to all of us, it turns out that the fun and games is a vital part of child development. In 2006, Richard Louv’s landmark book Last Child in the Woods illuminated a wealth of research that reveals what many parents already suspected – spending time outdoors in nature is healthy. It can enhance creativity, problem solving ability, self esteem and self control; it improves general health and physical conditioning; it enhances children’s emotional and social development; it reduces stress; improves cognitive ability and focus; and much more.
By honoring their sense of wonder, children are not just building skills and knowledge. They are making intimate connections with the world around them. They get to know their animal neighbors and the plants that inhabit their surroundings. They observe the relationships of these different life forms and have their own individual relationships with them as well.
In her essay "A Sense of Wonder," scientist and author Rachel Carson wrote, "If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life." She noted the importance of this not only to a child’s sense of spirit but also to their quest for knowledge.

