State-Journal.com

Outdoor Emphasis

No Child Left Inside – a national movement to get kids outdoors to learn about the environment – has made its way to Frankfort.
Canoe Kentucky owner Ed Councill has met with educators from public and private schools, home schools and Kentucky State University, environmental professionals, community development and children’s health providers to kick off the effort.
The group has agreed to do a pilot program this year, getting kids outside for field trips and camping adventures.
The goal is for activities to be free, or near so, Councill said. Providers are volunteering their services for the pilot project, and they will seek sponsors to pick up extra costs.
“We’re looking at a lot of ways to get the kids active,” said Harrie Buecker, superintendent of Franklin County Public Schools. 
“We looked at this opportunity as a way to do some things during the summer or holiday breaks where they could actually be outdoors with people who are part of that group.”
Buecker says trips could be tailored for kids of all ages, from preschoolers to high school seniors.
“We just thought this is another opportunity for kids to learn to enjoy the outdoors and have less of the sedentary lifestyle we fear a lot of them are doing,” she said.
“We applaud Ed (Councill) for spearheading this initiative, and were looking forward to whatever comes next.”
This week, Councill led a group of 7- to 11-year-olds from The Kings Center on a 24-hour camping and canoeing trip.
“This is not a normal type of camp,” he said. “We cook without utensils, and we light fires without matches.”
Groups sometimes stay two nights, he said, but temperatures that dipped into the 40s changed that. A coffee pot heated water for hot chocolate as kids played at the Kentucky River Campground Tuesday.
The kids went on a nature scavenger hunt, looking for leaves from the maple and sycamore trees, fossils, green sticks for the campfire and heart-shaped leaves. 
They were asked to identify six types of trees, determine the time of sunset, and calculate the length of the Kentucky River.
“We got to go down by the Kentucky River and look for shells,” 10-year-old Alexis Rankin said. “It was a great experience. We discovered different types of shells and fossils.”
It was her first camping trip with The Kings Center, though some of the kids have visited three times or more.
Alexis says she even heard an eagle “squeal” during a hike. At her former elementary school, she says she looked at pictures to learn about the texture of plants and wildlife.
“You have to be able to touch it in order to say if it’s soft, or rough,” she said.
Councill led a scavenger hunt team of six girls.
“You know what amazes me? I asked them what their favorite subject was, and all of them said science,” he said. “Second favorite was math, or reading.”
The kids used multiplication to figure out the Kentucky River’s length. Councill told them there are 20 miles between each of the river’s 14 locks and dams – 20 times 14, or 280 miles.
“I think for a lot of people, it would be math first,” Ciarah Owens, 9, says after explaining how they figured out the multiplication problem. “For me it was math first, science second.”
Ciarah was on the team that won the scavenger hunt. She earned a striker to start campfires with a small piece of steel wool.
Councill reminds her to not burn down her house (Trust me, she says), or use it on her brother (I can’t promise you on that one, she jokes).
Many students learn better from activities like the nature scavenger hunt, Councill says. That doesn’t mean schools should abandon paper-and-pencil lessons, he says, but balance both types of learning styles.
Outdoor field trips can enhance environmental awareness, and promote bonding, teamwork and collaboration among students, he says.
“Kids have more than one way to learn – all of us do,” he said. “But they show it more clearly.”
Dr. Dennis Rader, a KSU professor, is on the team working to pilot the No Child Left Inside effort. He’s the author of “Learning Redefined,” a book about how neuroscience impacts education, especially for right-brained learners.
One theory is that two different sides of the brain control two types of thinking; the left brain is more logical, sequential, rational and objective, and the right brain is more intuitive, subjective and random. 
“It (the book) says the reason we (schools) are doing so poorly in a global comparison is because we’ve gotten so mechanized with our teaching methods,” Councill said. 
“The answer generally is to put more money into the system, creating smaller classes and longer hours. Both of those may be partial solutions, but his theory is that the real bugaboo is you’re teaching to the left-brained learners, and we need to balance it with right-brain.”
There have been efforts at the federal level to tie No Child Left Inside to the No Child Left Behind system. It stalled with the Senate, Councill says, so individual communities are working to implement it.
The National Audubon Society, National Wildlife Federation and the Sierra Club have all endorsed the No Child Left Inside movement. 
Several states, including Kansas, Michigan and California, have passed a Children’s Outdoor Bill of Rights to encourage kids to play outside.
California’s 10-item list says that all kids should, by the age of 14, have the opportunity to splash in the water, play in a safe place and camp under the stars. Kansas includes fishing and hunting, following trails and learning to swim on its bill of rights.
Michigan asks that its kids get the chance to “touch, stand or swim in a Great Lake,” roast marshmallows over a campfire, sit under a 100-year-old tree and follow animal tracks in the snow.
“We’re pursuing it because it’s a good idea, not because we’re trying to get federal dollars,” Councill said.
On Tuesday afternoon, the kids from The Kings Center gathered in a picnic shelter at the campground to take a right-brained test. Working in teams, they tried to decipher the meaning of picture riddles.
The kids shouted excitedly as they figured each one out – and quickly hushed their voices, lest the other team overhear the answer.
“It isn’t just about classroom learning or outside learning, left brain or right brain,” Councill told the kids after the exercise. “We need both, and they need to be somewhat in balance.”
Fifth-grader Alexis Washington, 10, said she liked the camping trip because she could try out science on her own.
 “You’re not just learning about it and telling the teacher, you’re actually here in the wilderness,” she said.
“You get to experience what it’s like. You don’t just look at pictures and talk about it, you get to actually do it.”
But they learned some fun survival skills too. They roasted marshmallows for s’mores, and slept in tents – until one of their fellow campers threw up inside.
Madeline Baute, 9, demonstrated how to cook stick bread, a snack made by wrapping a crescent roll around a large stick and baking it over the campfire. 
She said she also learned how to cook hot dogs over the flames, and make hobo burgers (the kids at her picnic table squeal at the mere mention of them) by wrapping hamburger meat, potatoes, onions and carrots in aluminum foil and tossing it into the fire.
But her real claim to camping fame is when she caught a fish with her bare hands.
“I just reached down and picked it up,” she said. “I handed it to my friend, but she dropped it. I was worried it would die, so I tossed it back.”
Field trips for the rest of Franklin County’s public and private schools could begin in late March and run through the end of the school year.