Mother Nature's Child

Mother Nature's Child asks these questions: "Why do children need unstructured time outside? What is the place of risk-taking in healthy child development? How is play a form of learning? Why are teachers resistant to taking students outside? How can city kids connect with nature? What does it mean to educate the 'whole' child?"

The film explores nature's role in three phases of childhood: toddlers, middle childhood, and adolescence. According to the filmmakers, it "marks a moment in time when a living generation can still recall childhoods of free play outdoors; this will not be true for most children growing up today." They filmed children from the rural areas in Vermont (VT), United States (US) to urban locales including Washington, DC and Albany, New York (NY), and sought the voices of many adult experts.

Specifically, interviews include: Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods; Brother Yusuf Burgess, who works with inner city teens in Albany, NY; David Sobel, author of Children's Special Places and Childhood and Nature who works in the field of place-based education; Yale professor Stephen Kellert, PhD.; Nancy Bell, director of The Conservation Fund in VT/NH; Misha Golfman, Director of Kroka Expeditions in Marlow, NH; teacher Rob Hanson, who incorporates outdoor nature connection in his sixth grade VT public school curriculum; Jon Young, California tracker and author of Coyote's Guide to Connecting with Nature; Pearline Tyson of the Parks & People Foundation and the founder of the Holistic Life Foundation in Baltimore, Maryland; and Amy Beam, founder of Beyond the Walls in Washington, DC.