Program on the Environment

Many children today are growing up more surrounded by screens rather than trees, experiencing what author Richard Louv calls “nature deficit disorder.” This growing disconnect from the natural world threatens not only ecological literacy, but also curiosity, confidence, and emotional well-being. In a time of climate anxiety and digital immersion, environmental education (EE) offers a means to rebuild connection—yet barriers such as accessibility, financial, cultural exclusion, and limited hands-on engagement often reduce its impact. Alongside my role as a summer camp naturalist with UWBG at the Washington Park Arboretum (WPA), I developed an internship to explore what makes EE activities most effective and find ways to enrich UWBG EE curricula in both summer camp and field trips.

By combining camper “fist-to-five” evaluations and naturalist surveys on five of our thematic activities across the five two-week camp sessions, and a literature review on environmental pedagogy, I found that the most effective activities invited campers to use their senses, explore, and discover nature in a hands-on way. These qualities align with naturalist-intelligence-based learning, which emphasizes observation, species identification, and connection to place. Drawing from these insights, I developed new interactive lessons, including an Arboretum-specific bird scavenger hunt, native and invasive plant species bingo, and an activity called Operation Eco-Match to strengthen naturalist skills and make learning outdoors fun, adaptable, and inclusive. These findings show that when children are given a space to follow their curiosity and connect with their surroundings, environmental education becomes not only effective, but transformative.