Trade your child's smartphone for a nature trek

Straits Times Forum 13 May 13;

MR BRADY Barr lamented that "today's children have lost touch with nature" ("Children are key to nature's future"; last Friday).

In the train or on a bus, I cannot help but observe that youngsters are glued to their smartphones, iPads and video games.

Our children are IT-savvy but few take the time to keep in touch with nature and the things that nature has provided for us.

Dr Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon who led the team that separated Iranian twins Laleh and Ladan Bijani in Singapore in 2003, said that when he was in school, his biology teacher gave him squirrels to feed and a tarantula to observe.

He discovered the wonders of using a microscope to study water specimens and learnt about paramecium and amoebas.

This started him on a journey of discovery, which led him to become a leading neurosurgeon at the age of 33.

Perhaps our teachers and parents need to take their young children to visit not the manicured Botanic Gardens or Gardens by the Bay, but places where they can truly connect with the wonders of nature.

A visit to the Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve will introduce children to the Malayan water monitor (Varanus salvator) and the white-breasted waterhen (Amaurornis phoenicurus).

Take them to the beach at Kranji Reservoir Park to learn about the signaller crab (Metaplax elegans) and the mud creepers (Cerithidea obtusa), which can climb up a tree trunk.

Take them on a cycling trip to Chek Jawa and they will not fail to learn about the red flowers of Lumnitzera littorea and the palm (Nypa fruticans), which gives us the attap chee in ice kachang.

Parents can also take their kids to the firefly forest, fruit farm, bee farm and crocodile farms in Johor - they are only an hour's drive from Woodlands.

Their geography lessons will come alive at the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve as they observe a real tropical rainforest.

Much can be learnt from watching veterinarian Luke Gamble and herpetologist Austin Stevens on Animal Planet.

But while they are a feast for the eyes, nothing matches a child's fascination and wonder when he touches a living organism in the forest, a river or the beach.

Heng Cho Choon