Fontana, California – The Mayor and City Council invite the public to celebrate Earth Day at the Mary Vagle Nature Center located at 11501 Cypress Avenue on Saturday, April 16 during the Wild Zone Family Play Day.
At this event, the Nature Center staff designates a space outside and furnishes it with materials for children to build shelters and forts, set up homemade swings on trees and make sculptures out of natural materials. With natural materials such as tree limbs, sticks, palm fronds, mud, rope and rocks, children are able to explore and let their imaginations run wild.
“Research shows that as children’s time becomes more devoted to and consumed by the digital world they are becoming increasingly cut off from the natural world around them,” Community Services Coordinator Rick Dean said. “With this loss goes the experience of a positive self-creative form of play found only in engagements with the natural environment … Wild Zone provides a great opportunity to discover and renew this imaginative form of natural play.”
The Wild Zone Family Play Day is a free event open to the public from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the Mary Vagle Nature Center. All children must be accompanied by an adult.
For more information about Family Play Day, please call the Mary Vagle Nature Center at (909) 349-6994 or visit online at nature.fontana.org.