Climate ChangeEcocentrismEvolved Nest

Nature Connection Songs for Children and Adults!

By Darcia Narvaez, PhD
Shutterstock/peampath2812

Nature Connection Resource Includes:

  1. Podcasts for your to download of Darcia singing and demonstrating the songs below.

  2. The Nature Connection Songs PDF, showing musical lyrics and chord progressions for you to play along.

  3. The entire collection is listed here.

 

If you’re looking to replace artificial light hum, droning news reports, or monkey brain chatter with an uplifting, Earth-honoring ditty that is sure to inspire nature connection and joy, look below and pick out a tune written and performed by Darcia Narvaez, Kindred World’s president and founder of the Evolved Nest.

Nature Connection is one of our nine Evolved Nest components. One of the known causes for the planetary crises humanity is facing currently (e.g., global warming, climate instability, melting glaciers, toxic pollution, biodiversity loss) is the lack of caring for the rest of nature and the sense of separation from it (T. Berry, 1999; W. Berry, 2012). Our species is a creature of the earth and has evolved with the rest of the natural world, which preserves us.

Visit the Evolved Nest Self-Directed Learning Center to discover more about Nature Connection and resources, like the science-based 28 Day Eco Attachment Dance.

More Nature Connection Resources

Kindred’s articles on Nature Connection
Kindred’s articles on Indigenous Wisdom


Practitioner Guide to Assessing Connection to Nature Our goal in creating this guide is to provide practitioners, organizations, researchers, and others with a “one-stop shop” for measuring nature connections.   

Eco Attachment Dance. Eco Attachment Dance is part of the Evolved Nest Initiative, a web resource to help individuals, families, and communities nest or re-nest themselves. Eco Attachment Dance aims to help human beings reengage their connection to the natural world. 

Darcia’s Nature Connection Children’s Songs Collection, and reasons to sing them together!

https://soundcloud.com/evolvednest/birds-we-love-by-darcia-narvaez?si=0ebd1b242f814b09928d8ccd3acd78cc&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Bird species are undergoing rapid extinction rates due to human activities, like killing insects that they feed on. This song is a reminder that we love to see and hear birds. They need our mindful concern to help them thrive and prevent further extinction.
https://soundcloud.com/evolvednest/we-are-water-song-by-darcia-narvaez?si=3a4c510a52be4739b9152a5ccfab893a&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Water is life-giving, life-supporting aspect of the world. The ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher, Thales (c. 624-546 BCE), suggested that all things come from water. We often forget how ubiquitous it is and how reliant we are on its purity. Many people in the world do not have regular access to clean water. This song is to remind us how much we interact with water in so many ways. Sing and dance this song with one or more partners.
https://soundcloud.com/evolvednest/sing-to-the-insects-a-song-by-darcia-narvaez?si=13dc77761c574db481fe494459841445&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Insects are disappearing at a rapid rate with a mass extinction underway. In industrialized nations, we often treat insects as pests, not thinking about they fit into complex ecosystems that keep other animals, and ourselves, alive. When we use pesticides on one insect, it also kills other insects. This song is a cheerleading song to insects, needed members of our biological communities. Sing and dance to the music.
https://soundcloud.com/evolvednest/a-song-honoring-plants-by-darcia-narvaez?si=c089062d88a547c093cdd6e95c8f9615&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
This song honoring plants is written and performed by Darcia Narvaez. It was included in Chapter 9 in her new book with Four Arrows, Restoring the Kinship Worldview: Indigenous Voices Introduce 28 Precepts for Rebalancing Life on Earth.
Many plant species are increasingly threatened with extinction. Humans often act mindlessly toward plants, as if they do not have feeling or purpose. Native American communities honored plants as life givers and teachers. They practiced the “honorable harvest,” a way to treat plants and animals with respect. This song describes what the honorable harvest looks like. Sing and play this song with one or more partners.

BONUS SONG!

Here is Darcia teaching us the We Love the Earth Song, which was shared for last year’s Earth Day Celebrations!

https://youtu.be/p_1qtUlZqj0
Related Terms:
Darcia Narvaez, PhD

Darcia Narvaez is a Professor of Psychology Emerita at the University of Notre Dame. She is the founder of the public and professional educational outreach project The Evolved Nest Initiative whose nonprofit mission is to share her science research into developing appropriate baselines for lifelong human wellness by meeting the biological needs of infants. This wellness-informed baseline is imperative at this time as the United States ranks 41st out of 41 developed countries in public policies that support families.

In a 2020 analysis of top scientists, Narvaez emerged in the top 2% of scientists worldwide. Of the eight million scientists in the world, the analysis concerned those who had at least five articles published in scientific journals between 1996 and 2017-- over six million scientists. Individuals were ranked according to various criteria, including number of citations of their work.

In 2022, she was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science(AAAS), the largest international body of professional scientists in the world and publisher of the prestigious journal Science. Narvaez was honored for her distinguished contributions illuminating typical and atypical development in terms of well-being, morality and sustainable wisdom. Narvaez examines how early life experience — the “evolved nest” — influences moral functioning and well-being in children and adults. She integrates evolutionary, anthropological, neurobiological, clinical, developmental and education sciences in her work. The election of AAAS fellows is an honor bestowed upon members by their peers.

Narvaez’s book, Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom, was chosen for the 2017 Expanded Reason Award from among more than 360 total entries from 170 universities and 30 countries. Narvaez received the prize, including a substantial monetary award, at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Vatican City on September 27, 2017. The book also received the William James Award from the American Psychological Association in 2015.

Narvaez hosted interdisciplinary conferences at the University of Notre Dame regarding early experience and human development in 2010, 2012, and 2014. In 2016 she organized a conference on Sustainable Wisdom: Integrating Indigenous KnowHow for Global Flourishing. (Click on the links to see the full conferences in video on the Evolved Nest's YouTube Channel.)

She is the author or editor of numerous books and articles, see The Science page for listings.

She is the president of the venerable American nonprofit, Kindred World, a contributing editor to Kindred, the first global eco-parenting magazine, an advisory board member of Attachment Parenting International and the Association for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health, APPPAH.

Her recent book, Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom (2014), won the 2015 William James Book Award from the American Psychological Association, as well as the 2017 Expanded Reason Award. She is former executive editor of the Journal of Moral Education.

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1 Comment
  1. Whirled Peas says

    Thank you so much for these beautiful songs!!!

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