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Throughout history, outdoor-based play and the connection to nature have been recognized as important contributors to a happy life and healthy development. At times, however, play and nature have been neglected and viewed as frivolous and wasteful. In the early twentieth century, the first play movement took place to get children out of the factories and back outdoors to play. Now, a century later, factors including twenty-four-hour media,stranger danger, and overscheduling of children's time have resulted in a level of play deprivation that is contributing to a host of social, emotional, and physical problems. This article draws on recent research that shows that as many as 40 percent of America's schools have eliminated or significantly reduced recess. Also, children and adolescents are spending an average of fifty-three hours each week in front of screen media, and only 31 percent of mothers report that their children play outside as frequently as they did as children. The deficits in outdoor-based play that arise from these lifestyles have resulted in significant increases in emotional and psychological disorders, decreased capacity to deal with stressors, and decreased physical fitness. This article describes specific organizations and programs that address the problem of play deprivation and reconnection to the outdoors.

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Family vacations are an important part of life for many families and may lead to beneficial outcomes for family members. Potential negative aspects of family vacations have also been identified, including the stress of increased time together. Many accommodation providers have developed children's day programs to help people negotiate these constraints. The purpose of this study was to explore how children's participation in day programs influenced the parents' experience on vacation. An open-ended questionnaire was e-mailed to parents whose children attended a children's program while on family vacations and a qualitative analysis was performed. The overall theme that emerged during this study is that parents' stressful experiences during family vacations can be moderated by participation in children's programs. Findings indicated that parents were very satisfied with the programs, children's participation in such programs provided opportunity for parental time alone, parents experienced positive emotions while their children were at the program, and the children's program served as an affordance that helped parents negotiate constraints they experienced during the family vacation. Future research needs to further explore these findings to better understand how to help commercial accommodation providers better serve families.

In an era of financial constraint following the Great Recession, many Extension entities have been forced to make difficult decisions; some have adopted alternative funding strategies whereas others have accepted reductions in service delivery and staffing levels. In this article we describe how importance-performance analysis and the repositioning framework may be combined to help inform resource-related decision making in Extension. To do so, we provide an example drawn from an evaluation of local recreation services. The approach and recommendations we detail can be valuable resources for Extension professionals faced with difficult decisions regarding limited resources.