Angus Phillips - Nonprofit Invites Youngsters to Discover the Great Outdoors - washingtonpost.com

How many hundreds of thousands of kids have grown up around Washington and never set foot in, on or even alongside the Potomac River? It's impossible to know, but the simple answer is: Far too many.

Living Classrooms, the Baltimore-based nonprofit that's branched into the D.C. area on a mission to put youngsters in touch with nature, did its bit to amend that last week. With help from 10 corporate and government sponsors, the organization dragged 330 kids down to National Harbor on a bright spring morning to cast a line, tickle a fish, eyeball a turtle and learn about bobbers and worms, underwater grasses, snakeheads and other peculiarities that make life not just interesting but irresistible when you're 10 or 12 or even 17, before complications of adulthood set in.