1000 Hours Outside and Our Summer Bucket List

 

Hello there friends and happy Monday! I hope you had a nice weekend. If you missed last Friday's post make sure you head over there to enter the giveaway. You'll need to fill out your info on the Rafflecopter and then leave a comment on Friday's post to enter. The giveaway ends on Wednesday night and I will announce the winner Friday. Be sure to come back Friday!

While on our Ireland trip last month I re-read one of my favorite parenting books, Barefoot and Balanced. The author of this book is a Pediatric Occupational Therapist, who discusses the importance of unstructured outdoor play and how vital it is for children's development. While reading back through her book, I remembered that Adrienne and her family were working on a goal last year of spending 1000 hours outside. It felt like quite a daunting task! 1000 hours? That's almost 3 hours a day! That feels like a lot! Especially once full day school starts up and LG isn't home for 8 hours a day. But then I realized that on days that we have nice weather, particularly in the summer when there is no school, we can easily spend 8-9 hours outside daily. On the weekends we love to go for hikes as a family, or to the Whitewater Center, and we can easily spend several hours outside then too. Not to mention our beach trips, when the kids are outside basically from sunup to sundown. Maybe this won't be as hard as I thought? Challenge accepted. 😎

Last year as Adrienne and her family were trying to spend 1000 hours outside, she updated us each month with how many hours they spent outside. I loved seeing her updates because it was a reminder to me to get my kids outside. I also love how Sarah updates us on her New Year's Resolutions at the end of each What's Up Wednesday post, so I'm borrowing both Adrienne and Sarah's ideas and am planning to update ya'll on our "Hours Spent Outside" each month at the end of my What's Up Wednesday posts. 

When I read this in April I initially thought "oh well, it's already almost May, it's too late to start that now" but I figured "why can't we do it from June 2022 - June 2023?" So that's what we are going to start attempting to do. Over the weekend as we put together our Summer Bucket List, I tried to suggest as many outside activities as possible. Here's a look at what we came up with:

Looks like a fun summer ahead if you ask me. 😊

I went to the 1000 Hours Outside website and downloaded several tools we can use to help. I found this kick off pack that has hundreds of suggested activities. That way if we get to mid-July and feel like we are in a rut of doing the same things, we can look through these ideas. The pack also has children's book suggestions that will encourage some outdoor adventures. 

Kickoff Pack

I also found some cute trackers to print off and hang on the fridge. This way we can keep track of how many hours we've played outside. 

Tracker Page

I hope this inspires you to get outside with your family a little bit more this summer.  At the very least, I know I'll feel a lot less guilty about letting my kids watch a movie here or there this summer if I know we've already spent 15+ hours outside that week. It's all a balance, right? 

If you're looking for another book to add to your reading list this summer, here is Barefoot and Balanced:

Today I am linking up with Holly and Sarah for Hello Monday. I hope you all have a fun week!!