Could you spend 1000 hours outside? With babies?
One of the biggest challenges my family has decided to embark on for this new year is 1000 Hours Outside. This program is taking the social media world by storm and it is a challenge we are so excited to take on!
If you’ve never heard of it before, the premise is simple: spend 1000 hours outside in a year. Sounds like a lofty goal, but when broken down it can be an average of 3 hours a day. In these brutal Michigan winters- I am aiming for an hour a day, and then during the summer I plan on banking up most of my hours. I know last summer we easily spent 5-6 hours a day just by playing in the driveway and having picnic lunches in the backyard.
The website https://www.1000hoursoutside.com/ provides a TON of resources as well as the trackers to record your hours. For each hour you spend outside, you color in a space on the tracker. They are all free to use and download. I chose my favorite and printed it in a size 18×24 at my local print shop. We hung it on the wall in the kitchen and my daughter loves to help color in the spaces with me! There is also an app you can use to track your hours, but there is an additional charge.
The founder of the program, Ginny Yurich, is a native of Southeast Michigan. Years ago she was also a new mother trying to find ways to fill those seemingly endless hours with young children. She found that the average American child spends about 1,200 hours a year in front of a screen! Wow! She decided she was going to try to match those hours of screen time with hours spent outside in nature. Ginny says “Our greatest times as a family, and my most successful times mothering almost exclusively point back to these fully immersive nature days. In time we began to find that there is benefit upon benefit to this wonderful time outside.”
The blog on the website also has countless resources and ideas of ways to spend the time outdoors. I also purchased this book which is just chock FULL of fun ideas! Some things we are going to be trying this winter include painting the snow and ice with watercolor paints, making a “snow cake” and decorating it with fruits and vegetables for the wildlife to eat, and making frozen bubbles on a cold day. Another book that I found really helpful is called Balanced and Barefoot by Angela J Hanscom.
Even with all of these amazing ideas and resources, I know it is going to be incredibly difficult to make it to 1000 hours outside. But, for me, that is not really the goal. I will be just as happy to make 500 hours outside this year. Every extra hour that my girls get to spend outside, unplugged, and connected with nature is a complete and total win.
For BlueWaterParent.com – Alyssa Dock
Here’s an archived story from last year about 1000 Hours Outside.
