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Outdoor time – 4-6 hours a day?! Is this possible?!
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Benita-Thank you for the encouragement. He does enjoy being outside, as do I! This year we’ve been having DH teach “PE” on Saturday mornings when we can, to work on the gross motor. That’s a good point about wanting to do it more when he’s around other kids more.
Maybe we can try taking a brief walk at another point in the day. It’s just a lot of work to get 3 kids ready to go outside for such a short period of time. Guess I need to suck it up. 🙂
You are welcome, mama -nickles. Hope I wasn’t too preachy!! I well remember trying to get 3 or 4 little ones out the door for anything. 15 minutes doesn’t seem like it is worth it for all the work, but when weather warms up you don’t have to do coats, mittens, etc… and only need simple velcro sandals or flip flops. Remember, this season of little ones doesn’t last forever. Before long you’ll hear the back screen door slam as they go out themselves. Then you will smile and remember the hard years. Then you’ll have the new struggle of calling them and getting them to come in when its time to eat or its getting too dark and damp!:)
This is a very interesting topic. I am just starting to plan my CM-homeschooling for my 4,5 yo (and 3 yo) with a little one of 1 and a baby about to arrive. (My 7yo has to go to school, living in Germany). I´ve read through all the messages and would like to ask another question to it. Are there methods you use to motivate (or kindly ´force´) your little ones to play outside? My children can all play outside by themselves (even the 1yo if I leave the door open so he doesnt feel locked out does it for some time), but beside the 7yo the children want to play inside MUCH MORE. They are very creative in their playing, love puzzles, drawing etc. etc. They play indipendently very well. I would love to have them outside more. I think a problem is that our house is much ´too big´: there is too much work to do for me inside and the children find too much play-place in it.
A hard thing about letting very little ones play outside is that the ´getting dressed´ almost takes longer than the minutes they play outside – of course especially if the weather is bad (that´s quite a bit over here, only not during some rare summer weeks) and after ´undressing´ those want to go out again and it repeats itself sometimes so I don´t get my work done as quickly, so I rather don´t allow them to play outside during quite some time a day…
Thank you for any tips, Yvette Berg
I am bumping this post up from several years ago. My DS is now 8, and I have 6, 4 and 7 months daughters. We have been working on more and more outside time! I do still struggle with the fact that they like to play indoors as well. We are pretty much finished with school by 10:30, and they do go outside until lunch, but then they like to do roomtime after that (dolls or legos mostly) and my 4 year old has poop issues that seem to only resolve after being alone to “work things out.” LOL!
What about things like games, puzzles, legos? Do those of you who are outside a lot not have your kids do those sorts of things? My 6yo LOVES being outside and would be out all day if possible (we are planning to try staying out all day tomorrow for the first time!) but then she tries to make my 8yo feel guilty if he’d rather play inside than outside.
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