Outdoors Even In Winter

Acorn's absolute favorite thing to do is be outside.  This was easy and fun for everyone in Autumn.  However when the weather turns cold my willingness to go outside plummets.  Keeping the children locked inside is not fair.  So to help me stay motivated I decided to join The Outdoor Challenge.  A new winter series starts up in January but I wanted to prepare both myself and the children.  As she recommends, we went back to the beginning and completed Challenge 1. These challenges are based on The Handbook Of Nature Study.  We have had this book on our shelves for a long time without delving into it.  It is huge and overwhelming but the challenges give short relevant reading assignments so it is easy to absorb. 

I made the Challenge multipurpose.  We have a creek behind our house that is part of the public easement.  The creek runs all the way to the park where we have our weekly homeschool gathering.  Eventually I would love it if we could walk to the park along the creek.  However right now there is no access to the creek from the house due to massive overgrowth.  Before hacking out a path I wanted to check out the rest of the creek.

To that end, I selected the public access point to the creek as the destination for our inaugural challenge. It was a complete disaster.  Acorn started crying as soon as we reached the trailhead and did not stop until we were back on our street.  The trailhead starts out with a steep hill.  I sat on my bottom with Acorn on my lap and slid down it so she did not go tumbling down.  Froggy was able to navigate it slowly but carefully.

We spent the recommended 10-15 minutes outdoors exploring but we did not find anything to bring back and study.  I am not giving up though.  We are going to make this work.