Sunshine and Smiles

Some of you wonder why we put priority in outside time, some of you are wondering why we use the 1000 hours benchmark, and there's some of you who don't really wonder about it at all.

Nearly two years ago I was surfing the web, just attempting to find interesting ideas, and I ran across the 1000 Hours Outside Challenge. I read the articles, I did some independent research, and I came to the conclusion that 1000+ hours outside is MUCH better than 1000+ hours of screen time.

The first year we didn't make the 1000 hour mark, this year we're on track to get more than 1000 hours. There's no true sign up for the challenge, you keep track of your own hours, and you can be part of the community on Facebook doing the same thing. In the past two years so many people have learned about the challenge it's simply amazing.

Try making it a priority this week to get outside more and away from screens. Watch your children have fun and explore. Look for their behavior changes with less exposure to screens.

They're not going to become perfect children just because you limit the time in front of screens. You're still going to occasionally deal with them having attitude issues. But, I've noticed that with less exposure to screens their attention spans increase! Making other areas of our day easier.

So, Google the 1000 Hours Outside Challenge... look them up on Facebook... and then just try getting outside more this week. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Our Time Outside: September 14

This is our September outside post. We take part in the 1000 Hours Outside Challenge and this is our second year! (We're a little over two weeks into this year's challenge and are close to 60 hours outside!) Each month I'll be doing a recap of our outside time with basically this same format. A ton of pictures, a little writing, and then our new total for the year at the bottom. So, even though there's only 3 days into this new week and I'm not adding those hours in just yet here's out total for the new year of the challenge!!!!!

Year to date total outside hours: 57.75 hours!!! (two weeks in! That makes our average for each week so far: 28.9 *rounded up* hours)

And for those of you who have yet to look us up on Facebook you can find us there by following this link . As yet it is the only social media account we can be found at.

** We'll be trying to do Pinterest, G+, and Twitter after the move! Be on the lookout for updates! But in the meantime you'll always find us here and on Facebook **

A Look Back at Our Year Outside

I've decided to do our look back over our year outside for our 1000 Hour Outside Challenge mainly in pictures and then offer you my thoughts at the end. 

Out of the 1000 hour goal we managed 701.75 hours outside! That pesky Polar Vortex really put a cramp in our outside time!

From last fall until this past Saturday. There are tons more pictures that I could have included but decided that these were enough. We're planning on logging more than 1000 hours this upcoming year! And I'll try to blog at least once a month about what we did outside that month and once a week update our hours on Facebook. *All other children than mine in these pictures have been used before in this blog and are the "J" boys from over at Learning Life with 3 Sons *

We knew before taking this challenge that our children do better with lots of outside time (as the weather allows) and I tracked our TV time which amounted to less than 300 hours this whole year!!! I'm glad we're taking this challenge again and I'm going to make sure we break that 1000 hour mark!

Get those kiddos outside, they fight less and enjoy life more!!!!


And for those of you who have yet to look us up on Facebook you can find us there by following this link . As yet it is the only social media account we can be found at.