Playing Outside

Running Snowball Fight, a photo by virithos on Flickr.

Boo and I took a little hike while Lee was out of town. There was maybe half an inch of snow on the ground. But it was just enough to scrape together some snowballs.

We ended up having a running snowball fight through this prairie trail. It was awesome.

How do you play outside in the winter?

Motivator: Throwing Things Into Water

All the kids I’ve spent time with love throwing things into water. Rocks, sticks leaves. Ocean, great lake, stream, or puddle. 

It's easy for it to slow you down. “Come on, we need to keep moving!”

Or you can use it to keep them going “Throw 3 more things from this bridge, then let’s see where the next bridge is!”

It helps if you know that the next water is reasonably close. I’ve had luck encouraging her to find good things to throw into the next water. 

I try to camp near water, for a constant source of amusement. 

This works best with a slight change of mentality. Little kids don't understand hike for an hour then take a little break. All they see is you are being a boring adult and passing all the cool stuff. Most of these pauses can be pretty quick if the kid knows she'll get another chance.



What's your go-to trick to keep your kid going?

2 Distractions

We took a little hike after work one day last week. It wasn't as horribly hot as it has been, but it was warm and sunny and the air was full of allergens.

Boo started complaining before we'd gone a full mile. We persuaded her to the one-mile mark, then decided that turning back was the better part of valor.

Then the whining really started.

I took my hat off, and Lee took it. Folded it in half. And started wriggling it.

"Boo! Boo, what is in Baba's hat?"

Pout. "Nothing."

"Boo, it's really wriggly. Can you please look and tell me what it is? I can't see, it's too fast."

Intrigued, she looks. Lee very briefly opened it up and returned to wriggling it.

"I think it's a squirrel, Boo, did you see the squirrel?"

Now she's engaging. Lee offers increasingly more excited and wriggly peeks at the "squirrel". Boo gets more excited, even keeping up with our stroll, and then announces that it has run away into the trees.

"Whew, now Baba can have her hat back. Wait, what's in there now?"

"Meow!" Boo plays along, hooked.

They pulled out several kittens, some puppies, a snake, an elephant, all sorts of farm animals. Each time Lee started to give my hat back, Boo announced that it was full of another creature.

While they were playing and I was sweating, I found an unblemished green walnut. When the hat game was coming to an end (Boo being less excited each time), I dropped it to my feet and kicked it up the trail. Not a huge kick, just dribbling it along, like I did with rocks in the gutters when I was a kid. (That makes my childhood sound much different than it was...)

Finally Boo noticed. And commented. And finally, ran ahead of me to kick the walnut before I did.

And that took us to the trail head.

What games do you lay to keep your kids (or yourself) going when they start to get bored?

Keeping Cool

Kids don’t sweat the way adults do. This makes it easier for them to overheat. They also can’t tell that their body feeling kinda sick means “over heating” or “dehydrating”. Boo will sometimes tell us she’s not feeling good, but more often will not mention it if there’s anything more interesting going on. Pay close attention.

Boo drinks more with a water bladder. It’s right there, she doesn’t need to ask for help or stop. When it’s hot, she’ll complain that her water is too warm, and stop drinking. It’s also difficult for her to know when her water is gone. 

If we’re using bottles, we need to remember to offer her water more often than we drink. Oddly enough, a 4-year-old can’t drink and still walk. 

When she gets hot, I’ll soak her (light colored) hiking hankie in water and tie it to her head. Then I tell her she looks like a pirate. If I’ve missed a critical point in the cooling schedule (if she’s really whiny), I’ll take her backpack for a while. She’s almost always sweaty on her back. 

The heat will suck her energy out a lot faster than it will yours. Stop more often, slow down (even more), plan your hikes in the shade or earlier in the day. Water them down. A little splashy water fight can do wonders.

How do you keep your kid (and yourself) cool in the heat?

Hiking Skills

Disclaimer: any specific kid on a specific day may be capable of a wide range of things. Or not capable of things they could do last week. Your knowledge and observations about your kid are a better guide than any number of bloggers or experts.

Kids are sponges for new information. Especially little kids don’t know what’s normal outside what your family does. If you hike and camp, they will think it’s normal. Teach them outdoor skills as you teach them indoor table manners, how to answer the phone, etc. Kids want to be with you, they want to act like adults, they want to help.

While she is not expected to navigate at all, we do expose her to the basics. Like reading a map.

Or using a compass

Plant identification can start fairly young. The first one I pushed her to recognize was poison ivy. Then the more common flowers. She quickly started asking beyond my knowledge, so we got her a laminated pamphlet of common local flowers. This not only teaches her the flowers, but how to find that information. We occasionally hike where there are edible berries. We often hike where there are non-edible things. When she gets bored, or just points out berries, we ask “should you eat it?”

And then there are the times when you actually can pick and eat things…

Boo often talks, sings, or just shouts with joy while we hike. So we don’t see a lot of wildlife. But to a little kid, a squirrel is just as exciting as a moose. But tracks are always exciting. We see deer tracks frequently. Even when we don’t, we can find people tracks, and decide who may have made them (You? Me? Mommy? Someone else?). One of our favorite parks has turkey and coyote tracks with reasonable frequency. In the winter, rabbits and squirrels leave tracks. She frequently references her guidebook. When we do see critters, we teach her how to respect their space.

Scat is almost infinitely interesting to Boo. Especially while she was potty training. And when you are very small, it’s not easy to tell scat from some sticks. So instead of her poking the potential scat with her fingers, I taught her to pull it apart with a stick. This easily segued into checking what the animal has been eating, and using that information to guess at what the animal may be. (Turns out I can’t identify a lot of scat. I know a lot more now than 2 years ago.) We have been known to “collect” a picture of unknown scat to compare to our books when we get home.

Something that isn’t usually an issue for us is climbing safety. Illinois just isn’t that rugged, and we don’t seek out especially tricky hiking. But then we went to San Diego for a week to visit my sister. And the hiking there is a little… rockier. We had a little catching up to do on safe rock hiking.

We always carried drink and a snack for her. She caught on fairly quickly, and before we leave for a hike now she makes sure her pack has water and a snack.

Around 4, she started getting so comfortable on trails we frequent that she felt perfectly fine running far ahead of us. Going wherever she felt was best. Now she knows that she has to stay where she can see us (because a 4-year-old can’t judge where you can see her), and not pass any intersections.

I'm sure I'm missing a lot of things we teach her just by being outside where a kid should be.

What outdoor skills were you taught as a kid? Which ones were most useful?