Australian children are spending less time outdoors today than at another time in our history. In fact recent research revealed that 1 in 10 Australian children play outside only once a week.* Internationally it is not much better, a study by the company Persil, found that on average children spend twice as much time watching tv than they do playing outside.** At the same time there is a growing body of evidence that says that unstructured play in nature is essential for young children's development and that spending too little time outdoors may be having negative impact on our children’s wellbeing.
I am a teacher and a mum a preschooler and a toddler and I found this information very interesting. I started to wonder why did my kids seem to go out less than I did when I was a kid? I was also interested to find out if it was really true… If stepping out the door and heading outside, could really be so beneficial to my children? And if it was how could a busy family like ours make time to be outdoors more?
So my husband Nick and I sat down and made a plan, for a year we would make playing outdoors a priority. Here is our plan…
From 1st May 2016 to the 31st April 2017 we will…
1. Let our children play outside for three hours, every day, whatever the weather.
3. Visit 100 great places for nature play in NSW.
4. See how many hours we can spend outdoors in the year. 3 hours a day is just over 1000 hours, however we would love to see if we can reach 1500 or even 2000 hours outside this year.
3. Take lots of photos and write about our experience.
We hope you enjoy following Our Year Outdoors on this blog. We are so glad you are reading and look forward to hearing your experiences and ideas too.
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