10 Things Parents of Outdoor Children Must Know

Recently I read a blog post shared by Outdoor Families Magazine about the 10 Things Moms of Boys Must Know. As an outdoorsy mom of both a boy and a girl, many of the "boyish" stereotypes on the list rang true for both of my children. So I took on the challenge of creating my own list for parents of outdoor families. 

1. You must know that being grossed out by insects, worms, snakes and frogs is not allowed. You must react with the same awe that your children have when they introduce you to these new friends. It may take practice, but a great tip is to mirror the joy you see on their face on your own. It will become real with time, trust me. 

2. You must know that your home's entryway will be a muddy mess. Or a snowy mess. Or a dusty, dirty mess. Bath towels used as rugs will be invaluable to you. You will often need to carry your children in your outstretched arms, dangling from their armpits, to the bathtub. That is the best place in the house to strip off the dirty clothes while containing most of the mess.

3. You must know that your outdoor children will be dirty. Playing outside is hard work. It really is. And it's a very important job that your children will take very seriously. Keeping up with the demand for mud-pies at their restaurant, and bulldozing the mulch on the miniature construction site takes a lot of concentration and effort.  

4. You must know that your washing machine will become your new best friend. Everyone knows that children are washable, but don't ever forget that while children are precious, clothing is NOT. And clothing is 100% washable, too! Invest in an economy-sized jug of laundry detergent and let your children play! 

5. You must know that it is normal for outdoor children to want to play ALL day EVERY day. Sometimes their energy can seem overwhelming, especially when everyone is cooped up in the house. We often feel that way on the winter days when the temperatures barely scratch the positive integers. Being cooped up inside with children who need to PLAY, and often demand to play with you can be exhausting. Take advantage of any safe weather you have and take them outside. Sometimes it may feel like it is more effort than it is worth, but the payoff will be immediately apparent. The indoor destruction will switch to somewhere where messes will be more manageable.  

6. You must know that your outdoor children will push your buttons daily. The perfect solution for those moments when everyone is on edge and nerves are frayed is to spend some time outside. Children can feel the freedom that being in nature allows them, and that can sometimes be enough to calm a tense situation or refocus their energy (or your own) on something more positive and productive. Take a seat in a camp chair with a book and let your children focus their creativity on a sand sculpture or a bouquet of dandelions. 

7. You must know that you will forever be telling your outdoor children to take the rocks out of their pants pockets. You will quickly realize that simply requesting their removal isn't enough. You will need to check every pocket of every pair of pants, every hoodie, and every jacket every time you put them in the wash. Then you will add them to the ever-growing artifact collection. This is a good time to designate a small shelf or shoe box to the cause. 

8. You must know that the word "quiet" needn't exist when playing outdoors. Sure, quiet has it's time and place, and sometimes it's nice to play a game of "listening ears" to hear the sounds of nature, but for those afternoons that the children are bouncing off walls you can simply take them outside to run, shout, and play off the extra energy.

9. You must know that outdoor children love to tinker!  Give them things to tinker with. They will learn so much from taking things apart and putting them back together. They will discover how things work, and they will exercise their fine motor skills. Bring a few tools outside for them to play with: a magnifying glass, tweezers, a screwdriver, a hammer. Let them smash flowers and pick them apart and look at them up close. Let them tighten screws on the swing set, let them help when you build a mud kitchen or fix a window frame or put together a birdhouse. 

10. You must know that outdoor children will take advantage of every opportunity to be outside. Once they get a taste of freedom in the great outdoors, your children will want to experience that daily. That is a wonderful thing! Let them out! Let them hone their sense of balance by spinning in the grass, by rolling down a hill, or by playing hopscotch. Let them take risks to learn more about their own limits and to build confidence. Let them strengthen their muscles and their gross motor skills by climbing trees and running relays. Let them explore new creative outlets such as growing flowers, painting the snow and weaving tall grasses into fence pickets. 

Most importantly, enjoy this time with your children outside. Sit back and quietly observe how they interact with each other and with nature. Play with them. Remember what it felt like to be young, carefree, and wild, and experience that with them all over again. 

My Natural New Year's Resolutions

The beauty of the natural world is that there is always more to do. More parks to see, nature to explore, trails to discover, logs to flip, ponds to dip, puddles to splash, mud to squish. Here, nestled in between the Cuyahoga Valley National Park and Summit Metro Parks we have 43500+ acres of pristine parkland within a 20 minute drive of us. That is a huge playground full of potential, not to mention our own beautiful backyard. So my resolutions are goals that I have for myself (and my children) and the time we spend amidst nature, especially now that winter has arrived.

I resolve to play outside with the children at least 3 hours a week this winter. That's a very easily-attained goal in the warmer seasons, but one that pushes my levels of cold-tolerance during our long, cloudy, bitter Northeast Ohio winter. 

I resolve to try to find within myself the snow-loving joy that I had as a child. I will fake it, and mirror my children's happiness
and joy on my own face until it becomes real.

I will find more favorite trails to add to our growing list of stunning vistas, quiet pines, bubbling creeks, peaceful ridges and shaded valleys.

I will continue to guide my children through nature and conservation primarily with child-led messy play and meaningful experiences rather than definitions and adult-directed learning.

I will lead my family nature club even through the weeks that we are the only ones out in the cold.

I will learn to start a fire quickly to keep us warm on our backyard adventures.

I will start a family journal, this one actually, and grow this blog to include tales about the parks we visit and the adventures we go on.

Mission: Mud Kitchen

It took longer than I would have liked to get the mud kitchen up and running, but it's done and I'm so happy with the end result. It's beautiful, sleek, minimalist and MUDDY. But it started as a rusty, industrial metal cart, two stained enamel bowls, and a metal sieve. All of the components were bought at my new favorite thrift/salvage shop, Givits, for a mere $30.

The cart needed a bit of TLC. I sanded it, washed it, sanded it again, and washed it again. Luckily it was still structurally sound, just rusty. Then I painted it a beautiful blue to match the teeter totter. My handy husband cut me a piece of plywood for the top, and cut holes in it to sink the bowls down in to. I sanded the wood and painted it light gray. The bowls just needed a bit of elbow grease to come clean. Some baking soda and water scrubbed the rust stains and dirt away and they looked beautiful again...for now!

The kids were ready to dig in, so they transferred some nice soft dirt from their digging bed into their new mud kitchen, added some water and "blueberry" pebbles from the patio, and made blueberry soup and blueberry pie. I'd say this project is a hit!

Recycling our playscape

Back to reality. My handy husband has been on vacation for a week so a lot of projects got finished! But now he's back to work and I can enjoy the fruits of our labor. This week was all about recycling and rehabbing. We love vintage and recycled items, so fixing up and reusing old, discarded pieces fits perfectly in our plans for a greener, more playful yard. We visited Givits, a local antique/salvage/recycle center/thrift store and found quite a few gems there! First up we picked up this rusty old teeter totter from the '40s.

This old guy needed a lot of work. It is made of tubular steel and the bottom was completely rusted through. We had to patch it with steel patching, and take apart and sand the whole thing. Then we needed to replace the cross-braces, hardware, and make new seats for it. Then we repainted it and put it all back together.

Then came the chairs. More for the adults than the kids I suppose, but places to sit are important around any playscape. We assume they are from the '70s. They were in great shape for their age, but the paint was peeling, and the painter didn't do a very good job taping them off before spraying them fire-engine red. So after some much-needed attention from a paint scraper and a wire brush we repainted them bright green to match the trim and accents around our house. 

The last great find was a length of telephone pole. All that needed was some blocks screwed to the underside to make an awesome balance beam for the kiddos!

The dry creek bed is done!

It was a lot of work. A lot of sweat and dirt and rocks, but thankfully no blood or tears. Finally the dry creek bed project is done. 

What started out as a boring, weedy, puddly section of the hill down to the creek has become a beautiful rock garden. But before it became beautiful, it was a mud slide.

Then came the landscape fabric and the rocks. Lots of rocks. Truckload after truckload of hand-picked (by us) locally dredged rocks. Add to that a ton or two of pea gravel and small river rocks to fill in the bed and it's done! Easy peasy!

We now have a gently meandering stream of rocks to carry our downspout drainage directly to the creek. But it's not solely utilitarian. That would be boring. It is also a great place to sit on the bigger boulders, watch the spiders that have taken up residence there, jump over the narrower sections, balance on the rocks, run up and down the hill as they shift under your feet, sort through the pebbles, look at the lovely colors, stack them, toss them, and keep them as treasures. Because that's the point of a nature playscape- it has to be fun! 

 Since the rocks are the focal point of this project, the kiddos took some pictures of their favorites.

Mud-wonderful

While every day is the perfect day for playing in the mud, some are more perfect than others. Like International Mud Day, which was yesterday. The kiddos kicked off the celebration by choosing their own appropriate (or not) footwear for a hot, humid summer weekend, then stirred up a brew that alternately turned people into plants and made them happy depending on if they were playing "good guys" or "bad guys". 

Later on they put on their swimsuits and made mud stew, mud cupcakes and a mud pie. The pie and cupcakes were put in the "freezer" in the shade under a large shrub to chill. I had the privilege of taste-testing these, then washing my pans. I am planning a trip to the thrift store for some kitchen equipment that they can keep outside instead of using mine. 

 Then they both got in the mucky, sticky mud by the creek to try to catch tadpoles. Fortunately for the tadpoles they moved quicker than the kids. 

           How did you celebrate?

The time the neighbors realized who was really living next door

Or what the neighbors were likely whispering: More mud and more rocks?

Work on the dry creek bed, which is currently a sloppy, slippery mud slide, great for riding Big Wheels and trikes down, is progressing. We cut up the sod and, instead of filling the local landfill with it, were able to use it to create "banks" along the meanders of the creek bed and fill in low spots around the yard. The creek bed is really, really long. It is going to take a LOT more rocks than we originally anticipated to fill it in. Luckily Waterbug helped us dig two good-sized boulders out of the excavation areas. Two down, a million to go. 

We made good use of the sod cutter that we rented for a 4-hour block by cutting up everything at once. The cutting was the easy part. Pulling up heavy, wet sod wasn't much fun at all, and the many grubs, mealworms, earthworms, red worms, beetles and ants whose roof we tore off were not too pleased either. We removed all the sod from the area behind the house where the new patio will go in, and the 4 tons of pebbles for that project were delivered to my driveway this morning! We also re-vamped the old oft-flooded rectangular garden into a perfectly round rain garden. Now I just need to hope that the seeds didn't wash away before they could take root and sprout. 

Things are busy here, but they are always fun. We always have extra rocks to toss in the creek, mud to splash in, and some sort of mound of something in the driveway to climb lately. And that is what a nature playscape is all about.