I've been back and calculated our total time spent outdoors so far this year, playing, learning and exploring in various ways - the current total stands at 154 hours and 15 minutes.
Regular readers will have seen on my home ed posts that we are big fans of Charlotte Mason, a 19th century educator. She recommended that children between the ages of 0-7 should spend 4-6 hours outside everyday. In today's day and age this seems an unrealistic amount of time. But this daily length instead calculated over 3-4 times per week works out at about 1000 hours per year.
Over on the 1000 hours outside blog, you can read more about where this figure comes from, the research supporting it and the developmental benefits of outdoor time on this post here http://1000hoursoutside.com/join-the-challenge/why-1000-hours/
I think we will still be a long way off the 1000 hours total by the end of the year, but nevertheless I'm enjoying keeping track of our time outside and seeing the difference it makes in the kids, in both the short term and over a longer period. Some of those benefits that I've seen, and many other good reasons for getting outside, are listed on this blog post from the 1000 hours outside website http://1000hoursoutside.com/2015/01/21/100-reasons-spend-1000-hours-outside/
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