The North Wind Doth Blow

It's beginning to get trickier to get outside for long hours at a time. Up to this point, we've been able to have two park days a week during the school term, often having another long day outside on Saturday. With getting our school work and house work done, it's been difficult to do more; although, we have had one or two weeks that were so incredibly beautiful that we took school with us and went to parks for three or more days out of the week. Schedules like that have been more the exception than the rule.

Charlotte Mason urged parents to take the children out for long days in the country on "every suitable day" between the months of April and October. She lived in England's Lake District, which may have a very different climate from our own homes. Being in Ohio, our weather is not so terribly different than that of London, but we are, generally, about ten to fifteen degrees warmer and less rainy. One day in July, when the temperatures in Ohio were pressing 100 degrees with high humidity, I checked the London weather online. It was in the mid-70s. Armed with this bit of pertinent information, I decided that July and August were generally miserable months in my neck of the woods, and I would trade them in for March and November, instead.

So, November is here. Can we really try for more than 4 hours outside on two days this week? On Monday, we had a shorter park day, 2 hours, but it's been our only one so far this week. Looking at our 10 day forecast, all of next week is going to be rainy, rainy, rainy. We have today and tomorrow before all that rain comes. I'm wondering, though, if 45 degrees at noon (wind chill 40) and 49 degrees at 3pm (wind chill 44)is too cold with Little Dude. I guess we'll bundle up and find out! The worst that can happen is that we'll come home after an hour or so. Even then, we will have had an hour outdoors.

I'll take what I can get :)


Oh, and by the way, yes, my birthday is tomorrow, Esther :)



UPDATE:

Well, we got out there :) This morning we went to a metropark and walked through a one mile wooded trail. It was cold, but the trees blocked much of the wind and it seemed warmer once we were deeper into the woods. We were all bundled up, besides :) The children were running so much, they barely noticed the cold. We were there for an hour and a half (part of the time on the trail I had them walk slowly and quietly "like Indians" and this took a bit longer). Then we drove back toward our house, picked up some food for lunch, and headed on to the arboretum. We spent 2 and a half hours there. The sun was out for most of it and, again, the trees helped block the chilly wind. Little Dude was probably warmer than he needed to be. All you could see was his little face :) I'm not sure how high it actually got today, but I'd say the actual temp was probably near 50 degrees. Without the wind, not too bad. In the windier parts, we needed mittens. Brrrrr. Baby was toasty all day, though. That's encouraging!