New Year's Resolution

 Whether it is once a week or an hour a day... Resolve to make spending more time outside a priority for you and your family in 2015. You won't regret it! It's good for the heart, mind, body and moral of the whole clan!

 

Keep the Holiday Cheer Alive - Go Outside!

Winter Break Planning

Winter break is just around the corner. The Juneau Outdoor Family Network Facebook page is a great place to plan outdoor activities with other families! You can create your own event by going to the "Events" tab at the top of the groups FB page or you can just post where you're headed and when. I can be as simple as "My family and I are heading to Sandy Beach... or the Airport Trail at 10:30 tomorrow morning and would love to have other families join us." Activities could be, but are not limited to ice skating, sledding, snowshoing, skiing, playdate at the park...

JOFN is designed to be a place where parents are empowered with the tools and the venue to create their own outings that fit their own family's schedule. Part of the reason why I created this group and similar ones in Anchorage and Kodiak, was to make sure I had things I knew my boys and I would love to do at a time that met our needs, while making new friends. I'd like to extend that luxury to other families.

2nd Annual Lantern Walk

Our 2nd Annual Lantern Walk was a great success! Mother Nature bestowed us with a starry, calm night. We had about 20 families attend. Thank you to everyone who brought, food, drink and firewood to share! We were able to gather around the fire before and after the walk and the kids happily played at the playground. Next year I'll have to enlist a parent beforehand to lead us in song along the trail. My raspy, out of tune voice was just too quiet while recovering from a nasty cold to rouse any joiners. Right as we left the forecasted clouds moved in and we got our first snow dump of the season later that night.

 

Rain, Sleet, Snow: Why it is important to venture out in inclement weather.

It is hard to gain confidence in preparing the whole gang for warm, comfortable and dry fun in all kinds of weather. Fortunately we have some amazing resources in Alaska such as my dear friend and Alaskan author Jennifer Aist, whose book Babes in the Woods, is a wealth of knowledge for getting outdoors with the kids. There also happens to be a global movement to connect and reconnect children with the outdoors. This movement has largely been spurred on by the author Richard Louv and his books LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, and most recently, THE NATURE PRINCIPLE: Human Restoration and the End of Nature-Deficit Disorder.

Why is taking your kids out in cold or inclement weather important and actually healthy for them? Oh the reasons are numerous:

• Fresh air is so important for so many health reasons, it helps with croup, colicky babies, it is very important in the winter months to help ward off colds and bugs that thrive indoors in close quarters.
• Endorphins are thought to be released by engaging in physical activity and to elevate mood and energy levels, as well as promote a healthy immune system. They are said to help you recover from injury and illness faster too.
• Emergency preparedness - when you know how to prepare yourself for being comfortable, safe and warm no matter what the elements have in store for you, you have a better understanding of how to keep yourself alive should you or your children find themselves in an unfortunate predicament.
• Process skills and planning - as a veteran elementary teacher process skills and the ability to plan are traits that are widely lacking in today's children. Pushing on through and planning for an outing in inclement weather teaches kids how to predict what their needs will be and meet them trough planning and being proactive.
• Follow through & determination - the ability to see a plan through to the end. If you say you're going to accomplish something like a hike... then do it. Teach your children not to let obstacles get in their way.
• Flexibility - teach and role model for your kids how to roll with the punches and not let little things like rain get in their way of doing what they had intended.
• True sense of satisfaction - there is nothing more satisfying than conquering an obstacle, even one as silly as weather. Some of the best hikes with Taiga Trekkers have been rainy or cold ones, because we all thought about bailing before we even got to the trailhead, but we all persevered and felt better about ourselves than we would of if it was a regular old sunny day.
• Perspective - seeing life through another lens - rainy & snowy days aren't often thought of as beautiful, but they really are.
• Deeper understanding of nature/science & its cycles - if you only spend time outside when it it is "nice" or rather I should say sunny (now that we've established that other kinds of weather are nice too), you miss out on all the amazing lessons to be learned about nature and how all it's phenomenal systems function. A simple example is leaves turning themselves over before a rainfall or flowers battening down the hatches by closing themselves up. 
• Wards off depression - I recently read a staggering statistic, from a reputable source, that claimed that symptoms of depression could be reduced by 50% when a person spends time outside every day. I know from personal experience, that it played a huge role in helping me back out of the dredges of post-partum depression.

Now of course there are limits to what we will expose ourselves, an more importantly our children to. Those limits are different for every family, but it is important for us to not let a little rain or cold get in the way of our time outdoors. We'd miss out on so much wonder and opportunity if we did!

***This is a repost from my older blog Taiga Trekkers****

We're going on a scavenger hunt

Plant identification - a great way to get outside with the kids and show them how to use reference materials/do research, discuss attributes/identifying characteristics, use descriptive vocabulary, common uses and discriminate what a reliable sources of information is. Its like a scavenger hunt! 

What plant is this?

Here are some great resources:
-Alaska Native Plant Society
- Wildflowers of the United States, Alaska
- USDA Plants Database

Berry Picking: A wealth of opportunity

My favorite part of the year is always berry picking season! It's in my blood, literally. My father is half Finnish, making me a quarter. Finns are avid berry pickers as their climate is very similar to Alaska. Even those who immigrated to the US, kept up this tradition. My great grandmother owned a blueberry farm in southern New Hampshire. My grandfather made sure to have a bounty of blueberry bushes on his own property. My dad grew up picking berries at my Great Grandma Liimatainen's farm and now plants a new blueberry bush every year around his house.

Alaska is a land where people take the utmost pride in their ability to subsist off the land. So be careful when you ask someone where their favorite blueberry spot is... they may lead you astray. Like favorite hunting grounds and fishing holes, we guard our berry picking spots with great secrecy, only to be shared with family or close friends.

My family and I have picked berries across this great state. Kodiak is our favorite for salmon berries, Fairbanks: highbush cranberries & lingonberries, Hatcher's Pass for the view, and now Juneau has proven, with all its rain, to provide the biggest, juiciest blueberries and huckleberries.


Lessons from the Land:

Berry picking not only provides food in our freezers, but it is also the grounds for a wealth of lessons we can impart to our children. Some concepts that can be taught through berry picking and the requisite baking after:

• Estimating - estimate how many berries are in your container then count them.
• Volume - pour berries from a smaller container into a larger one
• Ecology - food chain, paying attention to where the berries are found on the mountain side - are they near streams? high in the rocky areas? low in the boggy areas? Is this habitat to other creatures?
• Topography & Geography  - bring a compass or a gps device to record your coordinates, pay attention to the terrain and elevation gain as you hike.
• Measurement & Fractions- baking
• Process Skills- From planning the berry picking adventure through canning, baking or freezing, kids see the entire process of gathering materials, making a plan and seeing it through.
• Democracy - let the students or members of your family vote on the fate of the berries... pies, smoothies, muffins etc...
• History - in my family's case blueberries are an important part of our history, my great-grandmother owned a blueberry farm in New Hampshire, as did many other 1st generation Finnish Americans. Berry's are also a part of the subsistence culture of Alaska from it's Native peoples to the gold miners fighting off scurvy in the long winter months.
• Literary connections - as I mention in an earlier post Blueberries for Sal, by Robert McCloskey is a favorite in our house. Blueberry Shoe, by Ann Dixon, a local author is another.
• Nutrition - There are many benefits to eating berries - antioxidants and fiber are just the beginning.

Some great books to tie in with your foraging adventures:

Activities - Make a Berry Bucket:

 Boy could Sal have used a bucket with bells like this one!

• a yogurt container with lid
• hole puncher
• yarn
• pipecleaners
• bells
• stickers to decorate

Favorite berry recipe:

Blueberry Crumb Bars

Adapted from http://smittenkitchen.com

Yield: I cut these into 36 smallish rectangles

1 cup white sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup cold coconut oil (may use butter instead)

1 egg

1/4 teaspoon salt

Zest and juice of one lemon

4 cups fresh blueberries, salmonberries, huckleberries, rhubarb, raspberries, cranberries or any mixture of fruit

1/2 cup white sugar

4 teaspoons flour

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease a 9×13 inch pan.
2. In a medium bowl, stir together 1 cup sugar, 3 cups flour, and baking powder. Mix in salt and lemon zest. Use a fork or pastry cutter to blend in the coconut oil (or butter) and egg. Dough will be crumbly. Pat half of dough into the prepared pan.
3. In another bowl, stir together the sugar, cornstarch and lemon juice. Gently mix in the blueberries. Sprinkle the blueberry mixture evenly over the crust. Crumble remaining dough over the berry layer.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 45 minutes, or until top is slightly brown. (This took an extra 10 to 15 minutes in my oven.) Cool completely before cutting into squares.

Outdoor Playdates

A bunch of us try to meet regularly on Thursday mornings 10am, at Auke Rec./Point Louisa for an outdoor playdate. This is unstructured play time. The kiddos climb, pick berries, fish, romp, explore the tide pools, the trees and the beach. Parents get a chance to connect with each other. It is a great location rain or shine, as there  is beach, the peninsula that is Pt. Louisa, covered shelters and the trees themselves provide shelter and a windbreak on blustery days. It is important for children to get to know one place through all the seasons, weather and tides to see the cycles and systems in nature. Often times from the point seal lions, seals, porpoise and whales can be seen swimming about. Often parents will bring wood for a campfire, hot dogs, marshmallows and apples to roast. Everyone always brings a snack to share.