Outdoor Hour Challenge
Winter Series Ebook
Winter Weather
Winter weather is usually pretty interesting to children. Observing snow, ice, rain, fog, hail, or just feeling the cooler air is enough to get them interested in going outdoors for this week’s nature study challenge.
I have a vivid memory from my childhood of taking a walk in a raging downpour. I challenge you to experience your weather outdoors at least for a few minutes this week. Properly dressed, your children might just make a fond memory of their own.
“There is no reason why the child’s winter walk should not be as fertile in observations as the poet’s; indeed, in one way, it is possible to see the more in winter, because the things to be seen do not crowd each other out.”
Charlotte Mason, Volume 1, page 86
Inside Preparation Work:
You can read the section in the Handbook of Nature Study on water forms to arm yourself with some basic weather information. Pages 808 to 814 have lots of fun ideas for learning about different aspects of our winter weather.
Optional Inside Preparation Work:
More ideas for winter weather study are found in chapter two of Discover Nature in Winter. There are so many great ideas for studying snow in this chapter that you will find at least two or three that you would like to try with your family. Use your highlighter or sticky notes to mark the places that you find with interesting information or ideas for including in your winter nature study.
Check out the Winter Wednesday entry from last year to glean some ideas for your Winter Weather study: Winter Snow.
Outdoor Hour Time:
This week you can use your time to enjoy the winter weather in your backyard. If you have chosen some weather related activities to complete outdoors, make sure you bring any items you need for your study. You may wish to bring along your weather notebook page or your nature journal with pencils to take a few minutes of your outdoor time to record the weather conditions. If your children are enjoying their time outdoors, you probably want to wait until you go back inside to talk about the weather.
Follow-Up Activity:
Be sure to complete your Seasonal Weather notebook page. You could talk about the differences between what you observed in autumn and those things you recorded this time.
- How is the scene you drew this week different from the autumn scene?
- How are the temperatures different?
- Is there a difference in the number of hours of daylight?
I was so excited to see this! We have been working on last years Winter Wed. Series on snow! =)
This challenge was a lot of fun for us. It’s amazing how fun a winter walk can be, even in the rain!
We had lots of fun with this challenge! Winter gets to be long here, and it was fun to learn a little more about it. Thanks for putting this challenge together!
Although being in So Cal we don’t get the snow like you do up North in our backyard, this was an exciting challenge because of all our birdie friends visiting us…We are calling this the year of the Cedar Waxwings!
We learned about how frost forms; and why snowflakes fall slowly compared to raindrops this week. So far this winter, we’ve had very little snow so we’re doing some experiments to help us learn more the snow…when it finally comes!