Photograph Courtesy of family+footprints.
Summer again is flying. It’s almost the end of August, and with that many children will soon be back in school, if not already. While each season brings new elements to explore and new aspects of life to help our little ones grow and develop, the feeling of each season can absolutely remain much the same. We can take that summer feeling, that blissful and full of wonder approach to how we play and enjoy the outdoors, to how we fall in love with the world and with life, and continue it into fall and beyond.
Summer seems to capture the essence of childhood. The hours of outdoor free play, spent with friends or family. So much movement and creativity, so many quiet and loud, slow and fast moments alike. The sun warming your body. The grass a perfect place to plop and run. The trees serving as umbrella and jungle gym and storage of natural play materials. There is a sense of freedom to summer that goes hand-in-hand with nature. Like moth to flame, with the summer sun we come running to enjoy all the outdoors has to offer.
Sometimes, the transition out of summer and into the fall dims those feelings and types of play a bit. This happens especially as we carry on our schedules into school, work, programs or other obligations, and as we start to cozy indoors on cooler days. But let’s imagine what the other seasons would look like if we had that same feeling about them as we did our summers. Would we celebrate them and life as much as we do when we blissfully run free in the warmest months of our year?
Here are some ways we can continue even a bit of that summer feeling, with the return to school and all other things still part of our lives. Ways we can try to keep that carefree bliss alive.
01. Encourage Time Outdoors
Set the tone for keeping outdoor play alive by encouraging it. With our words and actions, we can enjoy the time we’re not otherwise obligated, by spending time together in the great outdoors. It can sometimes take an effort to shift gears from being indoors all day or being in a setting where we must do things, to spending our afternoons or evenings outdoors, able to run free again. But initiating that your family heads back outside is the first step.
02. Gear Up
When you live in a place with more pronounced seasons, the cold can be a deterrent from enjoying the outdoors in the same way. Gear changes that and makes the cold just a new element of nature to explore. This never felt more true than when I found the proper gear and could stay still next to my daughter in our snow angel formations. There was a stillness to us and to the whole world. It was truly as beautiful as lying in the grass with the sun warming our faces. For more on what gear might be helpful, click here.
03. Let Children Plan Outdoor Adventures
A significant part of summer bliss is the ability for children to self-direct their play and their learning (even if they don’t see it as learning). They create imaginary worlds, they create challenges for themselves and they create projects without being asked. They are inspired. To keep this alive, try bringing children to a natural place like the woods or wetlands, with a group of friends or just on your own, and recreate some of those summer-time settings. Of course, the new season means those locations will have changed in subtle or overt ways, but your child’s play in those spaces won’t. They’ll still have much to create and explore, as they take the lead in outdoor play.
04. Plan Season-Specific Outings
Plenty of us fall in love with summer because we give it all we’ve got or rather, we take from it all it’s got. We appreciate it’s beauty in tremendous ways. Find out what there is to love about the new seasons where you call home. Does fall bring you changing leaves and in-season foods? Does winter bring you snow and ice? Does spring bring you a resurgence of wildlife and growth? Plan outings around each season and you may just feel some of what makes summer so special - a deeper appreciation for our world, filled with awe and simplicity - the whole year around.
05. Keep the Outdoors Magical
Nature is already pretty magical, so making it magical in your own life is more just a matter of recognizing just how special it is and incorporating that into how we choose to spend our time. In summer, easy. Other seasons, perhaps not so much. But let’s challenge ourselves. Try to take something you were planning to do with kids indoors and bring it outside. A meal. An arts and crafts project. A book. A box of dress up clothes. A bunch of open-ended toys. You also might want to go a step further and plan celebrations around the new seasons. A welcome fall or winter or spring party. No need to plan much, although you can. By simply inviting friends over to play along with you outdoors, you're back at step one of encouraging time outdoors - just this time with a community. Ah-ha, just like summer.
We hope you had a wonderful summer. Full of wonder and bliss. Full of play and discovery. We also hope you have a wonderful rest of your year, doing just the same.
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