An Afternoon Outdoors

The weather lately has been glorious. 

I realized immediately this morning that we were going to experience another spring-like day.

For December in Wisconsin this is really quite something!

The sun was bright, the sky a deep blue, and the air looked clear and fresh.

When our school lessons were complete, and the lunch dishes washed, we put on our warm jackets and walking shoes to meet up with our trails and head down to our swing.

"Cold winds shake the trees and bushes. Winter time is near."

Never mind that we should be well into winter and under a few feet of snow by now... 

A brisk walk in sunshine and fresh air is welcomed at any time of the year.

I brought along our current read-a-loud, and read a chapter to the children while they climbed the tree.

Then I sat with my face toward the sun and closed my eyes for a bit, listening to the far off caw of a black bird. Other than my children playing, there was nothing else I could hear.

In the summertime, the tree is buzzing with life. But winter is such a quiet time for animals and bugs, that even on this warm day we were not in their company.

Soren brought along his gun because he wanted to go off alone to do some hunting.

He says the likes being in the woods alone.

That is just like his father.

He never actually shoots anything, I think it's all in the experience for him.

When he got back to the house his spirits seemed revived and his cheeks were rosy.

As Charlotte Mason wrote to the parents of the "poor London children" of her day, "The gutter children who feed on the pickings of the streets are better off (and healthier looking) in this one respect than your cherished darlings, because they have more of the first essential of life - air."

- Charlotte Mason, Home Education

It is important to remember that when this was written, the wealthy upper class kept themselves indoors most of the time.

"Mid-Victorian interiors went with the frail and fainting feminine type that was the mode of the period. Dyspepsia and other ills flourished in the depressing darkened rooms of the Gothic Revival. Modern days have taught us the value, mental and physical, of plenty of air and sunlight."

- Gladys Becket Jones

Here is something you can try with your children the next time you are sitting outside:

 - Mental Photographs - 

"Get the children to look well at some patch of landscape, and then to shut their eyes and call up the picture before them. Let them say what they see. This is an exercise children delight in. It is well worth while of getting a bit of landscape by heart in this way, because it is the effort of recalling and reproducing. It is the altogether pleasurable act of seeing, fully and in detail."

- Charlotte Mason, Home Education 

When we practice this exercise I have noticed that my children recall different scenes, even though we all have the same view before us. One might say they saw fluffy clouds, whereas another may say a patch of pine trees, and another, long shadows stretched across the ground from the tree branches.

My hope is that when they are grown and moved away, when the difficulties of adult life are heavy upon them, they will be able to bring to mind a detailed memory of carefree times from their home in the country, and that would give them comfort.

We are due to get snow this Saturday, which the kids and I look forward to very much.

It will probably cause another burst of blogging inspiration, as sudden changes of weather usually excite in me the desire to write something.

I'm not sure why that is, but I don't fight it.

I write for this blog whenever I feel like it.

I never force something to flow out of me that isn't there.

However, I'm contemplating making "publish more blog posts" one of my New Year's resolutions.

Whether people will click over and read is not something that concerns me.

I mainly do this for my own enjoyment, and also "for the record," as they say.

But to those who do stop by and read, and tell me they're reading, you encourage me so much!

I hope to be back here again soon...

💐

~ Courtney ~