Could you spend 1,000 hours outside this year? How to take the challenge
TODAY
1 day ago
Gabrielle Frank
It started as a lark. In the fall of 2011, Ginny Yurich had three kids under the age of 3 and spent most days struggling to keep them occupied. A friend suggested Yurich join her in trying a concept popularized in the 1800s by British educator Charlotte Mason: Children should be outside four to six hours during "tolerable" weather days. They agreed to meet in a park with some blankets and food for the kids and see how it went. Yurich was skeptical.
"I thought it was the most absurd thing ever ... I'm like, 'Oh goodness, what are these kids going to do? ... This is going to go so awful,'" Yurich remembered thinking at the time. "So we went to this park ... and we spread out our blankets and the kids just played. I don't know why I was so dumbfounded, but I was just in awe."