Hey, this is Jenny from 1,000 hours outside, and I am thrilled to be bringing you our very first

podcast.

We are hoping to use it as a tool to inspire you to spend a little bit more time outside and a little bit less time on screens.

So with our first podcast here we are going to be taking the time to talk about

all of the academic benefits that your child will receive simply from playing outside.

And you know I thought about taking this first podcast and talking about 1,000 hours outside and what it's all about and where

it came from.

And eventually we will do that but I think you can kind of grab the idea just from the

name and we are just having a goal to be outside for 1,000 hours in a year's time span and that's just

about the same amount of time that American children watch TV or are in front of a screen on average.

And so we're sort of exploring this idea of what would childhood look like if those were

balanced out, if we matched our nature time with

screen time and so we've done this for the past four or five years and we've hit the

goal most years save one we were pretty close at 981, and it has truly changed childhood for our family and it has changed our family dynamics and just offered such

rich experiences so we are here to pass it along and to pass along the research

backed benefits that we have learned along the way.

So that said, let's talk about school.

Let's talk about academics. It seems that when we think about childhood

that that is one of the top priorities, as parents we are concerned about those

ranks and the grades and the standardized tests and boy, those are high visibility things in the landscape of childhood.

And so there are a lot of products

and a lot of resources out there aimed at increasing a child's academic performance.

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