50 Dangerous Things - Intro and thing #1!

Inspired by one of my favourite friends (who happens to be a super great blogger) and her sweet family, our family has purchased this book and set ourselves a challenge for this year : to get brave, and complete these 50 Dangerous Things. We're calling it a team building exercise.

If I'm really honest, it's a much-needed reminder, for Abraham and I, to let our kids experience the simple-yet-memorable things that we all did as kids.
Things like licking batteries, making slingshots, burning things with a magnifying glass, sleeping in the wild, building campfires and sticking your arm out of a moving car.
I mean, we did those things and survived, right? We probably didn't even do them with supervision and instruction from adults.. we had a blast, and we still survived to tell the tale. 
It's really easy to bubble wrap our kids. Society encourages it! We're forever hearing of schools banning playground games, toys being deemed 'unsafe', our favourite fireworks going off the market, children getting hurt doing things that would have been everyday activities a decade ago. I find myself discouraging all sorts of things, without realising it.
It's really hard for kids to learn about danger, without experiencing any. And really hard for parents to remember how important that learning is. We're hoping that, by encouraging our kids to try these things, that they'll learn about the boundaries of danger and learn when it's okay to give things a go, and when it's best to give it a miss. (And we'll learn not to be so afraid to let them be kids!)

We've had a flick through the book, trying to decide where to start - and then, yesterday, the weather decided for us! The clouds darkened, the temperature dropped, and it started hailing!
Number 2 in the book is - Play in a hailstorm! Perfect!

The book suggested putting a metal bowl on your head (for the sound effects!), donning a coat, long pants and gloves and heading out to play. We compromised a little - figured maybe going out in a lightening storm with a metal bowl wasn't super smart - and used plastic bowls. We also skipped the warm, protective clothing, it wasn't hailing really hard and wasn't too cold. We had a warm-up bath afterwards, instead.
The kids loved it. They didn't stay out long, due to the very loud thunder freaking them out a bit, but they managed to eat some hail that had collected on the tramp and run around a bit.

They were mostly just excited to have made a start on the project! They're busy deciding right now which activities we might be able to do this weekend.

(As the storm continued, we decided that a pizza and movie night was also in order. So nice to snug up on the couch on a rainy evening.)