Celebrate your child's love of learning

© Wondertime

One mother's serendipitous solution to cabin fever.

The night was young and there was plenty of winter ahead, but already we felt like gerbils trapped in too small a cage, except that at least gerbils get exercise. My 5-year-old twins, Caitlin and Ellie, were whirling blond dervishes, playing chase or setting up toy train tracks all over the kitchen rather than going outside in the cold and dark, which seemed to fall as soon as the school bus dropped them off.

I'd tried in these dark afternoons to get them blowing off steam before dinner with snowman-building or sledding, but it was a struggle. "We just did that," they'd say, or "It's freezing!" Last Christmas, they got pint-sized snowshoes that leave bear tracks in the snow, which I thought would be the answer. Like many Mainers, my husband and I love to snowshoe, so we had hoped the kids would join us. Instead, with startling alacrity, the girls deemed tramping around the yard and woods "boring." But then I found a secret weapon.

One night I came across my husband's headlamp — one of those geeky-looking strap-on numbers — and had a parental "aha" moment. What kid doesn't love a flashlight, especially one that straps to your forehead? I borrowed two more headlamps and dangled them in front of Caitlin and Ellie like fresh mackerel before two hungry sea lions. It took them all of 30 seconds to pull on their snowsuits and find their snowshoes.

In the near dark, the girls immediately got busy trotting around and swiveling their heads to illuminate each other's fleece-lined faces, the snow-covered spruce trees, and our patient black Lab. The air was nippy, with that iron smell that signals more snow to come. The darkness filled up not with whining but with joyful shouts of discovery and the crunch of snowshoes biting crusty snow. Our backyard had been almost instantly transformed from forbidding arctic outpost to playground of possibilities.

Since then it's been a lot easier to mount outdoor adventures. We bought headlamps for the girls, and I plotted short courses suitable for short legs. We take turns as head musher, packing the trail. Instead of intimidating the girls, the darkness seems to draw out questions aboutthe world around them. Where dothe deer — whose tracks they now recognize near the stream — hunker down on these frigid nights? What if they can't break the ice to drink? Why don't we see any bats?

On the way back home, giddy with the treat of being out after dark, Caitlin and Ellie often play tag or hide and seek, or become mini urban planners, making a stump store here, a house under a balsam canopy there.

Headlamps bring out the potential fun in winter darkness regardless of whether you live where there's snow. They don't, however, solve everything. It's still cold outside (we're big fans of fleece neck gaiters), bindings don't always stay put, and what your kids consider a mighty hike will probably strike you as a far cry from exercise. But there's something about those lights that sparks kids' senses and focuses their minds on the natural world in a way that daylight can't. Ellie says, "There are definitely more trees at night." Adds Caitlin, "I feel like a moose stomping around with big feet. They don't usually walk around in the daytime, you know."