The Rains Have Arrived! How to Keep Your Child Warm at School

From now until the end of the school year, your child must arrive at school dressed in WOOL layers (long sleeve shirt, leggings, sweater, and socks) and full WATERPROOF rain gear (jacket with hood, pants, gloves, and boots that they can remove and put on themselves.)

Here is an email from Sarah Page (MES Parent and an Outreach Coordinator)

Here is the gear information - separated into parts (Wool in general, Wool Group Order, Raingear, Boots)

Wool.

Wool is awesome.  You can do all kinds of research on the benefits of wearing wool but the bottom line here is wool will keep your child warm - even if/when it gets wet.  I cannot stress this point enough: cotton can become a soppy, heavy, cold horrible fabric in the wet winter.  Want to experience the outdoors without hating the elements?  Wear wool!  There were several suggestions made at the parent meeting about how to deal with the cost of wool.  One is know that your child will wear these items atleast while they're at school.  That's 3/4/5 days/week for 10 months (I'm betting they will wear them at home too and on a trip to the mountain or the grocery store!).  That's a garment that pays for itself.  You are also very likely to get more than one year's wear out of these items.  Another suggestions that was made is to buy wool items (adult sweaters) at resale shops (and keep checking those "free" piles!).  You can wash hot & dry on high to shrink the sweaters for your child to wear.  Also, these sweaters can be washed & dried ("felted") and the pieces can be cut & sewn into leggings, hats, and mittens.  Wool, wool, wool!  Ask a sheep - they love it!

Wool Group Order.

We order from a lady named Randi with her company Skandikids.  http://skandikids.com/

Mother Earth School receives a group discount of 15% plus no shipping charge for our order.  Our code is mes15 & the discount will automatically be deducted from your order (our code will be "live" as of Sept 1).   The code will be active through Nov. 15.  Estimated delivery time is 4 weeks from time of order.  

I recommend having 2 sets of woolens (one thick, one thin), wool socks, wool sweaters, a balaclava, a wool hat on top to add an extra layer of rain/cold protection, and wool mittens to go under the rain mittens.

Raingear.

The raingear that was passed around at the meeting is ordered from a company called Puddlegear, out of Vancouver, B.C., Canada.  The gear is made by a company called Abeko.  http://www.puddlegear.com/

An outdoor gear store was also suggested as an alternative from a returning parent.  I have not personally had good luck with Columbia - my daughter's knees were always wet at the end of the day.  She was, however dry given all the layers of wool!  My kids are never wet when they wear their Puddlegear; we've been customers since 2004.

I also passed around the repair tape from REI that I've been using for tears in the raingear.  The Puddlegear can tear - there are alot of blackberries around plus bigtime playing.  And the tape works!  It is tent repair tape.  Also, even though the tape wears out after a time, and wet can then seap through to knees, my child does not get cold due to the wool.  Seriously.