Getting the Kids Outside for Activities can Help Develop Learning Abilities and Encourage Creativity.

Fun Outdoor Activities for Your Kids

Spring, Summer, Fall or Winter. Scheduling outdoor time with the kids is a great opportunity to get out and let our little ones start exploring nature!  It’s important especially with screen time being popular as of late. And by screen time I mean watching TV, playing games or watching shows on cell phones and tablets.

There are many benefits to get the younger kids outside. It can help build confidence, thrive in a way they can’t when indoors and breathe the open air. Exploring the wide outdoors will promote creativity and imagination leaving your kids with endless possibilities for play.

Outdoor explorations and play changes the way children get physical activity that can’t be had indoors. Outside activities can contribute to healthy bone development, get blood flowing, help build a stronger immune system and keep a healthy weight.

Here are a few fun activities to do outside that will stimulate brain activity and get the kids moving:

Nature Walks

Going on a walk through your neighborhood or a nearby park is a great way to get your kids aware of what is going on around them and introduce them to most of the five senses.

As you’re walking around, ask your child what they see, hear, smell, and feel. You can also ask them to draw or write the answers. Having your child write or draw what they see promotes observation skills as well as fine motor skills.

Another way to make the walk fun is to make a scavenger hunt out of it. Have the kids find a gray rock, a yellow flower, etc. This will help them match their colors and learn about things in their surroundings. You can do this in your neighborhood, if you go camping, or even at the beach.

We have put together a free printable visual scavenger hunt for you to use with the kiddos. It’s has colorful images for the kids to find and words under each picture.

Just click on the preview image to view the full size. Once you see the full sized image, right click and Save Image to your computer.

If you don’t have the capabilities to print the image, you can save it to your phone or tablet and check off items as you go.

You can use this or use it as an example to create one of your own.

Rock Painting

Painting rocks is a fun way to get your child to explore the outdoors and find the perfect rocks for paining. Have them feel the different textures of all the rocks; ask them if it feels smooth, rough, pointy, etc.

Once you find the perfect rocks, you can paint them to look like bugs or animals you might find in the garden. I did this with my daughter and she painted a ladybug and a bumble bee. You could also have a train of them and paint them to look like a caterpillar; the possibilities are endless.

Ask your child to choose what they would like to paint them as so they can develop the confidence to make decisions. Once the rocks are painted, you can hide the rocks throughout the garden and have a rock hunt.

Another fun thing to do with painted rocks is take them to a local park and hide them in plain sight for others to find. Pass it on and maybe one day when you’re walking through the park, someone will have done the same thing.

Other Learning Activities for Young Children

There are so many fun ways for kids to learn when they are outside. Put your creative thinking cap on and see what you can come up with. Here are a few more ideas:

Match What You Hear with What You See

A fun learning activity to do if your children are in preschool or kindergarten is to write the alphabet in random order on the ground in chalk and then give them a spray bottle filled with water.

Start calling out letters and then they have to find the letter and spray it with the water. This is a fun way to get them to match hearing the letter with seeing the letter. This would also work great with numbers, shapes, and colors.

What Will Melt in the Sun?

Another fun thing to do is to find out what melts in the sun. All you need is a muffin tin (you can get a spare one from the dollar store) and random items throughout your house. You can put things like chocolate, crayons, marbles, ice, anything you have lying around.

Place each item in the muffin tin and leave it in the sun for a while. When you come back to it, take a look and see what has melted and what hasn’t. This is a great way to explain how things have different melting points (and maybe it will get them to stop leaving chocolate in their pockets.)

These are just a few ideas to get started, but the possibilities for outdoor activities with your kids are endless. So go outside and have some fun with the kids, you may also learn something you didn’t know.