Your living room could end up being a designated disaster area if your kids remain confined there for an extended period of time. To avoid such a situation, you might consider stepping outside, where a universe of outdoor educational possibilities awaits you. To get you started, we compiled a list of outdoor learning activities designed to help your children burn off energy and reach developmental milestones.
7 fun outdoor learning activities for kids
Avenues for learning outdoors are a recent development in the field of children’s education. They help make kids more imaginative, energetic, and healthy through innovative lessons. After all, what better way to learn than through play? Outdoor classroom activities often teach kids skills that they couldn’t learn indoors, even if they don’t necessarily realize it.
Below is a list of outdoor education ideas for kids covering a variety of subjects, including English, Math, and Science, to help you get started. Ultimately, a combination of all of them will aid in promoting a sense of belonging within the classroom.
1. Making mud pies
This is a must-do sensory activity for kids. Apart from being enjoyable, it is also therapeutic. The feeling of gooey mud squishing between your hands as you shape it into a pie can be calming. Most kids love to make pies out of soil and water, so offer them some room in the backyard or at a park where the earth is moist enough to be dug up easily.
To decorate your mud pie creations, you can go on a nature hunt to collect flowers, rocks, sticks, and shells. Kids will love using whatever bright object they can find outside to decorate their pies. Allow your kids to build forms and sculptures by combining dirt and water with their hands.
The nicest part is when you see how pleased they are at themselves for coming up with something on their own. Making mud pies is a sensory activity that not only gives kids useful tactile input, but also promotes imaginative play, and gives you a chance to connect with your kids. It also teaches them how to think creatively and solve problems.
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2. Gardening
Another great learning activity for kids is gardening. Allowing them to assist with gardening duties will give them hands-on experience. Additionally, keep in mind that kids naturally mimic adults and will probably replicate your every move to ensure that their developing minds don’t miss any of the crucial milestones along the route.
You can find everything you need for organic gardening at the neighborhood nursery. They will offer a range of options, from containers to seeds that will guarantee success in any garden bed or container. Your flower care instructions will specify the precise digging depth for you. They also contain details on each flower’s needs, in terms of sunlight, water, and planting time. Allow your kids to watch you work, and ask them to pitch in. Encourage them with clear directions if they want to try something but are unable to, due to size issues.
Ultimately, children gain a lot of satisfaction from digging in the mud, pulling weeds, and observing insects in their natural habitat. Gardening can also give them a great workout, while improving their hand dexterity. Your child’s senses and muscles will benefit greatly from the sensory experience that gardening entails.
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3. Nest investigation
Looking for bird nests is both an easy outdoor science activity and a fantastic way to teach kids about nature. In order to find a bird’s nest, you don’t need to venture into the wild. In fact, you don’t even need to leave your house. Birds are notorious for building nests that hang off of window sills or other ledges on buildings and structures where they can easily safeguard their eggs from predators.
Always be considerate to animal nests and avoid disturbing them. Imagine the amount of enjoyment you might provide kids by simply making index cards filled with nesting supplies. Outdoor learning ideas such as this can go a long way towards making kids more curious and motivated to learn. If you undertake this activity with your kids, encourage them to calculate the number of nests in the neighborhood or park in order to help them understand the concept of quantity in mathematics.
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4. Stone skipping
Stone skipping involves throwing a flat stone across water in a way that it bounces off and skims the surface as often as possible before sinking. The ideal location for such an activity is close to still, peaceful bodies of water, such as lakes and ponds, so that you don’t have to worry about waves.
In order to generate an impact on the water and produce the classic rock bounce over the surface, you need to throw the stone with a slightly inclined spin. Apart from being a lot of fun, stone skipping can enhance math abilities. For example, you can ask kids to count how many times they can skip the stone or rock across the water before it sinks.
You can also present them with an additional challenge, such as counting by twos or totalling up all of their skips on paper. To add to the enjoyment, you can compete with one another to see who achieves the most skips.
5. Chalk jump
A favorite children’s game for a long time has been chalk jump. Widely considered a fun activity, it involves using chalks of various colors. Sometimes the number of colors can be as many as 48, including glitter.
The purpose of the game is to “avoid the shark”. After using various chalk colors to draw beaches at various distances from each other, kids leap from beach to beach while avoiding the sharks swimming between them. While playing the game, it is important to remember to utilize the proper colors. For example, use blue chalk instead of red or green for water.
While chalk jump can be a fantastic action game for kids, it is also a useful outdoor educational activity. Children can enjoy the experience of playing, while developing their motor skills, counting abilities, and ability to recognize letters, numbers, and colors.
6. Texture Hunt
The texture hunt is a fantastic environmental learning exercise to encourage kids of all ages to investigate their surroundings and critically inspect objects for clues or special textures. It’s a great chance for parents and teachers to participate in the discovery process with kids as well. Your kids will enjoy participating in small groups and observing and conceptualizing objects in new ways.
A texture hunt involves putting a few items with various textures in brown lunch bags. Pinecones may go into one, while stones and sticks could go inside another. When they start feeling around with their hands for something that resembles what was felt previously, they should first close their eyes and feel each object before taking the bags outside to find comparable textures.
Apart from being an enjoyable game, the texture hunt ranks high in the hierarchy of excellent outdoor lesson ideas. It allows you to teach children new terms and broaden their vocabulary, while also educating them about various textures. There are a variety of textures that your kids will enjoy investigating in depth as they learn via play, such as smooth, bumpy, and crinkly.
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7. Kronos experience
Aside from academic learning, some of the most important aspects of child development are social skills, confidence, and self-esteem. The only way to establish and maintain social bonds in school and during childhood is through honest communication. However, it’s all too simple to forget about this crucial aspect of personal development when there’s a lot of homework to do.
A social experience is a sure-fire way to encourage children to communicate openly and to develop the skills necessary to overcome weaknesses. However, the caliber of the experience can have a significant impact on the success of a social-building activity which is why you should consider working with Kronos Experience.
Our events are planned to provide your kids with amazing, distinctive, and unforgettable group experiences, all with an underlying educational theme. We offer activities for kids of all ages that are designed to help children learn, grow, and bond with their friends, while boosting their self-esteem, confidence, and spirits. If you are searching for the perfect activity for kids of all ages, you don’t need to look further than Kronos Experience.