School is out, and your child is ready for a much needed break. This time off should not all be spent sleeping in until noon or lounging around all day watching television (although those activities are pretty fun sometimes!). Summer is a time to get up off that couch and explore the beautiful outdoors. Here are some great outdoor activities to keep your child entertained for hours.
Nature Collage
Encourage your child to go out and search for unique and interesting objects found in nature. Give them a small sturdy bag and let the exploring begin. If they find objects that are too big to fit in their bag, you can teach them how to do nature rubbings. Just take a piece of paper and place it over the object. Unwrap a crayon and rub it over the paper. These rubbings enable your child to capture a texture drawing of a piece of nature. Once your kid is finished collecting and exploring, they can empty their bag of goodies and glue, tape, or draw them onto a poster board. What a masterpiece!
Mini Golf
Creating a miniature golf course is a great way to test your child’s creativity and planning. Plastic coffee containers, empty cardboard boxes, or even soda bottles (2-liter bottles with the tops cut off) make for great holes in the course. Have your child use old toys or other items lying around the house and garage to make the holes more challenging. There are either 9 or 18 holes on a golf course, so encourage them to use the entire yard as their canvas.
Water Park
Summer can bring some sweltering heat waves to your area. There’s no better place to be than the water park on days like this. Why not create your own cool paradise right in the backyard? A tarp or inexpensive plastic sheets (preferably not black) make a great homemade slip-n-slide. Just lay the tarp or plastic out across the backyard, water it down, take a running start and slide along the cool surface. You can also set up a couple of sprinklers to add some more excitement to the yard. Don’t forget the sunscreen!
Watercolor Painter
Have a miniature Picasso or Monet on your hands? This activity is terrific for the little artist in your life. Take an old spray bottle and fill it up with a mixture of water and liquid watercolor paint (one color per spray bottle). Have your child spray the sidewalk, a wood fence, or even the side of the house and see what happens when the colors mix. The paint dries fast and it is extremely easy to wash off and clean up.
Backyard Camping
Create a mid-summer getaway right in your backyard. Set up a small tent with sleeping bags and maybe even a small campfire. Camping in your backyard is a fantastic vacation, and it’s easier on the pocketbook, too. If you’re not allowed to have a campfire or if you live in an apartment, you can cook hot dogs on a grill or over the stove and roast s’mores in the microwave. Sing camp songs, tell ghost stories, or even make shadow puppets in the tent! Backyard camping is just like the real thing.
The great outdoors open up an endless amount of activities for you and your children to experience. Be creative and come up with your own events to plan for even more outdoor fun.
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Filed under: Just for Fun!, Learning Tips | Tagged: family activities, learning
