5 ways to get creative outdoors

The outdoor provision is an essential ingredient for healthy, well-rounded child development. There are so many ways we can promote a love of the outdoors with the children in our care, to inspire them to connect with nature and sow the seed for a lifetime of confident, outdoor adventures! Here are just a few of our favourite suggestions:

1. Tuning into nature

The nature around us is priceless at any time of the year and a great way to get children exploring the world around us in a respectful way is to learn about our wildlife and its sustainability.

Get children involved in ways to support our ecosystems by designing bird feeders and wildlife boxes, bug houses and other natural environments, to encourage natural habitats in the familiarity of your outdoor space.

Check out the RSPB’s resources for getting involved!

2. Scavenger hunt!

Children love to explore and find, enquire and investigate! Their natural curiosity lends itself to investigations galore. A scavenger hunt activity allows learning that is flexible to the individual child’s ability, by using different ‘rules’ to find different items in the outdoor environment. For example, identifying colours, counting or recognising numbers, e.g. “can you find three things that are orange?"

3. Outdoor art

With an abundance of natural objects on offer outside, encourage children to collect items of various colours and textures to create their own masterpieces. Carefully arrange objects from the collection to create pieces of transient art or simply paint one side of a chosen leaf and press painted side down onto a piece of paper to create a leaf print. Sandwich a piece of paper between a natural surface and a crayon to create bark, twig or leaf rubbings. Develop mark making skills by drawing with chunky chalks on walls and playground surfaces, but be sure to warn the children that their masterpieces will be washed away next time it rains!

4. Think big!

The outdoor space lends itself to great opportunity to go grand! And when it comes to physical development opportunities, we can utilise the freedom of the outdoors to encourage children to take risks in play that is of a much greater scale. So, whether it’s rolling tyres instead of balls, setting up obstacle courses or filling buckets with water instead of cups, encourage children to think big and beyond for new experiences in their outdoor space.

5. Listening walks

Wrap up warm and venture outside, for an audible adventure like no other. Listening walks are enlightening opportunities to encourage children to identify and distinguish different sounds, around them and take the time to pay true attention to the details. From the sweet chirping of birds and the gentle rustle of leaves in the wind, to the less natural sounds heard from vehicles passing by. Whatever the origins of a sound, each can be equally as beneficial for early stages of communication and language development.