Activities To Do with Children In The Garden
Keeping children entertained is a never ending task. If they are used to a school or nursery routine where most of their time is scheduled, a day of nothing stretching before them can seem daunting. It is just as daunting for parents.
Here are some ideas for things to do in your garden, no matter what the size.
Have a picnic. My lot love picnics all year round. They just find it so exciting to eat outside-either on a picnic blanket or a table.
Nature hunts. Take magnifying glasses with you and little buckets and see what you can find. Depending on the time of year, there may be leaves, twigs, insects, soft fruit. If things can’t be identified you could take photos and investigate when you get home. Children love exploring.
Bird spotting. Position yourself somewhere shaded-maybe behind a tree or better still, make a hide out of an old cardboard box and just sit quietly-with binoculars if you have them and try spotting as many birds as you can. If you know the names of the different birds, encourage children to write the names or draw them. You could even have a competition to see who can spot the most birds.
Play. This might sound obvious but if you have a patch of earth with no plants in it, just give them some little toys or diggers and let them use their imaginations. Mine have hours of fun doing that. You could even give them their own spot to do what they want with. Fill a washing up bowl with soil or compost and leave them to it. Mud pie for lunch anyone?
Run/chase. Children love to run so a leisurely jog around a field is always a winner or maybe set up races if you have more than one child with you.
Draw. Take paper and pencils with you and encourage your children to get creative. Either let their imaginations run wild or ask them to draw what they can see. You could even take some glue with you and stick leaves and twigs to the picture.
Treasure Hunt. I seem to do treasure hunts all year round for mu children. We have the annual one at Easter but I have been known to do ones at Christmas and Halloween too. I just get little inexpensive things and get creative. If you can manage to get to the field first or sneak off to hide the stuff, it would be magical. You could even hide pencils and paper so that they can draw. Mayne a bird spotting book or some other outdoor toy.
Grow Something. Cress, beans, sunflowers, courgettes and cucumbers all grow quite quickly. We didn’t have any small gardening tools so I gave them all a spoon and some compost and got them filling re-used pots and putting there seeds in. If it is too cold for seedlings to go outside, your window ledge may end up looking like mine but it is all for the greater good.
I hope I have given you some ideas. Children learn better outside, if you ask me. We have even had days when we take our school work out there.
#StayAtHome and stay safe
