Kids Outdoor Activities and Nature Activities for Kids - Make Nature the Greatest Learning Playground

Kids outdoor activities such as playing in the garden and engaging in other nature activities do provide an enriching educational value for our children. Participate in nature outdoor activities involve children to use all their senses. This helps to enhance their learning and retain what they have learned easily. It also keeps them healthy.

Kids outdoor activities are not limited to just camping, hiking, fishing etc. There are many other outdoor activities that can be equally fun and interesting.

In fact, garden is one of the greatest learning playground and science workshops for kids. In addition to playing outdoor games, there are so many uses of a garden to provide learning opportunity for our kids.

You do not even need to incur much cost and there is minimum preparation. Explore the natural surrounding or conduct workshops and lessons outdoor are just some of the ideas for kids outdoor activities.

Gardening with Kids

One of the best kids outdoor activities are gardening with kids. If space permits, build a garden in your home. The process of building a garden is already a learning lesson for the kids.

The children learn about the difference between soils and sand, how plants reproduce and plants need sunlight and water to stay alive. The kids observe how plants grow, flower and produce fruits while spending their time tending to the garden with me. I guess they also learned about the fruit of hard labor.

Our little garden at our front porch at home. This is our little learning playground at home.

They dig for snails and earthworms after rain. Digging, observing and making discovery in the little garden is such an interesting garden activity for them. It can keep them occupied for hours.

They discovered crawlies and adopted one of them as pet.

Explore a Garden Activity

Take a stroll or walk in the garden or park with kids yields many science learning lesson too. Make some close observation around the garden. You may simply find some plants or creatures. Instantly, you can have some interesting science topic for discussion with the kids. Here are some of my personal findings with my kids :

Look around for mushrooms sprouting from the ground after the rainfall. Discuss about how mushrooms are form.

Have you ever see an ant that is about one inch in length? This was an interesting discovery I had with my kids during one of our "garden exploration". Start asking questions such as "why is the ant so big?", "what do ants eat?" and "where do ant stay?" to stimulate their thinking skills.

How interesting to get a chameleon to post for picture before it scrambles off into the bushes....Bring home the picture and start researching about chameleon with the children.

Collect Natural Materials for Crafts

Get out into the park or garden. Start collecting materials to make crafts. Many natural materials found in the garden or park can be turn into beautiful craft. Stones can be painted and make into paperweight. Leafs of different shapes can be used for T-Shirt printing. They learn about different types of rock and shapes of leafs in the process.

Attend Workshops in the Garden

You can either organize such a workshop yourself if you have a huge garden or look up any organization which may conduct such workshop for kids.

We participated in a “Hug a Bug” workshop in the Penang Botanical garden during one of the summer holidays. The children had the opportunity to learn about the different "BUGS"...that consists of Water Dragon, Bearded Dragon, Pray Mantis, Balled Python Snake, and Stick Insect etc. The kids also had the opportunity to touch, pet and observe the animals and bugs closely.

My kids learn about spices when they attended a workshop organized by Penang Tropical Spice Garden.

Organize an Outdoor Birthday Party

You may want to hold a birthday party for your kid in the garden or park for a change. Have a garden or nature related theme for the birthday. The children will simply love it.

My kids attended one of their friends’ birthday party held in a garden. The theme is Frog. The kids get to learn all about frogs through games, crafts and activities. It is one of the most meaningful birthday parties we ever attended.

Indulge in kids’ outdoor activities during summer holiday is one of the best summer activities. It keeps them away from computer games and brings them in touch with nature. Let them explore, discover and learn from this greatest playground and natural science workshop.

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