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There are many benefits to be reaped from spending time in the good old outdoors. Outdoor learning promotes the development of vital gross motor skills in children that just can’t be gained from the indoors. There are also many physical, mental and spiritual health benefits too. An independent school in Surrey shares 5 outdoor learning activities that you can do with your children.
Cloud Gazing
There are learning opportunities all around you in the outdoors. You can even use the clouds to let your child free their imagination by exploring what shapes or characters they can see. With older children, this activity can be adjusted to look for different types of clouds.
Mud Sculptures
Digging in the mud has many benefits. It can help to relieve depression by releasing serotonin and boost the immunity with all its harmless bacteria. Sculptures can be anything they imagine or the tallest wall they can build.
Gardening
This creates a great opportunity to teach your child about the plant life cycle. With each stage, get your child to draw their observations. Older children can even experiment with different areas of the garden to find the areas where plants grow best.
Water Play
In the summer using buckets of water, you can explore items that float and sink. This can be using pebbles, rubber ducks, flower petals or fruit from your garden. With older children, you may want to get them to estimate how much each object weighs using the capacity of each jug or bucket.
Measuring
With a ruler, set your child on a task to measure items in your garden. This can be a tree, flowers, a deck chair or even themselves. This can also double up as a lesson in ordering by promoting your child to make comparisons in height and listing the items from the biggest to the smallest.