6 Amazing Outdoor Activities and play ideas for Toddlers
1. Painting Stones
Equipment needed: Medium- sized stones, non-toxic acrylic paint.
What to do: Join your toddler and go forth to your garden or a local park and help your toddler pick out several medium-sized stones. Next, arrange the stones for your toddler and ask your toddler to paint the stones (usually funny faces or cool designs.) After finishing the painting and leaving it to dry you can place them on a shelf or on top of their draws to have some wonderful and colourful stone art. This is a great activity and could possibly be the first baby steps towards an artistic future. It’s always a really fun way to get a toddler out of the house and into the garden to get some fresh air.
2. Riding a tricycle
Equipment needed: A tricycle and helmet suitable for children, small objects (paper cups, cardboard), string or chalk
What to do: Whilst parenting a toddler there will always be a stage where they make a fuss to have a tricycle and although it might just seem like a big and useless toy to have fun with in the garden, it actually provides a lot of benefits. Tricicyles, apart from being fun also helps to strengthen leg muscles which is beneficial for later life. To start having fun, put the toddlers helmet on for safety and use string or chalk to make an area or “driveway” in your garden which they can ride around in and add small objects like paper cups and cardboard pieces in the area so they have to manoeuvre around the objects to add some additional fun. This play idea provides a great and fun way to get your toddler active and helps strengthen their leg muscles and is really simple to set up. To buy the best tricycles online you can visit summerpoolfun.com
3. Musical chairs
Equipment needed: Toddler chairs
What to do: Yes it’s the classic and fun game of Musical Chairs. To set up you will arrange your toddler chairs in a line whilst having another line back to back. You should always have one less chair than the total number of toddlers playing the game. To get started you will turn on a song or any music (recommend to have speaker so they can all hear,) and have the toddlers walk around the chairs in a circle. Once they have walked around for a while you turn off the music and the toddlers have to quickly sit on the closest chair. As there is one less chair than the amount of toddlers every round one will go out therefore one chair must be taken out every round. When there are two toddlers left in the game they will compete for the final chair and whoever sits on the chair first is the winner. This is a really fun game to play at a party as there is music and it keeps the toddlers feeling active and entertained.
4. Planting flowers
Equipment needed: Flower seeds (depends on what flower your toddler wants to grow,) soil, water, spade.
What to do: To get started you would ask your toddler to find a patch of soil where they want to grow their flower. You would dig them out a small patch in the soil with your spade as it could be dangerous to have them do it. Next, get them to put some seeds in the soil and cover the seeds back up with the soil you dug out. Next tell them that every day they will need to water the soil where the seeds are, with water but not too much otherwise the plant could die but just enough so it can grow well. This is a great `activity as it teaches them about responsabilty as they have something of their own to look after and teaches them that they need to look after their things and to follow instructions.
5. Making giant bubbles
Equipment needed: 3 empty gallon-sized milk jugs, 6 cups of dishwasher soap ( 2 per jug, recommended to use dawn), 3 cups of corn syrup (one per jug), 3 packets of Knox unflavoured gelatin (one per jug), water, funnel, string, hula hoops, baby pool.
What to do: Pour the corn syrup, dishwasher soap and gelatin to the bottom of the jugs using the funnel. Carefully pour water slowly through the funnel until a good amount of liquid is made (recommended to fill to the top.) Then place the cap on the jugs and shake vigorously and leave to set overnight. Next, wrap the string loosely around your hoola hoops until the string goes a full way round and the ends meet and tie it. This gives the hula hoop better grip for the bubbles. A few hours before you are ready to start making bubbles pour the solution into the baby pool. The longer it sits in the pool the better the results. Once it’s set dip the hula hoop in the baby pool and start to make huge bubbles. This is really fun for your toddler on a summer’s day when they need to cool off.
6. Balancing rocks
Equipment: River rocks or beach stones.
What to do: To start go on an adventure to a local park and you and your toddler want to locate rocks of all different sizes. You will want to have a relatively big rock or stump to start balancing. After you have collected your rocks together you want to place your biggest rock and the bottom. Now the challenge is to try and balance the rocks on top of each other without toppling over. You always want to start with the biggest rocks at the bottom ascending by size where the top rock is the smallest one. This is a hard challenge but is really fun and a great experience for your toddler and teaches them about precision and care.
The Family Advisor 