5 great activities to do outside this summer!
Summer is a lovely time to work in childcare, with lots of fun to be had in your outdoor environment in the great weather. It is a great opportunity for the children to get messy and explore activities on a larger scale, whilst building on all areas of development.
Here are 5 lovely activities to do in your outdoor area with the children this summer.
Paint bombs
Painting is a lovely activity to do, with a range of materials and tools that can be used. Using the outdoor environment can enable children to be much more daring and explore the paint in a variety of ways. Paint bombs are water balloons that are simply filled with paint; these can be used to drop or throw onto a large piece of paper, supporting the children to experience painting on a larger scale. This activity will also support children’s physical movements alongside their creative development.
Fairy soup
Fairy soup is a great way to encourage children’s investigation skills and support their mathematical development too. All you need to do is provide the children with a large “cooking pot” and a wooden spoon. Explain to the children that you are going to make fairy soup and that you need help to find the ingredients. You can give the children a list of ‘ingredients’ to find in the natural environment such as flowers, stones and leaves. The children can then add these to the pot along with some water and take turns to mix the soup. This activity is a great opportunity to talk to the children about what they are doing and develop imagination and story telling skills.
Water Balloon Pinata
Water balloons are a great way for the children to have fun with water and keep cool in the warm weather. Fill up lots of colourful water balloons and attach them to a long pole. Practitioners can hold the pole up high and let the children take turns to pop to balloons with sticks like a pinata. This will strengthen the children’s hand eye coordination and develop their physical development. Make the pinata’s more exciting by adding glitter to the water!
Volcano explosions
The outdoor environment is great for holding messy science experiments. A popular and easy to do experiment for little ones is the coke and mentos volcano explosions. All you will need is a large bottle of fizzy coke and a packet of mento mints. Place the bottle of coke in a large empty space and ask the children to make a circle around the bottle. To create the explosion you will need to remove the coke bottle top and add two or three mints to the bottle as quickly as possible. The coke will then fizz up out of the bottle and display a mini explosion. This activity teaches children about cause and effect and develops simple scientific and problem solving skills.
Bubble painting
Bubbles are a fun activity for the outside area and can be adapted to build something creative. Simply use some small bottles of bubbles and add a small amount of paint to the bottle, shake well and encourage the children to blow the bubbles using a wand. The bubbles will become colourful and when caught on paper will leave lots of patterns. Standing over a large sheet over paper will help the children to create a lovely piece of art work as the bubbles pop onto the blank canvas. The children will develop hand eye coordination and be encouraged to share and swap the different coloured bubbles.
For more summer activity ideas you can visit our pinterest board. Could you try and use some of these fun summer activities in your outdoor area?