1. Go barefoot!
Scrapes, cuts, stubbed toes… all kinds of things happen to our kids feet when they don’t wear shoes. Schools require it for safety and liability reasons – so give your kids chances to learn about the world with their feet at home! Just let them run with shoes off at a place you never let them take their shoes off before. Let them get dirty outside, and be prepared to clean up the mess with them later. Skin is a great protectant from all kinds of things so if they step in dog poop, they’ll most likely be fine. Add a fun vocabulary and a science experiment to your barefoot excursions with a comparison of your haptic perception using your hands vs using your feet!
2. Masking tape bracelets/armbands.
Use masking tape to save some of treasures you can find in your back yard or on a walk. Petals from colorful flowers or leaves or seeds stick to masking tape, so start out by wrapping a strip of tape sticky side out on your kids arms or legs. Demonstrate finding something and sticking it to the band of tape – then let them go! Maybe they’ll make a pattern of petals, or just mush dirt into the tape. Whatever they do it’s a fun new way to explore and collect treasures from the outdoors.
3. Make your own paintbrush.
All you need for this is clothespins! Gather different textured items rom outside. The tops of grass, cattails, a bunch of leaves all work as paint brushes when you clip them together with a clothespin! Pain on tree bark with mud, or use real paint and paper. Being creative can take you lots of new directions.
4. Stained “glass” window painting.
Get a clear shower curtain, or just use your liner from your shower 🙂 and let your kids finger paint with washable paint. You can lay the curtain down in your yard or park and paint on the ground then lift it up to let the light shine through. You can also string the curtain up between some trees or hang it from some branches and paint it standing up!
5. Web making.
Spiders are everywhere and some species make amazing types of webs! Give kids a ball of yarn or twine and let them make a web the way a spider does! Tie one end of the yarn to a branch in a bush or tree and then let kids climb over branches or run around bushes leaving a trail of web wherever they go. It can even be fun for kids to rewrap the ball of string while you clean up when your done!
6. Collect a garland of treasures.
Twine is pretty awesome for collecting nature treasures! Take a 3 to 6 ft string of twine on an adventure outside with you. While you collect leaves or flowers gently twist a small section of the twine to create an opening between the fibers and insert the stem of the flower or leaf in the opening. Then let the twine twist back on its own and the nature treasure is held between the strings of twine! Once you fill up your twine, you have a garland!
7. Build a fort.
You can use a tarp and rope, or just gather long sticks! There are so many ways to make a small enclosure, let your kids explore and experiment building something they can hide in!