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Doing outdoor activities with preschoolers and toddlers can be a daunting task, but it can lead to some great exploring and learning. We utilize a multitude of learning activities such as free play at home, free play at a community playground, field trips, talking work outside, nature walks, hikes, sensory play and gardenting.
Free Play
Free play is one of our favorite outdoor learning activities. We try to go outside for at least an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon, but the more the better!! Most days, I let my 6 year old and 4 year old pick what they want to do and just supervise. I firmly believe they need to figure out how to entertain themselves. This does not mean I am not paying attention, but I let them choose what to do! I usually pull out my chair and just sit down to observe. This is a great way for them to learn some social skills on interacting and play with each other as well as the world around them.
They learn about birds and other creatures we might see outside. Once we see a new creature, we look it up and learn more about it. We did a whole “unit” on birds because a bird built a nest on our gate. They learned about the whole process from building the nest to the birds hatching and even death because one of the baby birds died. I would have never thought to look in this one part of our fence, but my kids were playing over there and we found the nest.
We also learned a few weeks ago that with many birds and flowers (and more objects), if you take a picture of it, your phone can tell you what it is in the photo app (this is apple, but I was told Android does something similar). It does a reverse photo search for you and you can see what animal or flower or object it is. We did this while on vacation with a bird we didn’t know. It was fun learning all about it later.
The playground is another great place for outdoor free play learning activities for preschoolers and toddlers. They have to learn how to interact with many children and adults! They learn all about how to ask a friend to play to figuring out what to play. They learn how to play with younger kids and older kids. They learn the social “rules” of the playground.
Field Trips
Field trips are amazing outdoor learning activities for preschoolers and toddlers!!!! They are super simple to setup as well! Check out my great post about out of the box ideas for field trips here. Our favorite field trip is the zoo! We go all the time. We love seeing all the animals and our zoo has a ton of play equipment to break up the walk as well. Need some ideas of how to connect the zoo back to your child’s learning check out my zoo field trip pack below.
Zoo Field Trip Pack
Grab this 100 plus page pack to help your young child child understand their zoo field trip from a creation world view.
Taking Learning Activities Outside
An easy way to get our outside time in is to take our work outside! We love to do this on a nice day. If it isn’t too windy, it is perfect. We will take all our worksheets and games outside and do them as we feel like it between some free play. This is a great way to break up the day. This is also a great way to get a reluctant child to do their work. We also do our games outside with a twist. I have set up letter hunts or number hunts for my daughter to find or practice a skill. One day we needed to review our letter sounds, so we jumped from letter to letter. I said the letter sound and she jumped to the letter. It got her moving and practicing a skill she needed to work on.
Another one of the best outdoor learning activities is to do an outdoor unit study. You could focus on bugs like above or birds or plants or anything!!! If there is something your child enjoys, you can make it a unit study.
Nature Walks
We also love nature walks. Our area has so much to explore. There are just walking trails and there are more intense areas to hike! We love going for a hike. Don’t forget about your local parks, state parks and national parks! One way to help engage young children on a nature walk is to use a Nature Hunt. I have a great three page hunt below that is designed for little ones.
Nature Hunt
This pack has three different nature hunts to use with young children.
Sensory Play for Littles
This is probably by far one of our favorite outdoor learning activities for preschoolers and toddlers. We love sensory play! The easiest sensory play to set up outside is water play. We have a water table. I fill it up and off they go! They will do everything from paint with the water to dump and pour it into a pool. They love to water the grass. What a great way for little ones to explore with water without worrying about it getting everywhere. We have colored our water before, we have added different toys and tools, and we have even added some dirt to make mud! The nice thing about doing this outside is you can just hose them off. We also have done chalk outside as well as sand play at a park. The options are limitless. Fill up a bin, place outside and let your child go! If you want to read about How to Not Make a Mess with Sensory Play click here!
Gardening
Gardening is one of many great outdoor learning activities for preschoolers and toddlers. This can be difficult if you live somewhere where you are limited in yard space or soil. Many cities and communities have community gardens if you cannot have one in your yard. My daughter grew a tomato plant last year in a pot. She loved taking care of it and checking on it every day. We even brought it in for the winter and kept it alive! We are going to have her help us again this year in planting it and taking care of it. There is a great perk of gardening: you get fresh fruits and vegetables! Your child also can learn science through watering it and watching it grow, patience because plants don’t go overnight, and your an even have them track it and measure it to bring in some math. When you track it you can add in some writing and language arts through learning and writing about the parts of the plant as well as how high it grew. For littles you can teach vocabulary by describing the plant every time you see it. The children can see how it changes as it grows. They can learn the different parts of the plant by touching the parts. They can learn about vegetables and fruits colors as they grow and develop. Then they get to eat the fruits of their labor!
Recommended Books and Activities
