The great outdoors are full of learning opportunities. Take advantage of your backyard and beyond to have fun and learn.

The outdoors are full of learning opportunities for young children. The average four-year old child spends 31 hours a week playing indoors and up to 21 hours watching television. Outdoor spaces can stimulate children's imagination and curiosity. So how can you enrich your child's learning by playing in the backyard or taking a trip to the park?

Motor Development

Children love to move. Playing outdoors gives the chance to practice and fine-tune their physical skills - running, jumping, climbing, balancing, skipping etc. Are your children bored with your backyard?

• Create simple obstacle courses in your backyard from things in your garage -planks, ropes, saw horses, tires, logs, boxes (these make great tunnels), ladders, tarps etc.
• Create challenges, but keep it safe at the same time. At our house, we use an old cot mattress for a soft landing under the obstacle course or for tumbling practice.

Sensory Development

Nature for a young child is a wondrous sensory experience- try these activities to stimulate your child's senses:

• In any backyard, there is a variety of textures, smells, colors, sound and even tastes that will sharpen children's senses and stimulate their interest. Point these things out to your child. Find things that are rough/smooth, hard/ soft.
• Listen to the noises around you, and try to guess what they are.
• Play eye spy using colors.
• Close your eyes and give each other things to smell and identify (risky I know).

Emotional Development

Outdoor play allows children to experience a greater freedom to run, shout and do 'messy' activities that may not be tolerated indoors. Through outdoor play, children have the chance to express, manage or release their feelings. Playing with water, sand, mud and other natural materials lets children create and manipulate their own worlds. This is great for developing a healthy self-esteem. Even with a bucket of sand and a bowl of water children can create their own fun. Add some of the following and the play possibilities are endless.

• Bowls or containers. 
• Old spoons, measuring cups, sieves, baking and cooking utensils, plates.
• Funnels, pipes and clear plastic tubing (can be purchases at hardware stores).
• Cars, trucks, small figures, toy animals and dinosaurs - only use those that can be washed easily.
• Popsicle sticks, string.
• Twigs, shells, rocks, pebbles, leaves.

Arts and crafts

• Push natural materials into clay or old playdough to make a garden display.
• Collect leaves for leaf rubbings. Put the leaves under paper and rub with crayons or pencils.
• Bring the outdoors in by making a collage using natural materials. Collect leaves, bark, twigs, flowers, grass etc and glue or tape them onto cardboard.
• Paint with glue then sprinkle with sand.
• Take the drawing/painting table or easel outside and help your child to draw or paint what they see around them. Look at the colors and shapes of the plants around them. This can help to expand their ideas that all leaves are green, and all trunks are brown.

Math and Science

The outdoors are rich in mathematical and scientific learning possibilities. For example:

• Counting the number of trees, flowers, animals etc - you could even show your child how to create a simple graphs or tables.
• Measuring, estimating, and spacial awareness (what will fit where).
• Shapes - eg round trunk, oval leaves, square buckets, spirals on snails.
• Sorting and classifying natural objects-eg sorting leaves in to different shapes or colors.
• Problem solving - "how can we get this plank to stay still on the log so we can balance on it?"
• Observing the characteristics of plants, animals and the weather.
• Plant seeds in pots or the garden, care for them and watch them grow.

Dramatic play

• Children love  to role play, and playing outdoors can stimulate and extend their imaginations.
• Bark and leaves and other natural materials can become plates for 'dinner' or even the food on the plates.
• Give your children some old sheets and blankets and help them to make a play house outside- this can be a house, a fort, a cave or whatever their imagination needs it to be.
• Take the dress up clothes outside and see what happens.
• Boxes - ask department stores for large boxes-these are great for anything and everything - cars, tunnels, houses, boats the possibilities are endless.
• So, switch off the TV and go outside. Please remember to be sun safe and have fun!

By Michelle Hutchison

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