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Interactive Bar
Outside Activites
National Trust - 50 things to do before you are 11 3/4 - why not see if you can tick any things off this summer and get a head start!
Rock Painting
Have a go at painting some rocks and leave them out for other people to spot and brighten their day!
Treasure hunt
Find some everyday objects from your home and hide them around the garden. Then create a treasure map to help a family member or friend to find your treasure. A great social distancing game if you have visitors to your garden!
Can of course be adapted for indoors or a park if you don’t have your own outdoor space.
Clay Imprints with Plants and Flowers
This activity can be done at home with modelling/craft clay or playdough - see Fine Motor Skills activity for a homemade recipe.
You will need a very smooth surface to work on. If you have a clear bit of plastic table cloth or a very smooth kitchen cutting board, they will work best. You also need some flowers or plants and a rolling pin or water bottle that has smooth sides. Later when the clay is dry, you may want to use some paint to add the green or flower colour. Also, if you want to turn it into a mobile or wind chimes, you might need a chopstick or skewer to poke a hole in it.
Take chunks of clay and make different shapes with it. Then roll it flat. Next, place a bit of plant or flower onto the clay and roll over it gently with a rolling pin or smooth water bottle. Pull the plant off the clay and admire the details now imprinted in the clay. If you want to add a hole, this is the time to grab your kebab skewer or chopstick adults!
Allow the clay to dry overnight before you paint it.
This project has a lot of possibilities so let your imagination go wild. Find things around the house with interesting textures to imprint the clay.
Rainbow Collage
I know that lots of you coloured some lovely rainbows at the start of our time at home.
Why not update these and create a rainbow collage by collecting coloured materials from your garden or home?
Natural Art
Weather permitting, get the children to collect a few leaves or petals from your garden or while out on a walk. Place them between 2 pieces of paper or a piece of spare white material. Using a stone, bash the leaves and petals through the paper (mind those little fingers). When you open up the paper or material, what do you see? I’d love to see some of this original artwork! Will it be fridge worthy?
Nature Scavenger Hunt (Woodland Trust)
The Woodland Trust website has some lovely suggestions of outdoor activities that you can do. Why not try their scavenger hunt? As we are between seasons, I have included spring and summer. Feel free to Dojo me if you are not sure about any of the items on the list (I had to google a few myself).
Spring scavenger hunt
In spring, nature starts to wake up from its long winter sleep. Trees burst into leaf, flowers cover the ground and animals emerge from hibernation. There’s so much to see, can you find…
- new green leaves
- scented blossom
- springy moss
- sticky leaf buds
- a lichen-covered twig
- a piece of eggshell (stay well away from bird nests, look for fragments of shell that have fallen to the ground)
Summer scavenger hunt
Head to the woods on a summer's day and look out for...
- brightly coloured wild flowers
- fluffy dandelion clocks
- nibbled leaves
- a soft feather
- spotty ladybirds
- a four leaf clover
https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/blog/2020/05/nature-activities-for-kids-to-do-at-home-part-7/
Make Your Own Birdfeeder
Animal Footprint Trap
I saw this idea on my facebook feed and thought what a lovely idea it would be to see what might be exploring in your garden at night. The video I have selected is one of the easiest ones to do but there are plenty of other demonstrations on facebook. The black plastic can be substituted for cardboard (just make sure you don't put it out on a night when it is forecast to rain) and ink can be exchanged for food dye. Hopefully you will be able to get some tracks!
Make a Mini Wormery
Step by step
- Collect some worms from the garden. Look in the compost heap, under stones in damp places or dig a hole.
- Cut the top ¼ off the bottle, to make a lid. Make a slit in the side of the lid so that the top can close over the bottom part.
- Fill the bottle with alternating layers of sand, soil, sand, compost, sand etc. Spray each layer with water so that it is damp.
- Add a few worms to the top of the bottle and watch them burrow down. Then add the ‘food’ to the top. Wash hands well after handling worms and compost.
- Wrap the black cardboard around the bottle to make it dark. Worms do not like light and it will encourage them to burrow around the outside of the bottle so they can be observed.
- Place the wormery in a warm place. Remove the cardboard for observation periods and record findings. Check that the contents are damp and that there is food available for the worms.
- After 1 week, release the worms back into the garden.
Frozen Eggs
This is a lovely idea which I got from a member of my class who added pictures of her doing this activity to her portfolio. I found a website which details how to do this activity and attached below.
http://hugsandbugsclub.com/blog/2020/4/12/frozen-flower-eggs
Object Hide and Seek
This is such a good game to allow you to sit down with a glass of wine while your children wear themselves out. I would usually play this with coloured bricks from the brick box of one type. Hide the bricks in the garden and get your children to find them. This can be played either by one child alone or you can do different coloured bricks for each child. The trick is to introduce a time element to it.
1. Child has to beat their own best time, or if playing multiple then play against each other.
2. introduce a max time they have to find it.
The time trick gaurantees your children will be engaged and running round like mad things. However the pay off is that hopefully they will wear themselves out!!
Improvised Parachute Game
No I haven't gone completely mad. I know most of you don't have a parachute. But hopefully all of you have access to a bed sheet (fitted is better as makes the game harder). This is an excellent game to work the upper arms and tire children out (I use it often in the summer when there are too many wiggles on the carpet). There are different variations you can do.
The most basic (easiest if you only have two parents and a child) is to simply place on your object (whatever you have- cuddly toys/balls/beanbags etc) and see how high you can get it to go on using the sheet.
Next game you can easily play with a small number of people is putting mutliple toys on the sheet and timing yourself to see how fast you can fling them off by bouncing the sheet up and down.
Last game for those of you with larger families is playing the game as above but allocate a person to be running around and putting the objects back on as fast as you can bounce them off!
Happy sheet bouncing!
Outdoor Obstacle Course- This is such a flexible activity which can be done with whatever you have available. Maybe challenge your children to design one on paper each and then vote for the best one. Or do a different one each day! Just remember to make sure all parts are sturdy! (I can neither confirm or deny that Mrs Burton once fell through the top of her Mum's bucket when she was about 8!).
