Outdoor summer activities to teach children about nature

How many times have you thought nostalgically about your own summer breaks, and all the fun you used to have with the neighbours' kids, roaming wildly close to home all day long, be there scorching heat or thunderstorm, leaving home early and turning in only for dinner? 

Times may have changed, but kids still crave outdoor play. The need for outdoor fun hasn’t disappeared; it just needs a little encouragement amidst today's many distractions.

When well-planned and aligned with their interests, outdoor summer activities not only spark creativity and enhance well-being but also combat summer learning loss and foster active participation in learning.

Encouraging kids to spend time outside, away from screens, boosts their physical, emotional, and intellectual health. Despite growing research highlighting nature's importance for children’s development, opportunities to explore the outdoors have dwindled. Many kids now spend more time on devices than playing outside.

To help you inspire your child to embrace outdoor fun and nature’s elements, we've compiled a list of engaging outdoor summer activities. Plus, we’ve included a summary of the numerous benefits of spending time in nature. Let’s get kids excited about the great outdoors again!

Contents:

• Summer activities for children to learn about nature
• Use technology to record your kid's outdoor activities milestones
• Benefits of outdoor summer activities for kids

What are the best outdoor summer activities for kids to learn about nature?

1. A day in pictures. Provide your child with a camera and encourage them to photograph moments that they find interesting or meaningful. At the end of the day, you can watch them and tell them about what they enjoyed most about the activity, what they captured in the photos, how they felt doing it and what their favorite pose was.
 
2. Organise a rock painting workshop. It's well known that our little ones are great collectors of rocks of all kinds, all shapes, and colours, and their pockets are always full. Set up a stone painting workshop. Be inspired by the shape of the stones, nature, and the colours around you, then leave them in the sun to dry.
 
3. Have a picnic in the park or the woods. Equip yourself with a blanket, a basket of fruit, lemonade, and whatever else you like, and go for a picnic in the park or the woods. Observe the shapes of the clouds and imagine all sorts of funny animals, musical instruments or make up your unusual characters. Make up stories with imaginary characters and enjoy nature and fresh air.
 
4. Organise a camping trip. Experiencing a night in a tent can be a real challenge. Go on an adventure together! Go camping for a night in the mountains, away from the hustle and bustle of the city. Build a campfire in the specially designated spots, bake marshmallows on a stick and enjoy the cool air. Improvise some musical instruments with what you have to hand and give a spectacular concert that ends with a round of applause. Alternatively, send your kid away on their first camping adventure  and see what comes out of it.
 

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  Read also:
  Your child's first camp: 5 ways to prepare them for a new adventure.
 


                            

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5. Arm yourselves with magnifying glasses and go in search of butterflies and insects, observe their characteristics, learn their names and talk about what you found interesting about each one. Take along a book of butterflies and insects to make it easier to identify them.
 
6. Plant seeds and observe their development. An activity that requires patience and responsibility. Remind them that seeds need sun and water to sprout and grow. Talk about the importance of plants and trees to the environment and show them how to care for them.
 
7. Collect insects or plants. When we were kids, we used to make bugs or weeds. Continue this habit and teach your child to create one. A wonderful opportunity to spend quality time in nature.
 
8. Admire the sky. Set up a telescope together and look at the stars and moon. Talk to him about the constellations, the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, and if you're lucky, you might even catch a shooting star.
 
9. Abstract painting with a straw. On a sheet of paper drip watercolours and give your child a straw to blow across the sheet of paper and create all sorts of funny paintings.
 
10. Make an experiment: the erupting a volcano. Bury a container in sand or soil but leave the mouth uncovered. Add water, dye, dishwashing liquid, and baking soda. Mix well, and then pour in vinegar. The reaction between bicarbonate and vinegar produces carbon dioxide, which is released by the volcano's eruption. Make sure you have enough vinegar and bicarbonate because the little ones will be so excited about the experiment, they'll want to do it again and again.

Studies have shown that spending more time outside will make children happier and more relaxed. Time outdoors improves short-term memory, concentration, and cognitive skills. It's almost as if nature makes us smarter, which is quite amazing!

How to use Kinderpedia to record your kid's outdoor activities milestones

Summer break doesn’t have to completely separate children from their classroom colleagues, not from their daily routines during the school year. In fact, summer break activities can be an opportunity for active learning -  and outdoor activities even more so. 

With a variety of communication and collaboration features, you can confidently use Kinderpedia to keep kids engaged during the summer break.  On the one hand, Kinderpedia makes it easy for educators to provide students with interactive and engaging resources that keep them connected to their learning journey. On the other hand, it keeps parents connected and engaged in their children’s education. 

For a start, teachers can encourage children to go out, play and have fun, and offer them practical assignments that they can carry out whilst outdoors. Assignment charts or templates that are conveniently uploaded in the dedicated module in Kinderpedia can be accessed by both children and parents at all times.

Assigned tasks can include observing nature and taking notes in predefined templates, taking photos and sharing them via the media module, keeping a journal about a week out of town, and many more. All of these can be uploaded by children in their own Kinderpedia app, and can easily turn into a personal portfolio for the summer vacation.

To make things more engaging, teachers can regularly share with the entire class small breakthroughs and pictures that describe the kids’ summer experiences and learnings.

If anything, this kind of collaboration during the summer break isn’t meant to widen the gap between children coming from various backgrounds, but to encourage them to take an active role in their own learning and keep parents in the loop with their progress. 

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Benefits of outdoor summer activities for kids

• Reduce the risk of certain diseases. Studies have shown a clear decrease in the risk of obesity, asthma, and myopia in children who spend more time in nature. The immune system is also improved by exposing little ones to bacteria and viruses. Children who spend more time in nature and green spaces are less likely to develop respiratory diseases caused by excessive air pollution.
 
• Train physical activities. Children are a source of energy: they run, climb, jump, dance. All these activities are more attractive if they take place outside, in the fresh air, and they are a cornerstone for the health and development of children of all ages.
 
• Quiet sleep. Surely you've noticed too that after a brisk playtime in the park or the backyard at grandparents' house, children's sleep was much deeper and more restful. The first hours of the day are the hours when the body is most productive, alert, and able to concentrate, so it is advisable to spend more time outside to regulate their internal rhythm and get quality sleep.
 
• Limitless creativity. Nature is an infinite resource of objects that can form a real play universe for little ones: a twig can be a magic wand that carries you into the future, a maple leaf can turn into a fan, and a tree can be the castle tower of an enchanted land.
• Various summer activities in nature bring a wealth of valuable sensory experiences.