Nature offers endless opportunities for children to explore, create, and learn. Time spent outdoors encourages curiosity, creativity, and a deeper connection to the world around them while supporting overall development.
If you’re looking for simple ways to keep your children busy while enjoying the outdoors, our Nature Activity Guide is full of ideas to inspire outdoor play and discovery. Explore activities that invite children to learn, imagine, and grow through nature.
- Garden Sensory – Invite your child to play in a sensory bin with dry black beans that will represent dirt. Add plastic vegatebles, shovels, garden pots and flowers to create a clean gardening experience for your child to play and learn.
- Spring Suncatcher – Mac tac is a wonderful material to work with and allows the sun to shine through. Have your child ‘stick’ items onto the paper to create a nature piece of art. Once they are done, place a matching piece of mac tac on top to ‘seal’ the art. Hang from a window on it’s own or add sticks to use as a frame.
- Sun Pictures – Explore the power of the sun and preserve your child’s nature hike items. Encourage your child to find special items with a variety of shapes. Lay out the pieces on top of a piece of construction paper and leave in the sun for a few hours. Return to the picture after the sun has worked its magic and remove items to explore what the sun has left behind.
- Leaf Exploration – Collect a variety of items from your backyard or on a nature walk to create a fun sensory experience. Your child can rip, snip or pull apart the items while they explore. Add cups and spoons for your child to fill and dump containers full of nature.
- Nature Paint Brushes – Provide your child with a variety of painting options by creating paint brushes with items found outside. Collect a few sticks to create the handle and grass, flowers or leaves to attach with an elastic to create the bristles. Your child will enjoy painting with these fun ‘nature inspired’ brushes.
- Mud Invitation – Create this fun mud pie invitation by placing dirt in a container and supplying a watering can, container of water and some cups, spoons and scoops for your child to play! Add muffin tins and cupcake liners to make this invitation interesting. Pots and pans work well too. Let your child get messy with nature!
- Flower Ice – Your little ones can use these nature ice blocks as a sensory experience. Freeze flowers or nature items in ice cube trays or containers for your child to explore. Your child can build and play with this chilly sensory activity and retrieve flower petals as they play.
- Nature Stamping – Head outside to collect a few nature items to create a stamping invitation. Provide your child with a few coloured stamp pads or some paint and a paint brush to capture prints of your child’s treasures.
- Playdough Prints – Place some playdough on a tray with a rolling pin and a few playdough toys and take it outside. Gather some items from around the yard…leaves, pine cones, sturdy flowers, etc. Encourage your child to press them into the playdough, leaving impressions of the items.
