I am as guilty as others at looking out of the window and thinking of things that we can do inside to escape the weather rather than embracing the weather and getting some fresh air.  So I am dedicating this week’s something for the weekend to getting us outside and encouraging our children outside too.  In many parts of the UK it has been the wettest winter on record and often March and April can be pretty wet too, but I am determined to get us out and about.

Ways to encourage kid’s outdoors

Photo credit: AR Blog 

1. Go on a rainbow hunt.  Not just in the sky, but also look for colours of the rainbow all abound you.  You could take a treasure bag and look for natural materials in the colours of the rainbow and bring them home to stick on contact paper.
2. Go dancing in the rain.  You can make up a dance with an umbrella!
3. Look for reflections in puddles.
4. Take photos of rain droplets on things such as spider webs.
5. Do some mud painting.  You can use a twig or leaves to paint with the mud on paving stones or fences or on paper.
6. Look for rain shadows.  Patches of dry can be found where something has been covering the ground making a rain shadow.  You could even place things outside before it rains so that you can make a design (like stencils).
7. Make a shelter or den, wither with sticks or leaves or with tarpaulin.
8. Make a rain catcher
9. Make a rainwater run, you could adapt Science Sparks colour mixing wall.
10. Try tasting raindrops by catching them on your tongue
11. Go looking for snails
12. Take your bath toys on an outdoor adventure, let those rubber ducks out on puddles!
13. Make a natural umbrella with the biggest leaf you can find.
14. Make mud pies, mud castles and mud sculptures.
15. Measure how deep puddles are (you will need a large ruler for this)

Windy Day Outdoor activities

1. Make pinwheels to spin
2. Blow bubbles and see where the wind takes them
3. Make and fly paper planes
4. Make streamers for wind-dancing
5. Let off balloons in the wind
6. Make and fly a kite
7. Be a superhero using your coat as a cape
8. Make a windsock
9. Make music with wind chimes (you can use kitchen utensils! )
10. Make a sailing boat

How to Make a Windsock.

These are super easy to make and you can use them to see which direction the wind is coming from or you can just use them to run around with in the wind.

Materials

• Large plastic bottle or circular container
• Plastic bag
• decorations inc tape and ribbon
• string or wool

How to make

1. Cut the bottom and top off your circular container or bottle to make a cylinder wound 6 inch or 15 cm in depth (this is the opening of the windsock)
2. Pierce a hole in each side of your cylinder to thread your sting through to make a handle or hook for hanging your windsock.
3. Using a plastic bag (we used a black sack cut out a tube shape (the boys wanted ours to be fishlike!).  Make sure that the long edges are all taped togethger, but the ends need to fe loose so the wind can blow through.
4. Attach your bag to the cylinder at one end either with tape or staples.
5. Decorate your windsock.  You could glue shapes on, paint it or even use ribbon to add streamers.

Having the appropriate clothes for the weather

This is a biggy for me, as there is nothing worse than being too cold, wet or hot.  So it is important to have the appropriate clothes available.  With this in mind we have a wicker basket at the front door which is filled with hats, gloves and scarfs and the boys also have waterproof coats and trousers (ours are from Muddy Puddles) for this time of year.  We also have waterproof poncho’s too and the boys have waterproof boots that are easy to clean too.  I make sure that I keep a can of waterproof spray in the house, so I can reapply it.

Layers are the key to our wet and damp winters.  We all have thermals and fleeces and I make sure we wear them.  I also have a waterproof backpack where I put spare gloves and hats for really wet days and plastic bags for the replaced wet stuff.

We don’t very often have really cold weather, but remember this video that Heath at Not from Lapland did about dressing children in cold weather and made sure that we had padded waterproof trousers for when it does snow and waterproof gloves too

Make sure you are following our facebook page, Google + page or on Pinterest for lots more ideas on getting outside with your family over the coming week.