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
- 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.
- Go dancing in the rain. You can make up a dance with an umbrella!
- Look for reflections in puddles.
- Take photos of rain droplets on things such as spiders webs.
- Do some mud painting. You can use a twig or leaves to paint with the mud on paving stones or fences or on paper.
- Look for rain shadows. Patches of dry that can be found where something has been covering the ground making a rain shadow. You could even place things outsode before it rains so that you can make a design (like stencils).
- Make a shelter or den, wither with sticks or leaves or with tarpaulin.
- Make a rain catcher
- Make a rain water run, you could adapt Science Sparks colour mixing wall.
- Try tasting raindrops by catching them on your tongue
- Go looking for snails
- Take your bath toys on an outdoor adventure, let those rubber ducks out on puddles!
- Make a natural umbrella with the biggest leaf you can find.
- Make mud pies, mud castles and mud sculptures.
- Measure how deep puddles are (you will need a large ruler for this)
Windy Day Outdoor activities
- Make pinwheels to spin
- Blow bubbles and see where the wind takes them
- Make and fly paper planes
- Make streamers for wind dancing
- Let off balloons in the wind
- Make and fly a kite
- Be a superhero using your coat as a cape
- Make a windsock
- Make music with wind chimes (you can use kitchen utensils! )
- 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
- 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)
- Pierce a hole in each side of your cylinder to thread your sting through to make a handle or hook for hanging your windsock.
- 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.
- Attach your bag to the cylinder at one end either with tape or staples.
- 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.
What a wonderful collection of ideas! Proof that the weather doesn’t need to spoil the fun! I’ve pinned this to my ‘For The Kids‘ board on Pinterest 🙂
What a great selection of activities. Very well presented, thanks for sharing all the info x
Great ideas Jen, I love the windsock xx
These are truly fabulous ideas. Going to watch the video now. Would dearly love to go to Lapland one day. We haven’t had snow in London this year yet, but then it did snow in April last year……..
x
Fabulous ideas. I have pinned! x
What a gold mine of a post! Pinned to my family board and will be back to give it a closer read at the weekend when we’re in need of inspiration. Definitely want to give the windsock a go.
Fab ideas! We have been very lucky with the weather where we live and it is beginning to feel like Spring already! I really like the look of that windsock – definitely a great project to do together and then get out and about to test. Thanks, I will be pinning it for future reference!
What lovely ideas! My biggest problem is getting my kids to wear enough clothes to keep them warm. They seem to be allergic to coats 🙂
I so have to make that windsock – it looks like great fun (plus we struggle to keep our kite airborne)
Great post!
My boys love being outside (whatever the weather) and cannot understand why I’m not keen to go out in the rain…
Totally agree with you that clothing makes a HUGE difference (as my husband says “there’s no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing”)
I completely agree that, especially in UK, you have to dress for the weather and get out there. If you don’t then you might never get outside. My little one loves rain and isn’t bothered by it but wind is a complete no-no. I have pinned the wind and rain activities and we will be getting outside and hopefully we can get over the wind phobia with a lovely wind sock
Fab post – some really good ideas! I love the wind sock – might try that one 🙂
Brilliant list of activities. Love the wind sock idea 🙂
Bookmarked for future reference! there are so many lovely ideas here!
What wonderful ideas! Part of me is hoping it’s wet and windy tomorrow, so we can try these out…
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I’m really liking the windsock – we used to make ‘kites’ with plastic bags – this is a very upmarket version 😀
Great post. I think that we spend so much time trudging through the rain back and forth to nursery that the last thing we want to do is go back out in it. This post was a good reminder that all weather can be fun and to make the most of what it throws at us.
This is a lovely post, with a lot of excellent ideas in there, we need to be versatile with the weather here, and you have given me a lot of food for thought. I shall be coming back when the weather plays up again – probably tomorrow! 😉
What a brilliant post for this time of year! We used to like to having raindrop races – pick a raindrop on the window pane and see which one reached the bottom first! Obviously we didn’t have your fab post to turn to!
I love all the rainy day activities…we’ve had plenty of rainy days recently and I suspect we have lots more to come so these will come in handy! 🙂
Definitely going to have a go at making that wind sock
A great list Jen, really well thought out and I love the windstock. Hours of outdoor fun packed in here. Thank you for sharing on Country Kids
Your Comments
Some great ideas – many that my children already love to do, but lots of new ones too that we can try.
Such fab ideas and will be making a windsock with my little man soon as we have lots of wind here!
Lovely simple ideas. Watched a little girl walk to school this week with her mouth open, tongue out, catching the raindrops. Too sweet! Your windsock looks fun to make and fun to play with #CountryKids
What a great collection of ideas! Love the windsock 🙂 #CountryKids
What great lists – I have bookmarked them for future reference!
I don’t mind admitting it I used to love making mud pies the squishier the better! x
Ha! These are such great ideas!! People need to live more and this us a great way to start instead of moaning about british weather you’ve embraced it. Love this post 🙂
Yes we don’t to get out enough when the weather turns bad in the U.K. It has been really muddy round here but we really should make an effort next weekend to go to the woods.
Brilliant ideas. I’m good at thinking of indoor ideas but not good With outdoors ones!
Lots of great ideas. We like to try to get out at some point whatever the weather, though it’s not always easy.
#CountryKids
Some really great ideas here.
I like the mud painting the most 🙂
What a great collection of outdoor activities to do, especially with all this rain it’s good to think of new ideas to get outdoors. x
What a brilliant collection of ideas, I love the windsock idea!
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