Fun Summer Outdoor Activities for Families

You don’t want your children to be inside all the time, especially if the weather is glorious. Here are a few summer activities for children which will get them running outside and playing outdoors for hours! There are lots of holiday activities at home so here are just a few…

Summer Water Activities- Water Gun Races

What do all children love? Water!

A fantastic non-messy (but potentially wet!) game for individual children or groups of children!

All you need is:

• Water pistols
• Plastic cups
• String

1. Take a plastic cup per child and put a hole in the bottom of it.
2. Then take a long piece of string (depending on where you can attach both ends) and thread it through the hole.
3. Tie the ends up at a starting point and an endpoint, making sure the cup is at the starting point.
4. Fill the water guns up with water and shoot the water into the cups so that the force of the water moves the cup along the string all the way to the endpoint.

Encouraging children to improve their teamwork skills, individual play skills, communication skills and gross and fine motor skills.  

How? Well, they can play on their own and time themselves outdoors.

Or groups of children can play together by competitively racing against each other, with the first cup at the finish line being the winner!

But watch out – inevitably someone will get wet!

Messy Play Idea- Excavation Digs!

Budding Palaeontologists, Archaeologists, and Treasure Hunters get your spades ready! Why not turn your garden, sand pits, and paddling pools into an excavation site? All you need is:

• A bag of compost or sand or
• An old ice cream tub or big Tupperware box and
• Small world toys, dinosaurs, treasures, or if you want to make it real some bones from your butchers!

1. All you then need to do is bury the items in the soil or sand or freeze them in water using the plastic ice cream tubs.
2. Place the frozen cubes in the paddling pool outside.
3. Then using children’s tools (spades, rakes, spoons etc) let them dig and chip away at the sand, soil, or ice!

A fun way for children to pass time outdoors unravelling the mystery of what’s been buried or frozen!Whilst at the same time improving their fine motor and gross motor skills and developing their imagination!

On a more sensory topic instead of small world toys – why not swap them for fruit in the ice blocks so that children find sweet treat treasures whilst they chip away?

Storytelling and Role Play Activity- Wash Cars!

Summer activities for children can be practical as well as fun! Why not wash your car?

A great activity to get children of all ages involved and the bonus is, you get a clean car at the end of it!

Little children will love playing with the water and bubbles in a guided car wash with parents, where older children could be left to their own devices to clean the car on their own!

You will need:

• A hose pipe
• Buckets
• Soap
• Soft old cloths or sponges to clean the outside of the car.  

Let the children hose down the dirty cars, clean them with soapy water and wipe them down with cloths to make them shine.

Children who help wash cars will develop their core strength and coordination as they carry buckets of water to the car, wipe the bonnets clean and spray water onto the cars as well as improve their self-esteem.

It’s amazing to see how much pride children (of any age) have when they show you the finished clean car!

If you don’t have a car, then washing bikes or even your dog is still a fun-filled activity that your children can do and they’re all free activities!

Time to Get Active- An Outdoor Obstacle Course

Holiday activities at home can be exhilarating!

What better way to get your children active than to build their own obstacle course?

This can be done in any outdoor space from your own back garden to your local park all you need is a bit of imagination and away they go.

Children can use as many or as few resources as they need to get from point A to point B.

Using stone, trees, pathways, Hoola hoops, skipping ropes, garden fences, walls, cushions, chairs, balls, and nets etc to help make the course more exciting or challenging.  

A great way to improve fine and gross motor skills by climbing, jumping, balancing, throwing, aiming, crawling, running, and catching.

The children will enjoy the challenge to play by themselves or with each other!

We hope you love these fantastic summer ideas, but, if you're looking for more, why not check out our new Arts and Crafts Summer Ideas...