Finally the sun is shining, it’s starting to warm up and we can get outside a bit more. I love to take my classes outside to work: it’s different, it’s motivating, it lets us move and uses energy, and it gives us so much to talk about as the outdoor environment changes around us – a bird flies by, a funny shaped cloud appears, we hear a siren and so on. Here are 5 great ideas for outdoor activities – all low or no resource so they are cheap, quick and easy to prepare. They’re ideal for a small group or a 1 to 1 walk.
Make a Nature Mobile
This is a great idea from the Sensory Trust. Their website has lots of ideas for outdoor activities several of which I have used before (including this one).
For this project all you need is some string and some ribbon (how much depends on how many young people are doing the activity). Everything else you need you collect while you are outside. The idea is you go for a walk, collect some sticks or twigs to use to make the frame of your mobile and lots of things to hang from it: leaves, flowers, herbs etc. You use a large twig to make the top of your mobile, three smaller twigs hang down from that on string and you hang your nature items under those using string. Attach ribbon (or string) to the middle of the long stick to hang the completed mobile from. The Sensory Trust provide a clear, colourful activity sheet to show how to assemble the mobile which can be downloaded from their website.
Make a Nature Palette
This is another great idea from The Sensory Trust. All you need to make a nature palette is a piece of card and some double sided sticky tape. If I need card I always go the the kitchen where I work and ask if they have any old boxes. One box could be cut up to make several palettes.
The Sensory Trust have a printable page which explains clearly how to make a nature palette and ideas for using them. Making one is as simple as sticking the double-sided sticky tape onto the cardboard and then peeling off the top layer when you are ready to use it. Once outside you look out for colourful, shiny, interesting natural things and stick them on. The Sensory Trust instructions suggest covering the card with the double-sided tape but you could do a single side strip or a few strips spaced across the cardboard to make this more economical.
Spring Scavenger Hunt
I love a scavenger hunt and you can do them on all sorts of different themes: the seasons, Christmas, Easter, colours and so on. A quick search of the internet will find lots and lots, though finding one which is suitable for your geographical area and free-to-download and printable can reduce your options quite a lot.
Here, free-to-download, is a simple scavenger hunt that I made using Widgit symbols. You can just tick the items you find or take an ipad/camera outisde and photograph them. Either way it’s fun to get outside and there’s lots of conversations to be had about what you find and lots of vocabulary to learn or practise.
Go On A Sound Walk
This great idea comes from the Learning through Landscapes website where there are lots of ideas for outdoor activities for children and young people of different ages. They have a downloadable activity sheet all about doing a sound walk. All you need for the activity is a stick per young person – and you can probably pick that up at the start of your walk.
Doing your sound walk is as simple as going outside and listening, using the stick to tap against different items and objects and see how they sound; try fences, stones, tree trunks etc. You can either just listen, or use an ipad/tablet to record the sounds, or video as the young person taps and makes the sound. If you have taken recordings or videos you could use these later to make a quiz to recap what the sounds were or what things were called.
Go On A Colour Walk
This is an activity I’ve seen done in slightly different ways on lots of different websites. The basic idea is that you go outside with a selection of colours and find natural items that match the colours. Paint swatches are a good resource for this activity and something that can be picked up for free in your local DIY shop. You could give one swatch per child and task them to find as many items as they can in that colour and share what everyone has found once you get back into class. Or you could give each child a small selection of swatches for them to find an item of each colour. If you are doing it this way its a good idea to fix the swatches down somehow: maybe blutak or sellotape them to a clipboard, or stick them to a piece of card (cut up an old box againš). To make saving the objects easier you could have a strip of double-sided tape on each colour to stick the item on (as suggested for the nature palette above). If you don’t have paint swatches you could use pieces of coloured paper or sugar paper or print a colour wheel from the internet and use that. To find lots of variations on this idea just google ‘nature colour walk.’
I hope that this has given you a few easy-to-organise ideas of outdoor activities for you and your group or young person. If you have a great idea you would like to share please do get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.
