The great outdoors are full of learning opportunities. Take advantage of your backyard and beyond to have fun and learn.


The outdoors are full of learning opportunities for toddlers. Outdoor spaces can stimulate children's imagination and curiosity. So how can you enrich your child's learning by playing in the backyard or taking a trip to the park?

Motor Development

Toddlers love to move. Playing outdoors gives the chance to practice and fine-tune their physical skills - running, jumping, climbing, balancing, skipping etc. Are your children bored with your backyard?

• Create simple obstacle courses in your backyard from things in your garage -planks, ropes, saw horses, tires, logs, boxes (these make great tunnels), ladders, tarps etc. 
• For toddlers keep it low and hold their hand as move through the obstacle course.
• Create challenges, but keep it safe at the same time. At our house, we use an old crib mattress for a soft landing under the obstacle course.

Sensory Development

Nature for a young child is a wondrous sensory experience - Anyone that has taken a one-year old for a toddle around the garden will know this. Your little one will stop every few feet to touch, feel, smell (and sometimes taste!! ), every leaf, rock, snail and piece of bark.

• In any backyard, there is a variety of textures, smells, colors, sound and even tastes that will sharpen children's senses and stimulate their interest. Point these things out to your child. Find things that are rough/smooth, hard/ soft.
• Listen to the noises around you, and try to guess what they are.
• Close your eyes and give each other things to smell and identify (risky I know).

Emotional Development

Outdoor play allows toddlers to experience a greater freedom to run, shout and do 'messy' activities that may not be tolerated indoors. Through outdoor play, children have the chance to express, manage or release their feelings. Playing with water, sand, mud and other natural materials lets toddlers create and manipulate their own worlds. This is great for developing a healthy self-esteem. Even with a bucket of sand and a bowl of water toddlers can create their own fun. Add some of the following and the play possibilities are endless.

• Bowls or containers. 
• Old spoons, measuring cups, sieves, baking and cooking utensils, plates.
• Funnels, pipes and clear plastic tubing (can be purchases at hardware stores).
• Cars, trucks, small figures, toy animals and dinosaurs - only use those that can be easily washed.
• Popsicle sticks, string.
• Twigs, shells, rocks, leaves- nothing too small for toddlers.

Arts and crafts

• Push natural materials into clay or old playdough to make a garden display.
• Bring the outdoors in by making a collage using natural materials. Collect leaves, bark, twigs, flowers, grass etc and glue or tape them on to cardboard.
• Paint with glue then sprinkle with sand.
• Take the drawing/painting table or easel outside. 

Math and Science

The outdoors are rich in mathematical and scientific learning possibilities. For example:

• Counting the number of trees, flowers, animals. 
• Shapes - e.g. round trunk, oval leaves, square buckets, spirals on snails.
• Sorting and classifying natural objects-e.g. putting all of the leaves in one bucket and all of the twigs in another.
• Problem solving - "How can we get this plank to stay still on the log so we can balance on it?"
• Observing the characteristics of plants, animals and the weather e.g. smooth leaf, cloudy sky, small ant etc.
• Help your toddler plant seeds in pots or the garden, care for them and watch them grow.

Dramatic play

• Children love  to role play, and playing outdoors can stimulate and extend their imaginations.
• Bark and leaves and other natural materials can become plates for 'dinner' or even the food on the plates.
• Have your toddler help you to make a play house outside- this can be a house, a fort or a cave or whatever their imagination needs it to be.
• Take the dress up clothes outside and see what happens.
• Boxes - ask department stores for large boxes-these are great for anything and everything - cars, tunnels, houses, boats the possibilities are endless.

So, switch off the TV and go outside. Please remember to be sun safe and have fun!

Next: Gardening with toddlers

By Michelle Hutchison

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