Outdoor activities are vital for the mental and physical health and development of children. With this in mind, it makes sense to enhance your outdoor space with children’s garden furniture like our kids picnic bench and create a plan to keep your kids busy and entertained with fun and easy activities.
As a parent, grandparent, or childcare provider, by introducing garden activities, you can encourage learning, reduce the child’s stress levels and give their self-esteem a boost.
Don’t forget to protect your children if they spend time outdoors. On hot sunny days, ensure your kids apply a high factor sunscreen to protect their skin from burning. Hydration is also essential, so always make sure water or fruit juice is easily accessible. Placing a jug or bottle on your children’s garden furniture accomplishes this task. Sun hats, locking your gate and putting away tools that might cause an injury are also a must.
1. Play To Their Senses And Inquisitive Nature
If your garden is not the greenest, then you could consider introducing plants, shrubs, fruits, or vegetables. By adding greenery, children can explore the wonderful smells, textures, and tastes that a garden can offer.
If your outdoor space solely consists of hard landscaping, such as a patio or deck, then planters are a great addition and a more straightforward option compared to removing slabs and stone.
Plant choice will undoubtedly play a part in successfully entertaining your children. Plants with alluring aromas include cosmos, Aloysia citrodora, and sherbet. Plants with soft, furry, or leathery textures include Stachys byzantine and bergenia.
2. Bird Spotting Activities
The UK is home to many bird species, including those that are common and rare. A pair of binoculars kept on your children’s garden furniture will encourage spotting activities. A bird book will illustrate the appearance of bird species such as starlings, great tits, goldfinches, and collared doves.
You can get your kids involved in making items that attract birds. This might be making, hanging, and filling a bird feeder, nailing a birdhouse to a tree or fence post, or topping up the water in a birdbath.
Kids love making things, so making your own bird feed is an excellent activity. You can make a bird feeder by covering a toilet or kitchen roll in lard or suet and then sprinkling or gently pressing seeds or nuts into the lard. A simple hole and a piece of string are all that is needed to hang the bird feeder.
Our childrens picnic table is also an excellent place for your young ones to sit and draw birds and do colouring-in, either on paper or on a tablet or laptop.
3. Plan A Treasure Hunt
Kids love treasure hunts, especially if there is a reward at the end. Treasure hunts can keep children busy for hours, and prizes can include sweets and chocolate or healthier rewards such as fruit or a colouring book. Older children will love a riddle, and you can create cryptic clues with difficulty based on the child’s age.
4. Make A Kite
Craft-based activities are always a favourite, and making a kite is a good example because flying a kite is a great reward for their effort.
5. Bugs, bugs, and bugs
Gardens are full of insects and bugs, and a magnifying glass will let your kids see their unusual and alien-looking characteristics. You can encourage more bugs to visit your garden by creating a habitat made from a pile of leaves, branches, or moss.
6. Hold A Teddy Bear Picnic
A Teddy bear picnic is perfect for younger kids and can be set up on smaller-sized children’s garden furniture or on the grass if you have a picnic blanket. You will encourage your children to use their imagination, and you can bring the event to life by baking or preparing real finger food such as sausage rolls, sandwiches, biscuits, and fruit or vegetable slices.
7. Painting Stones
Kids love to paint and create things, and smooth stones are a great alternative to paper or card. If you intend to have your kids carry out this activity while sitting on children’s garden furniture, be sure to cover the table with a waterproof and wipeable table cloth.
8. Hold A Sports Day
You can get your children active with physical activities, games, and races. If you have hours to fill, then you can keep your children busy by getting them to create medals, badges, award certificates, and race schedules beforehand. Game ideas include running, hopping, hooping, sack races, three-legged races, egg and spoon races, aim testing games, and obstacle courses.
9. Children’s Garden Plot
If you want to entertain your kids day after day, then creating a garden spot just for your children is an ideal solution. You can get your kids started right from the beginning with a range of seeds, seed trays, and compost. You can set out these items on your children’s garden furniture and keep them there so that your kids can water them easily and watch them grow.
Flowers and fruits can be started this way and then transplanted into your child’s garden plot. Seeds can also be sowed directly into the ground, and your young ones will get to learn the differences between flowers, vegetables, and weeds. At the end of the adventure, your children will be able to crop vegetables or pick flowers for extra activities such as flower drying and pressing or even making flower-scented perfume.
10. Chores For Pocket Money
Children can learn a valuable early lesson by doing chores for their pocket money. The most obvious garden chore is mowing the lawn. Still, other tasks include deadheading plants, watering, weeding, creosoting the fence, and staining or protecting your wooden garden chair, log store, and picnic table with preservative wood treatment.