Non-screen Activities

 

Wonderful activities you can do together as a family

 

Things to do in the garden/or for an outside space:

• Planting seeds 

• Building a hedgehog home
• Reusing plastic bottles to make bug hotels
• Making Fairy gardens
• Building a small pond/bog garden (using an old bucket or box)
• Feeding the birds and using ID charts to identify them
• Making wildflower seed bombs
• Growing salads and herbs
• Painting in the outdoors
• Drawing in the outdoors
• Building dens!
• Bug hunting (using ID charts)
• Building a bug trap
• Building mini glasshouses with small plastic bottles (growing salads in them)
• Mapping skills (drawing a map of the garden/house and using it to learn orienteering skills)
• Painting stones
• Setting up role play areas e.g. a mud kitchen (younger)
• Playing with bubbles
• Playing with chalks, e.g. hopscotch or art work using paving slab as a canvas!
• Painting with water – kids play for hours just painting with water – making patterns and watching them dry
• Playing with boxes and building and challenges
• Making story jars with natural items (this can then be used indoors with story writing)
• Making and building musical areas – using old pans/pots, etc
• Making water runs with old pipes/guttering and bottles
• Exploring clouds and the solar system
• Making mini rafts/boats
• Building obstacle courses
• Making trails/finding your way – using sticks and stones to follow a trail
• Making weather stations (rain gauge)
• Making sundials
• Scavenger hunt
• Making a moth trap
• Skipping (long rope)
• Designing games courses using cones, etc.
• Making a hockey stick with old newspapers, string and tape and then having a game

 

Things to do in the house: 

• Cooking/baking

• Decorating cakes
• Setting up a snack shop 
• Setting up role play corners – shop, office, hospital, café, etc.
• Painting/using pastels and charcoal/colouring
• Making models
• Using clay and play dough
• Making your own dough to use
• Mapping skills – using logos and grid references to design a day out
• Indoor dens
• Threading beads/pasta
• Making marble runs with tubes
• Printing
• Yoga – on YouTube 'Cosmic Yoga'
• Mindfulness – Short audio sessions – Smiling Mind
• Dancing – on Facebook with Oti Mabuse
• Science – Techniquest – they have pre-recorded 90 second daily demos on their Facebook and YouTube channel e.g. how to make a Lava Lamp
• Experiments – lots of ideas online
• Bird watching – using ID charts
• Collecting things outdoors and bringing them inside to create stories