Summer is here, and now is a perfect time to get out and enjoy these warm, sunny days with your kids. Spending time outdoors offers many benefits for kids and adults alike. Unfortunately, it isn’t always easy to convince kids to step away from their electronics and go outside. With plenty of indoor entertainment options, today’s kids don’t see the need to play outside to alleviate boredom.
If you are searching for ways to spend time with your kids outside, you’ve come to the right place. With the tips and ideas below, you can convince even the most stubborn kids to go outside and enjoy the great outdoors as a family. Keep reading to learn more!
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Do Crafts Together
You might think that doing crafts with your kids is only a good way to pass the time when the weather isn’t nice enough to go outside. While crafting does make rainy days less boring, there’s no reason to only craft on cold, wet days. With things like beginner diamond art kits, you and your kiddos can take your project outside.
If you haven’t yet tried diamond painting, it’s the perfect activity for outdoor crafting sessions. When you buy a kit, it comes with everything you need to create a masterpiece. The best diamond painting kits come with high-quality self-adhesive canvases, sparkly “diamond” drills and the tools needed to place each drill on the canvas. The canvas is pre-printed with your chosen design and a key that tells you where to put each color drill. It’s a lot like painting by numbers but a lot less messy! When you are finished, you’ll have a mosaic “painting” that shimmers in the sun.
Diamond painting is a great activity to introduce your family to for a few reasons. First, it’s fun! Learning how to do it takes just seconds and this hobby is easy enough for anyone to master. Your child doesn’t need any special skills or crafting experience, which eliminates frustration and allows any child to create breathtaking art. Talk about a confidence booster! Plus, painting with diamonds builds fine motor skills and can help your kids calm down. It’s a great project to work on outside before bedtime. Make diamond painting a part of your evening routine and both you and your kids will get to de-stress and unwind a bit before heading to bed.
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Set a Goal for Outdoor Activity
Did you know that the average child spends about 1,200 hours staring at screens every year? Offset all of that screen time by spending more time in nature. Set a goal to spend no less than 1,000 hours enjoying outdoor activities every year. Alternatively, just set a goal for the summer to help keep your kids away from their electronic devices while they’re on break. Adjust the goal to meet your family’s lifestyle, but strive to dedicate as much outside time as possible.
Come up with a reward for meeting or exceeding the goal. Make it something good that your kid will want to earn! Don’t contribute to their screen time by making the prize a gaming system or another electronic device. Instead, choose something to support your child’s healthy lifestyle, like a brand-new bike, tickets to try a new outdoor activity or some new sports equipment.
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Let Your Kids Choose the Activity
Your kids are much more likely to willingly spend time outside if they get to have a say in choosing the activity. While you may think going for a run as a family is a perfect way to spend time outside, your kid might have different ideas. And even if they do love a particular activity, they will get tired of it if you do the same thing day after day.
Ask your kids how they would like to spend time outside. They might want to color or sketch, go for a nature walk, have a picnic or play music. More active tweens and teens might be dying to try kayaking, paddleboarding, skateboarding or mountain biking. You never know what your son or daughter might suggest if you let them take the lead. Let them call the shots once in a while and you just might discover a new favorite activity for yourself, too.
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Plan an Outdoor Scavenger Hunt
Scavenger hunts are fun for kids of all ages. And outdoor hunts don’t require a ton of planning. If you have multiple kids, give them a list of natural items to find. Some ideas include leaves from specific species of trees, flowers of a particular color, pine cones, etc. You can ask participants to gather up the listed items, or you can have them take pictures instead. Give each child a copy of the list and the first one who returns with everything on the list wins.
When planning a scavenger hunt for just one child, come up with hints and arrange them so that one hint leads to the next. The final clue should lead to some sort of treasure. No matter what type of scavenger hunt you create, remember to make the hints/required items age-appropriate. The clues should make your child think, but they shouldn’t be overly difficult to figure out. When providing a list of items, keep it simple for little kids and make it more challenging for older ones. For example, you might ask your preschooler to bring back a leaf while your teen might need to bring you a leaf from a specific type of tree.
- Plant a Garden
Whether you have enough room in your yard for a large vegetable garden or you live in an apartment and can only have a patio garden, gardening is an excellent activity to enjoy as a family. It also instills valuable life skills by teaching kids how to grow their own food and be more self-sufficient. It gives them a better sense of where their food comes from, too.
Gardening is a lot of hard work, but it’s gratifying. Involve your kids in every step of the process. From planting seeds to weeding to harvesting crops, ensure they get the entire experience. It teaches kids responsibility and instills a sense of accomplishment when seeds sprout and grow into their favorite vegetables and fruits. Your child will be excited to go outside each day to see how their garden is progressing.
Conclusion
The tips and ideas above will help you pull any kid away from their screens and get them to enjoy time outside. Make this summer the one where you and your family spend as much time outdoors as possible.
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