What To Do: Find a comfortable and safe place to sit. Close your eyes for one minute (30 seconds for younger children). Listen to all the sounds you can hear. What are they? From which direction did they come? Who might have made them? Next, close your eyes again; this time focus on the sunlight and air touching your face or arms. Talk about what you can notice about the world through the sense of touch. Where is the sun? From what direction is the breeze blowing? Does the air feel warm and gentle or sharp and brisk?
Outdoor play decreases risk of nearsightedness compared to indoor play.
Source: American Academy of Ophthalmology See More Facts
What To Do: Go outside on a rainy day. Dress to stay comfortable but keep your hands free — no umbrellas today! Peek into puddles; listen for bird and frog calls. Discover how many kinds of raindrops you can see. Find a plant with rain dripping from the tips of its leaves. Try to find out where animals go when it is raining.
What To Do: Catch some snowflakes on a sheet of black paper. Study them under the magnifying glass. How are they alike? How are they different?
What To Do: Cover a large tin coffee can with a tube sock with the opening of the sock on the same end as the can opening. Insert a variety of found objects in the can. Encourage your child to reach in and describe how the object feels without looking at the object. See if they can identify the object just by touching. For younger children, have several objects on the table and see if the child can match which object is the same as the one in that is hidden in the mystery can. Some good objects to try to include sweetgum ball, seashell, smooth rock (you can change the temperature by putting it in the freezer or heating in hot water), pine cone, seed pods, cattail, textured non-poisonous plants. Activity field testing made possible in part by a PNC Grow up Great grant, an early childhood initiative designed to help prepare children for success in school and life.
What To Do: Go outside and start exploring your natural surroundings. As you explore, ask your child questions that are very general, reminding yourself and your child that there are no right or wrong answers. Ask questions that do not require background information or prior knowledge, but are based on what your child is experiencing at the moment. You can build up to questions based on previous outdoor experiences you and your child have already had, such as comparing today’s discoveries with ones made during an outing last week or to a different location.
Sample questions
What To Do: Remove a length of tape that will wrap around your or your child’s wrist. Wrap the tape around your wrist with the sticky side up (facing away from your skin). As you walk around the yard or park, pick up small things and see if they stick to your bracelet — flower petals, small fallen leaves, sand and seeds work well. Save bracelets from previous walks and compare them through the seasons.
What To Do: Put the piece of paper in a sunny place on the ground. Place the object in the center of the paper. Draw an outline around the object’s shadow with one of the colored pens. Leave the paper and object and go do something else for a little while. Return to the paper and draw a new outline around the shadow with the other colored pen. What do you notice? Wait a while again, return and draw another outline around the shadow, what do you notice now? Speculate on what happened.
What To Do: Challenge kids to walk outside and find colors or shapes or textures in nature that match their paint chips or other selected color/shape choices. They can record their findings in a journal with words or pictures. A digital camera can also be used to document the findings. You can be the recorder for younger children.
What To Do: Find a quiet natural area where everyone can sit and observe their surroundings in silence. Have everyone do a watercolor study of whatever they choose — it might be shadows on the ground, plant life alongside a creek, rock formations, or a single blade of grass. Remind your child that the process of focusing on their chosen subject is more important than their final product. Encourage them to pay attention to their surroundings — the sounds, the light, the air — and to do their best to work in complete silence. The purpose of this activity has less to do with actually painting, and more to do with being in tune with nature.