Outdoor Activities Toddlers | Forest School

It all points right to that. I set myself aside. Lead the way on this trial. If you don't know the way, We can stop and make a change. I know we walk for days, Losing hope, fading love. This night will be okay, Waking up to another day. Day. Hi, welcome to my channel. We are in a bit of a different setting today. And that is because I am filming some really simple activities that you can do when you're out on a nature walk with your child. So, when I say simple, I'm talking about the only real things you're going to need are some twine, masking tape, a bit of cardboard, and some paint. So, I'm going to show you today some activities that we do when we're just out on a nature walk with Oscar. Really simple, things that you can just have in the back of your car or have in the pocket of your coat. And the kids really love doing it and makes it a bit more interesting for them. It encourages them to look closely at nature and participate in it and use it in different craft activities. So this first activity is perfect for the toddler who constantly stops and picks things up from the ground on their walk. So, I think that's probably most toddlers at some point in their toddlerhood. So, what we need for this is some masking tape wrapped around their wrist. You do this before you go out. Sticky side sticking out. And then every time they find something that's interesting, you just rip a little bit off and adorn it onto their bracelet. So, it's just a tiny bit of leaf, a tiny bit of twig. And then by the time they have finished their walk, they have beautiful adorned bracelets. The next activity is a variation on the sticky bracelet and instead it uses an egg carton. So, you can just have an egg carton in the back of your car and if you're going out for a walk just bring it out with you. And then encourage your children to look at the ground and find interesting things. Oscar loves doing this, especially on his bike as you can see. And he kind of points things out for me to pick up for him. And then you just pop each little find in a section of your egg carton. It's really handy to obviously try to find a variety of different things because then you can take them home and use them for some craft activities that I'm going to show you later on. The next activity is a nature weave. For this you need the lid of a shoebox or a piece of card and just make some snips with some scissors about every 10 centimetres down the sides. And then use your twine to wrap it around. And then this creates a weaving board. So, this is a great activity for, again, picking up things on your nature walk of, you know, sticks and bigger things that wouldn't stick to the sticky bracelet, for example. And if you have a slightly older child, you can actually get them to do the weaving. And this makes a really lovely display of such a variety of things you can find on your walk. The next activity is leaf threading. And all you need for this is a piece of twine. Find a stick to use as your needle and criss-cross a pair of sticks at the bottom so the leaves don't fall off. And then in your nature walk, go along and look at the ground looking for really interesting leaves. This is great for fine motor skills and also for language development as you talk about all the different colours and different shapes and sizes of the leaves. There's no such thing as bad weather, just unsuitable clothing. And I couldn't agree more. We try to get out every day regardless of what the Irish weather is doing. And I think it's such an important lesson for Oscar to learn that weather doesn't have an impact on what we can do. We were kindly gifted our splash suit and wellies from Spotty Otter and they've given me a 15% off code for you guys to use if you'd also like to get your hand on one of these Forest Leader insulated splash suits using the code PLAY15. I'll put all the details in the description box below but they are fantastic and allow us to get out every day. If you're wondering what on earth you're going to do with all those forest treasures you have collected in your egg carton, then this is your answer. Making natural paintbrushes. So all you need to do is again, using your trusty twine is collect a series of different things from your forest walk and then have some sticks. Use your twine to wrap it around your sticks and there you have a selection of natural paintbrushes. Then you just provide them with some natural coloured paints and if you don't have an easel like I don't yet, you can just put big paper over your fridge. I find this the best way for toddlers to paint, is standing up and doing it vertically because when they sit down they end up getting covered in it and it just ends up being a big, big mess. So I just wrap our fridge in paper and then allow Oscar to use all the things we found on our nature walk to paint with. And this is a fantastic idea to allow creativity but also to allow them to explore those things that they've found in nature and to examine them more, the prints they make, the leaf shape and it's just really, really fun. I always get asked lots of questions about our art supplies so in the description box below this video I have popped lots of links for all of the things that we use including Oscar's cover up, the oil cloth he's standing on, the paints we use, it's all linked in the description box below. The final activity is for the braver among you and it is a colour mixing activity which uses their hands. Collect some leaves of different colours and give them some paints and encourage them to recreate the colours of the leaves using their hands by mixing all the paint together. They can also use the leaves to create imprints. Oscar really loves this and it creates the most wonderful patterns. I actually then cut out the patterns and use them on cards which I send to the grandparents or I frame and put in his playroom. They're just really gorgeous modern art pieces and once you actually put them in a frame or on a card you just can see the beauty in your child's artwork. And that's it! I really hope you'll give some of these activities a try and I will see you again next week. Bye guys!