Why outdoor play is so important for your kids

Playing and being outdoors is the best place for all children, especially young children, to practice and master their challenging physical skills.

Outside, kids can fully experience fine motor skills like running and jumping.

It’s also the best place to practice hand-eye coordination in games that involve ball action like shooting and picking, along with other skills like pushing, pulling, lifting and carrying moving objects.

Plus, it’s outside where kids burn the most calories, which helps prevent obesity. Being outdoors is also important because outside light stimulates the pineal gland (the part of the brain that regulates the “circadian clock”). This is vital for the immune system and makes us feel happy.

Other studies are done outdoors

Even children Learn through their feelings. Outside there are many different and wonderful things to see (animals, birds, plants/trees etc.), listen (wind blow in leaves, birds chirp), smell (flowers, freshly cut grass), touch. (tree bark) and also in taste (fresh snow or raindrops on the tongue).

What better place outside for kids to be noisy, distracted, and agitated where they can run, jump, scream, and expend energy that wouldn’t normally be appropriate in the building?

Great activities outside

• Walking in nature is a great way to increase children’s appreciation of the natural environment. Ask them to tell you what they see, hear, and curse. Encourage touch: detects the smoothness of rocks, the roughness of the bark and the fragility of dry leaves. For young children this is a science experiment.

• Arrange the parapets with old tires, large cardboard boxes, and wooden poles. Moving inside teaches you important concepts such as above, below, traffic and around.

• Walking “listening” creates an excellent speech discrimination activity. When walking with children, notice the birds, cars passing by, the whistling of the wind and even the sound of your footsteps. What sounds can children recognize independently? Which one is stronger and which one is softer? Which is high and which is low? What are their favorite sounds?

• Get an old parachute or paper and play with the parachute (shake it, turn it in a circle, raise the waves or climb the balls).

• Balloon hunt gives kids the chance to catch balloons and try to catch them while running and jumping.