How to get your children outdoors

Do you want to get your children outdoors, learning and having fun at the same time?

If you sometimes struggle to get your children motivated to go on a walk or you’re fed up of the same old walk and want to do something a bit different; if you don’t have access to beautiful countryside but you just need to get the children out for a walk before another sibling squabble breaks out then hopefully I can help.

We often spend the entire morning on the beach or afternoon in the woods, but sometimes we don’t have the luxury of being able to spend so long outdoors or just want to go on a local walk around the town where we live. It is these times when we go out on what we call a ‘Dice Walk’ or a variation of it. 

Go on a Dice Walk

Basically, you add an element of surprise to your walk by letting the roll of a dice decide where you go and you never know where you will end up. These walks are great if you live in a town or city and don’t have easy access to a green space like a park or nature reserve. You will be amazed at just how much of Nature you can find, even in a town or city. There will almost certainly be trees, flowers, birds, insects and clouds to see, weather to experience, mosses and lichens to find in cracks. And the man made environment also has plenty to explore.

These walks are easy to do and my children love them. You can make them as simple as you like . . . just a walk to see where you end up, or add things in to make them more focused. You can make them as long or as short as you like. It’s entirely up to you.

What to do:

• Go outside and take some dice with you
• Take it in turns to throw the dice and add together
• Let the dice decide your route:

• Odd number – go left
• Even number – go right
• When you encounter a 3 way junction then:
  • numbers from 2 to 4 – go left
  • Numbers from 5 to 8 – take the middle path
  • Numbers from 9 to 12 – go right
• Have fun!

Or you could choose to always follow a left / right/ left/ right pattern or left, left, right, left/ left / right or any other left/ right pattern and get the children to try to predict where they will end up.

Variations

The brilliant thing about this type of walk is that it can be adapted in so many ways. And if you don’t have some dice you could use a coin or even a stone with a scratch mark drawn on one side.

Learn at the same time as having fun

These walks can also be used to reinforce or extend learning, whilst having fun at the same time. Use the ideas below to help structure your walk.

Nature and observation walks

See how many different things you can spot

Colours

• Look for how many different colours you can find, things the same colour or shades of the same colour, things that are camouflaged.
• This could be followed up back at home by exploring the colour wheel and how to make secondary and tertiary colours or how to create different shades of the same colour.

Patterns, textures and shapes

• Look for patterns – they are are everywhere! On tree bark, brick walls, paving slabs, flower arrangements in peoples gardens, manhole covers, windows on buildings, arrangement of leaves on plants. . . the list goes on.
• Explore textures whilst you are out on your walk. Is the stem of a plant smooth or hairy? Is the wall bumpy and hard all over or are there patches (where there is moss) that are soft? Are all smooth things cold to the touch (metal, stones) or not?
• With younger children you might want to talk about shapes and position and make crayon rubbings to remember your walk by. With older children you may want to extend things further by investigating Fibonacci and where it can be found in nature.

Sounds

• Take time to stop and really listen. What can you hear? Listen beyond the cars. Can you hear birds, children playing, aeroplanes in the sky? Can you identify what type of vehicle you hear in the distance. . . a car, lorry, fire engine, bin lorry? Can you see what you can hear? Birds are very good at hiding!
• Take it a step further by learning about birdsong when you get home. Can you tell the difference between a blue-tit and a robin? Can your children recognise a blackbird’s song?
• Or you could snuggle up together with little ones and read You Choose, exploring the page on different vehicles. All my children have loved this book. There is so much see and talk about together.

Smell, feeling and touch

This can sometimes be a bit harder but it is still possible to notice smells on your walk. My favourite of course is the smell of petrichor – that wonderful earthy smell you get when rains falls on dry earth.

• Things you could ‘smell out for’ include bonfires, mown grass, blossom, tarmac being laid, bread being baked in a bakery, even the smell of the perfume from the lady that just walked past you.
• Smell is a really powerful sense and it is said that if you encounter a smell from when you were young (such as your mother’s perfume, playdough or old books) that you haven’t smelt for a while it can trigger lots of memories. Maybe your children will have fond memories of their childhood walks when, as an adult, they smell a particular flower that they always used to walk past and sniff?

And don’t forget the sense of touch: a rough or bumpy wall, smooth railing, cold stone, velvety petal. What adjectives can you use to describe it?

How does it make you feel in your heart to be outside?

We once took some chalk with us and drew arrows pointing to various things we had spotted along the way so that other people could enjoy noticing them too. My favourite was when one of my children noticed how the temperature was slightly different and commented on how it felt like Autumn was in the air.

Literacy and Numeracy

• What can you find that begins with a particular letter?
• Can you find a particular shape? Round – wheels, middle of a flower, door knob. Oblong – windows, bin lorry, tree trunk.
• Can you find things that come in pairs? Leaves on a stem, gate posts, couples walking by.
• Do some ‘people watching’ – can you make up a story about them? Where might they live? Are they top secret spies? Where are they going?

You choose . . .

Choose some of the ideas or add your own ideas make your walk your own.

Use your locality and your children’s current interests to enrich it and have fun!