If you live within walking distance of a public park, then you have a great resource on your doorstep which can keep you and your kids entertained for hours. This is particularly true if you don’t have a garden, making the most of green public spaces can be a great way to introduce your kids to nature and let them enjoy the big outdoors. If you’re heading to the park soon and the weather is holding out, check out these fun, skill-building games that you can play with your kids.
Wildlife Spotting
Before you go to the park, create a simple sheet listing some of the common bug, animal, and plant species you are likely to spot in the park. As you wander around with your kids, they can tick off each wildlife specimen they’ve seen—this acts as great motivation to go for a slightly longer walk and helps them to learn about the natural world. If your park is super small, take a hula hoop, drop it on the grass, and then use a magnifying glass to help you peer at all the bugs and creepy crawlies moving through that patch of ground.
Obstacle Course
It’s really easy to create your own simple obstacle course, and running around this will boost your kids’ balance and agility skills, as well as help them burn off energy. Simply take a few cardboard boxes (you can collapse them to transport and then unflatten them at the park), a skipping rope, a hula hoop, and whatever other odds and ends you think may come in useful. You can set up the boxes as an agility course to run around, the skipping rope can be used as part of the course and you could ask your kids to jump into or over the hula hoop on the ground. Your kids are sure to come up with ideas to make the course even more challenging!
Ball Games
A simple game of catch is great at developing your kids’ coordination and agility, and on a nice warm day, it can be fun to play for hours. If there’s a group of you, you can split into teams and add rules to the game, bringing it more in line with a team sport such as netball or dodgeball.