By you and for you! Sharing ideas for outdoor learning

In a recent Facebook giveaway, we asked you for outdoor learning activities that have gone down well in your setting. Here are some of the ideas you shared, and we hope they will inspire other early years practitioners and parents.

Nature Play

An activity we love is finding and using natural materials for small world play. This was an African animals habitat set up.

– Katy Patla

Christmas fair using natural resources from outdoors.

– Tracy Carlisle

Planting seeds, counting how many plant pots we have, talking about life and decay.

– Jayne Davies

Making pine cone bird feeders.

– Beverley Oliver

Outdoor Kitchens

All my children love our outdoors kitchen we add all different resources for them to explore. Here they are the chef’s in a cafe. I love how they can use their imagination and take it in any direction they want.

– Katie Lauren Jordan

The mud kitchen provides lots of opportunities, maths: number, ratio, fractions, size, classification etc. Sensory: touch, taste, smell, see and hear are all there.

– Melanie Feltham

We will be playing outside for the rest of the term, they all love concocting amazing dishes in the mud kitchen using a variety of herbs and flowers.

– Emma Toner

Mud pies in the mud kitchen, mixing water and mud and plants, making potions and stew!

– Jen Bond

You can never go wrong with a mud pie kitchen and providing a simple, visual “recipe” is great for modelling ideas for little ones before they experiment with their own concoctions and/or for incorporating literacy and numeracy skills.

– Katy Patla

The great outdoors, even greater possibilities!

My toddler group loved being outside bird watching and playing. But one of the best was our science project of making clear water! It works really well!

– Gareth Jones

Den building and our campfire bread are our favourites with all the children.

– Julie Wilton

Wearing our wellies and puddle suits, finding worms, looking for birds in the sky, enjoying nature and getting dirty. Measuring worms and sticks, planting and watering seeds, making noise on our music wall, filling and pouring in tubes and guttering, lying on the floor looking at the clouds and listening to the world around us. Climbing on tyres and pallets conquering challenges in all weathers!

– Jen Bond