Posts Tagged ‘Outdoor Play’

Color Recognition and Fall

By: Creative Play Muse

The final batches of leaves are falling from trees everywhere, creating spectacular piles (and messes!) for adults to clean up.  However, as time consuming as it can be to get lawns ready for winter, there are also some fun uses for all of those fall leaves during this time of year.  One of those is to teach color recognition to children.

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Color recognition is an important part of early childhood knowledge, in that learning to identify colors early on helps create a mental link between visual clues (in this case, the leaves) and words (or actual color names).

Incorporating the teaching of color recognition can be as simple as taking a fall walk Cheri dvdrip .  There is little young children enjoy more than stomping down a tree-lined path in a pair of boots, listening to the leaves crunch.  So why not use this time to engage them in a little learning at the same time?  With leaves truly running the gamut of the color spectrum this time of year there are plenty of easy opportunities to enhance children’s color recognition skills right in your own backyard

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Another fun way to teach color recognition with fall leaves is by having children pick up their favorite leaf specimens, either from your yard or from a nature walk (or even the local playground!), and then assisting them in their preservation and identification by doing a wax paper leaf pressing The Iron Giant Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey move .  This definitely needs an adult’s supervision, but is a very simple way to engage children in a fun color recognition exercise that will not only increase their knowledge, but also provide a great memory for both of you well into the future.

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Here are some other games for your children utilizing nature.

Play Tip: Drawing in Nature

By: Kelly Christian
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This creative play tip is a great activity to do in small groups or one-on-one with your child. First, find a quiet natural area to sit and observe the surroundings in silence (if possible). Bring paper, watercolors, crayons, or other drawing materials and have everyone chose one thing to draw nearby. It can be a cool rock, a single petal, an interesting shadow, or perhaps a patch of soft moss.

If your child feels discouraged that their drawing is not perfect, remind them that studying their chosen object is more important than their final product. Encourage them to also pay attention to their surroundings, the sounds, the light, the air, and to do their best to work in complete silence.

The purpose of this activity has more to do with relaxing and being in tune with nature than actually drawing.

Hunt for Spider Webs!

By: Kelly Christian

First, fill a spray bottle with water. Find a spider web and gently mist the web. The water droplets should stick to the strands and help you see the pattern more easily.

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Look for different kinds of webs and talk with your child how they are alike and in what ways they are different. Can you or your child find where the spider is hiding first?

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What’s Lurking in the Bush?

By: Kelly Christian

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Lay down a white sheet of paper or cloth under a bush. Gently shake the vegetation and watch the insects and small invertebrates that fall on to the sheet.

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Make observations with your child about the many kinds of bugs you see.
- Notice how things move: do they hop; fly; or wiggle?
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- How many different colors do you see?

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- Try to count the number of legs, wings, and antennae on each insect.

Look under other nearby plants.
- Are there different insects on other plants or the same?
- Do certain bugs prefer to be close to the ground and others up high?

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D-War release When you are done, gently shake the sheet so the animals can safely return to their homes. Remember, this is also an opportunity to model for your child the importance of not harming insects and respecting their homes.

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With older children, keep a journal of the insects you see! Kids can write down key features and draw their observations to help them identify what they have found later in a guidebook. This is also a wonderful activity to do with a group of children, who can then compare what they found and talk about their coolest bug!

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Pretend to be Ants!

By: Kelly Christian

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With your child, pretend to shrink to the size of ants and have some fun looking at the world from a different perspective.  Ask your child to lead an ant-sized nature walk and find four things along the way that are interesting. Use a stone, small stick, or toothpick to mark these special spots.

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After the walk, talk about the spots they marked and what makes them interesting. Talk about how these areas look to a person and compare it to an ant’s perspective. Feel free to pretend to be other animals like a bird flying high or squirrel jumping through the trees! Encourage your child to use his or her imagination and have fun role playing together!

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Nature Calls!

By: Kelly Christian

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With summer winding down it’s important to take the opportunity to go outside while the weather is nice and explore nature with your child! This month, we will be posting activities to help engage you and your child in nature that can be done anywhere, at anytime, with anyone. Be on the lookout for new posts each Thursday to encourage outdoor playtime and sparking your child’s interest in nature!

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