Turning Your Yard Into A Learning Environment For Your Kids

Spring is just around the corner and your children will, hopefully, be begging to spend some time outside. You can make their outside fun in your own yard a learning experience for them, in many ways. It starts with having the right things for them to learn with.

Plants, sand boxes, giant board games, and even the soil itself lends to a great learning environment. If you start your planning now you can have some great fun in the sun while teaching your children about nature, enriching their minds, and helping them with sensory learning.

A Lesson On Plants

There are a million lessons on plants just awaiting your children in the great outdoors. You may even learn something yourself. Start out by looking around your yard and documenting the nature that is out there.

What type of grass grows in your yard, what trees are out there, what weeds are growing, and which flowers do you have. Teach them about edible things growing in the wild, like dandelions. You may even want to plant a garden and teach them about fruit trees and what grows best where.

When spring does arrive, have the kids help you plant a garden, vegetables, fruit, or just flowers. Have them tell you what each plant is as they plant. It’s a good way to get them to like helping you weed the garden too!

Introducing A Sandbox

If you have younger children, a sandbox in your yard can be a great way to help them with sensory learning. Make sure that you have plenty of sandbox toys for them to play with as well. You don’t want them to get bored.

Teach them how to build sandcastles (you may have a child that grows up to be an architect). Plant fake dinosaur bones and have them excavate them and then tell you which dinosaurs they came from, and put them together.

DIY Some Fun

You can make a ton of fun and educational things for your yard. Create a giant checkerboard game in the yard, or spray paint twister circles and play outdoor twister. Pinterest is full of excellent ideas for outdoor fun, so spend some time pinning.

If you see that your garden is starting to look dry and dull, you can even replant some new grass along with your kids. You can use a lawn measurement tool to understand the proportion of turf you might need, and purchase a suitably sized one online. While there are professionals who can plant the grass for you, you can choose to go the DIY route with your kids to have a productive and educational evening for them.

You can also put in your own koi pond with some easy DIY instruction found online (just Google it). Teach children about caring for these outdoor fish, feeding them and making sure they have a fish friendly environment. And, of course, how to board them indoors when it gets too cold outside.

There is a ton of learning and fun outside waiting for you and your children. Spend some time offline with them and away from the electronics this spring and summer. Your children will gain a new appreciation of outdoor fun.