Sam Goldsworthy: Keeping children active in the outside world

As you have previously read on our blogs you would have learnt that we love being outside with the children each day so we thought we would share our top tips for keeping the children active whilst in the outside. Did you know that young children need to be active for at least 180 minutes a day?

In the garden we do lots of planting and include the children in digging the soil, pulling weeds and also harvesting potatoes which as well as physical activity has many other rich learning opportunities included such as caring for plants, learning where our food comes from as well as many maths skills such as size ordering, estimating and counting. We also use our wheelbarrow to transport our weeds and potatoes in as well as carrying the full watering case to water our plants.

Children love to help and enjoy little tasks so ask them to help - there are many jobs that they can do such as water the plants, pick the weeds etc. This encourages them to build resilience, self worth and also builds their self confidence and allows them to feel part of the team too.

We also provide the children with water and paintbrushes so that they can mark make using the brushes on the fence, patio and the playhouse. This is great mess free activity for people who do not like mess. We encourage the children to draw big circles using their gross motor skills. This simple activity keeps them active and busy with a purpose . We also use chalks too to draw big circles and a hopscotch which again encourages physical movement as well as many other fabulous learning opportunities

We also regularity visit the woods where we encourage the children to climb trees, balance and crawl under the logs. We feel this is important for children to manage their own risks and strengthen their body core too. They also learn that if they persevere that they can achieve tasks in the end. They will remember each time they visit the same place that last time they could not climb over but today they did.

We encourage them to do many simple tasks such as running and finding leaves, sticks and twigs to get them moving continually. We also bring some wooden cars to the woods. They push these over the mounds, under the branches and up the trees. Again another fab way to encourage them to use different parts of the body to move.

At the beach we encourage digging using spade, making sandcastles and carrying pebbles round too. We balance these to make mini towers as well as making little houses and castles as well as paddling in the sea.

We quite often do yoga whether this be at the beach, the garden or the woods to provide some calm time as well as improving their body strength, balance, motor skills and coordination.

Pop over to our Facebook and Instagram pages - Sam Goldsworthy Childminding. We would love to share ideas .