Outdoor Activities for Preschoolers

Are you looking for fun and exciting Outdoor Activities you can introduce to your Preschooler?

Whether you are a parent, an immediate caregiver, or an educator, incorporating Outdoor Activities is paramount to help facilitate the holistic development of children, especially during the early stages of development

Let’s face it being cooped indoors for hours on end can become quite irritating, agitating, and annoying for anyone. 

The best way to describe preschoolers is active, curious, and definitely energetic, often finding the smallest wiggle room to play outdoors. 

Believe it or not, Outdoor Play activities contribute significantly to your child’s development process. 

Playing outside is more than just burning out your preschooler’s excess energy, in fact, these Outdoor Activities are great ways of facilitating the development of physical, cognitive, social, emotional, gross motor, and fine motor skills in children. 

If you are interested in integrating some exciting and interactive Outdoor Activities for your preschooler to enjoy, look no further. 

Here are some of the best Outdoor Activities for Preschoolers that will help get your child to come closer to nature and embark on exciting adventures.

Why are Outdoor Activities Important for Preschool?

If you are a parent of a preschooler, you would know that they’re highly active and always on the move touching and sensing objects in their vicinity.

Most parents consider outdoor activities to be simply fun activities that keep their child away from making a mess at home. 

However, there are more benefits of Outdoor Activities for preschoolers than you may think. 

To help you understand how vital outdoor activities can be for your child, here is a list of some of the benefits of outdoor activities for preschoolers:

Development of Gross Motor Skills:

Gross Motor skills are abilities that require the movement of larger muscles present in the back, torso, legs, and arms. 

These abilities are crucial for facilitating movement and allow individuals to perform physical tasks such as sitting up straight, walking, crawling, jumping, running, or bending. 

Outdoor Activities allow your preschooler to indulge in numerous play tasks that promote the development of their gross motor skills. 

Since the child has full autonomy over their movement without any restrictions, obstacles, or constraints, each Outdoor activity is specifically designed to isolate each gross motor skill to promote optimum gross motor development. 

Children when partaking in any Outdoor activity are promoted to jump, run, leap over obstacles, throw, and catch. 

Helps Develop Social Skills:

What better way to build your child’s social skills than by promoting them to interact with their peers? 

Outdoor Play is a great way of developing social skills like sportsmanship, collaboration, cooperation, and coordination. 

Children pass through each stage of play by partaking in collaborative outdoor activities with their peers. 

Preschoolers can indulge in team sports activities or even outdoor pretend-play activities that help them understand values like sharing and responsibility. 

Promotes the Development of Emotional Skills:

Emotional Resilience is the ability to rationally and efficiently conduct one’s emotions during unexpected situations or emotional crises. 

Outdoor Activities for preschoolers allow them to overcome times of emotional crisis to help develop emotional resilience. 

Children are able to learn how to regulate their emotions if the outcomes of the activities are not in their favor. 

These activities also help preschoolers feel overall happy and satisfied with their achievements after partaking in Outdoor activities. 

Facilitates the development of overall health:

Playing outside on a pleasant sunny day can be a great way of helping the child meet their daily vitamin D requirements. 

Vitamin D is great for maintaining bone health which is crucial during the early stages of development. 

Furthermore, Outdoor play activities are a fun way of burning out excess calories in the body, helping the child enhance their metabolism and boost their immunity. 

Helps Develop Cognitive Skills:

Believe it or not, Outdoor Play Activities are a great way to promote the development of cognitive skills in children. 

Preschoolers are able to develop their cognitive skills by indulging in tasks that require focus, attention, problem-solving skills, and critical thinking. 

A List of the Best Outdoor Activities for Preschoolers:

Children learn in many different ways, one of them being through physical and tangible experiences. 

Outdoor Activities are among the best ways to promote holistic development in preschoolers. 

If you have a tiny preschooler who has more than enough energy to go around and about in the house wreaking havoc, Outdoor Play and Outdoor activities may come to your aid. 

Whether you are a parent or an immediate caregiver looking for fun outdoor activities for your schooler but do not know where to begin, we’ve got you covered. 

Below is a list of some of the best Outdoor activities for Preschoolers that are specifically curated to cater to your preschooler’s age-appropriate needs and requirements:

1. Listening Walk Outdoor Activity:

A simple listening walk outdoors is a great way of getting the child closer to the natural world that surrounds them. 

This Outdoor activity for preschoolers stimulates their auditory senses and promotes them to listen to different sounds of nature while walking around on a trail. 

Whether it is walking around and listening to the wind blow or listening to the birds chirp with each walk outside, the child gets to learn something new about the natural world. 

2. Water Activities with Water Bins:

Water Bins and Water Tables are fun Outdoor Play Activities for preschoolers to venture out of their comfort zone.

It is as simple as adding a few drops of food coloring and different toys to bins filled with water and promoting the child to explore new opportunities and broaden their horizons.

3. Bubble Snakes:

If you are a parent or an immediate caregiver who does not hesitate to commit to fun DIY activities for your child, then the Bubble Snakes Activity is meant for you.

For this activity, you will need a 0.5l water bottle cut in half, a sock, dishwashing soap, and water. 

The preschooler will be required to blow through the water bottle nozzle to get foamy thick bubbles, however, it is best to keep a vigilant eye on the child to prevent them from ingesting the soap. 

4. Colors of Nature Hunt:

Scavenger Hunt is among the best outdoor play activities for toddlers that promote them to develop an appropriate vocabulary of objects present in nature. 

Take your child outside whether it is out in the park or even in your back yard and promote them to find objects of the colors that match the colors on the scavenger hunt chart. 

You can either make your own Colors of Nature Scavenger Hunt chart or you can download a template from the internet. 

This Outdoor Activity is a great way of developing the child’s color recognition skills as well as helping them develop their gross motor skills and fine motor skills. 

5. Painting the Sidewalk with DIY Puffy Paint:

Puffy paint can be a fun and exciting twist to your daily old basic watercolors. This Outdoor Activity only requires a sidewalk or a patio and DIY puffy paint. 

Allow your child to unleash their inner Picasso by painting on the sidewalk with washable paint or your DIY Puffy Paint that can be stored in condiment bottles.

6. Water Gun Play:

Water Gun Play is a great collaborative Outdoor Activity for preschoolers that promotes children to interact with their peers and build new relationships. 

This fun activity only requires child-safe water guns and can be a form of individual play collaborative activity or a team play activity. 

7. Water Transfer Activity:

Transferring Activities is among the best ways of promoting the development of fine motor skills in children. 

This engaging outdoor activity for preschoolers promotes them to transfer colored water from one bin and pour it into another bin to enhance their fine motor skills. 

8. Balloon Painting:

This Outdoor activity takes having fun outdoors to a whole different level. This outdoor activity can be quite messy but equally if not more fun and exhilarating for any preschooler. 

All you need for this fun activity are some water balloons filled with paint and a large sheet of white paper. 

Allow your child to throw the paint-filled balloons on the paper to create unique patterns and designs. 

9. Making a Dam:

This Outdoor Activity for preschoolers also incorporates elements of STEM education. 

All you need for this fun STEM-inspired outdoor activity is a wooden board covered in tin foil, running water, and objects like sticks, stones, or rocks. 

Allow the child to stop the flow of water by creating a beaver dam with sticks and stones. 

10. What can Melt Under the sun:

This Outdoor Activity is another STEM-inspired Activity that not only caters to the preschooler’s natural curiosity but also helps them understand the different states matter. 

For this Outdoor Activity for preschoolers, you will require a baking tray with a compartment or a muffin tray and some random objects for comparison. 

Allow the child to place the tray under the sun and observe which object melts and which does not. 

11. Washing Toys:

This Outdoor Activity for preschoolers allows them to develop a sense of responsibility and order along with endless outdoor fun. 

Promote the child to wash their beloved toys in a water tub with child-safe liquid dish soap. 

12. Growing Flowers:

Promote your child to develop a green thumb promoting them to grow their very own flower garden. 

This fun outdoor activity allows the preschool to develop a sense of fulfillment, confidence, and independence from a very young age. 

13. Sponge Water Bombs:

Sponge Water Bombs are another great DIY Outdoor Activity for preschoolers that is perfect for the summertime to blow off some excess heat while playing outdoors. 

It takes only a couple of minutes to create water bombs from cut-up sponges and can be a great family activity or group activity for children. 

14. Bug Scavenger Hunt:

This outdoor activity is a great way of promoting the child to learn about different insects as well as developing the child’s vocabulary. 

All you need for this activity is a bug chart and your child’s vivid imagination.

Simply take your child outdoors for a walk and allow them to go on a scavenger hunt to find bugs that resemble closely or are the same as the bugs on the chart. 

15. Colorful Rice Sensory Bin:

Rice play activities are a fun way of promoting sensory development and fine motor skills in children. 

For this fun and engaging outdoor activity for preschoolers you will require mason jars, and colored rice for the child to interact with. 

16. Scooping and Transferring Bins:

Scooping and Transferring activities are another way of promoting the development of fine motor and sorting skills in children. 

This outdoor activity allows the preschooler to scoop out different colored balls from one water-filled bin and transfer it into another bin.