Do More Outdoors

The month of April is a great season for diving into or reconnecting with earth-friendly activities with little ones. These quick ideas are written to launch your own ideas and exploration of your own family or classroom connection to this beautiful blue marble we call home. There is no right or wrong way to do any of them and you can do one or all of them this spring and beyond. As a busy mom of four all of these ebb and flow in our own lives and are of course low-prep and low-cost ways to deepen that connection to your place in the world and taking care of it!

After many years of working outside the home, I found myself a little lost on how to entertain a toddler while in a chapter of being home with him all day. I had worked with groups of kids for years, and I had a toolkit, but I needed something different in the belly of covid. I began searching online for outdoor learning activities for toddlers. Websites and books I found either required an expensive list of materials, hours of adult preparation time, or assistance of technology, sometimes all three. All of the things I was trying to avoid.

Toddlers learn through play, and the simpler, the better! Have you ever given your toddler a cardboard box? They don’t need expensive learning gadgets! I realized the advice out there was much about selling a lot of “educational tools” and less about how to just get your kid outside and learn from their world.

These ideas, pulled from my years working in early education and largely inspired by our own kids’ interests and ideas, are minimal set-up, inexpensive, and tech-free. Alas, here is the list of 13 outdoor learning activities for toddlers I couldn’t find!