10 Outdoor Activities To Do With Your Kids In The Winter
After the popularity of my post 10 Activities To Do With Your Kids In The Winter, I thought I would follow it up with some ideas for activities that you can still do outside with your kids during these colder months.
10 Outdoor Activities To Do In The Winter
Hunt for the Gruffalo
You could go on a trail to hunt for the Gruffalo or the Gruffalo’s Child or the Stick Man. Why not have a look online for your nearest Forestry Commission site and check which ones have these trails? If you live in or near to Hampshire, Alice Holt has each of these characters to find. It is a great way of getting out and about and doing something as a family and as it is open all year round you can still enjoy this in the winter too.
Go Ape
Go Ape is a treetop adventure for adults and children. It involves zip wires, climbing, obstacles, Tarzan swings and all above the forest floor. This will also be found at a Forestry Commission site. Full training and safety harnesses are provided and it’s a great outdoor activity for the winter as well as the summer.
Train Watching
Jake is obsessed with trains so this is a pretty usual activity for us to do. We are lucky(?) enough to live quite close to the train line which has a bridge and is perfect for us to watch them go by from. If we wave hard enough we even get a toot! It really makes his day. Simple to do and completely free and it doesn’t matter if it is raining or shining… or snowing!
Nature Walk
There are so many forests, woodland walks, country parks and beaches around that are completely free to visit across the UK. To make things a little more interesting you could print off a nature walk sheet from the internet and hunt for certain items/plants/animals and learn as you enjoy your winter walk. The RSPB has plenty of hints and tips over on their website and when it comes to outdoor activities for the winter, this has to be one of our favourites.
Star Gazing
With it now becoming dark earlier it is the perfect time to teach your children about the solar system. Younger children are usually in bed whilst it is still light during the summer months and may have never even seen the stars or the moon. You can use the BBC’s stargazing activity pack to help you identify the constellations, make fun rockets and learn about the solar system.
Scavenger Hunt
You could make up your own hunt or maybe get your kid’s to come up with one. If you wanted to give it a festive theme you could use Christmas chocolates as the prize at the end or trick or treat sweets at Halloween. You can adapt each hunt to where you may be carrying it out or dependant on the weather. For example, if you were heading to the woods you could look to collect certain items, such as leaves, conkers, acorns, twigs, at the beach you could hunt for stones, shells, seaweed, driftwood, it would be completely up to you. Or you could even come up with a role-play to act out and then head out to a woods or your back garden and have some family fun!
Snow
Will we get some? Won’t we?
It’s always something we long for over Christmas and if we are lucky enough to get a good snowfall this winter you can have plenty of fun. Making snowmen, sledging, snowball fights, Igloo making and snow angels. So much you can do with snow! Why not also try adding food colouring to water and painting pictures in the white stuff?
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Make a bird feeder
Winter is the time of year when birds can do with a little help with feeding. If you only want to get a little crafty you could make a simple wooden ledge and string it up on a tree for the birds to get to… Squirrels may get there first, mind! If you have great carpentry skills you could have a go at making a full stand or make a fat ball covered in seed or perhaps a fab eco-friendly bird feeder like this one. For details on what food you should be putting out just visit the RSPB website.
Oh, and don’t forget the bugs! They will need somewhere to shelter in the colder weather check out my post on making a bug house.
Splashing in muddy puddles
Take a leaf out of Peppa’s book (you know you love her!) and pop your wellies on and go looking for those amazing muddy puddles! It’s a great time of year to go splashing mad and not care. Then return home to dry off, warm off, sit next to the fire and drink your hot chocolate. Mmmmmm.
Country Parks
Local country parks often have events on all year round and will advertise these on their websites or social media pages. Keep an eye out early for any Halloween events, festive days and/or Christmas Grottoes. Our local country park is full of play areas, a farm, train, lake, slides, sandpits and dinosaur statues and so much more. They also regularly put up their big red tent and hold events inside, have face painting, clowns, stalls and birds of prey to admire. The winter is also classed as out of season, meaning the prices are lower so get checking out what is local to you. Do check closing periods though as some take a break for a couple of months and re-open in the new year.
Do you have any more to add? What outdoor activities do you love to get up to in the winter?
Some fun things on your list, have you tried Geocaching, equally as fun in winter as summer (although a bit colder), in fact less leaves and plant growth so sometimes easier (although more leaf litter)
#ChasingNature
No What is geocaching?
Some great ideas here, I love star gazing 🙂
Stevie x
Thanks for reading. Yes I may try this with Jake this year. Now he’s a little older he will understand 🙂
Where is your country park? It sounds amazing and I want to visit!
Thank you SO much for the link to the Stargazing activity pack, I’ll be making use of that.
Geocaching by the way is essentially treasure hunting using a GPS device (usually using an app on your phone). The best app you have to pay for (about £6 I think?) but it’s really good fun and gets the kids outdoors if they’re not feeling like it too.
#Chasingnature
Hi, thanks for reading! The country park is Wellington Country Park just outside Reading. I have a Halloween post on it because we had so much fun there when they had all their events on. We are so lucky to have it just up the road and I buy a season ticket for us. Thanks for the geocaching tip, I had no idea!!
I was so excited to read this post as I new it would be fabulous and inspiring! So many brilliant ideas which everyone can do! Thank you for sharing this beautiful outdoor post with us. I particularly love the idea of star gazing as it is much easier to do in these winter months! #ChasingNature
Thanks so much xx
Great list! Only think I wouldn’t do is star gaze – I’m actually scared of stars! Haha! Well, it’s not really the stars themselves, it’s more that I feel insignificant when I look at the stars and it makes me feel queasy. 😛
#ChasingNature
Oh you made me laugh with that comment! Scared of stars hahaha. I get what you mean, you start to think about everything… my mind can’t quite comprehend it all. Thanks for reading xx
Nice list – I used to love looking for The Gruffalo in our local Country Park when the boys were little but he always he so well lol #chasingnature
Thanks. Ours is great because we can also find the stick man too 🙂 Thanks for reading xx