Outdoor activities

Is the weather nice outside? Then why don’t you play with the children outdoors? Children tend to get bored when they are cooped up in the house all day, so the nice weather provides a great opportunity to take the children outside to play. The large open space provided by the outdoors allows children to run around and engage in more active activities that will keep them happy, healthy and most importantly, entertained! Another great advantage of letting the children play outdoors for you as a babysitter is that all of the physical activity will drain their energy so that they will be a lot more calm inside the house.

Children can keep themselves occupied for hours outside without the need for toys, but it might also be fun for you to join them in playing games so that you can both stayed entertained. We’ve provided some great tips for activities that you can do with the children outdoors.

Piggy in the middle is a fun ball game for multiple children (you will need at least 3 players). The game is played with one ball and one “piggy”. The remaining players form a circle around the “piggy” to start with and the objective of the game is to keep the ball away from the “piggy”. Basically, the other players need to throw the ball to each other, and the “piggy” has to try to intercept the ball when it is in the air. If the “piggy” succeeds in intercepting the ball, then the player that threw the ball becomes the “piggy”, and so the game goes on.

To make the game more fun and challenging, you can have multiple “piggies” or multiple balls, but you’ll also need more players as well.

What you’ll need:

• A ball

Hopscotch is a fun outdoor game that can be played right in front of the house, so you don’t have to worry if the house doesn’t have a garden. You’ll need some colored sidewalk chalk so that the children can draw out the hopscotch “court”, which should consist of around 10 numbered squares. The last square is typically the “home base”. The aim of the game is to throw a small stone into the first the square and then hop through the court on one foot, alternating the foot between squares, to retrieve it. At points where two squares are drawn next to each other, players can put one foot in each square or can hop on one foot from one square to the other. At the “home base”, the player must turn and complete the reverse trip back down the court. The rules of the game dictate that the stone must fall within the square and not bounce or touch any lines. The player must also hop within the square and if they touch any lines or lose their balance, then their turn is over.

The goal is to be the first to go through ten turns of the court (by throwing the stone into the next square at every turn so that you are playing up the court). When you lose your turn, you can start your new turn where you left off.

Children can also get creative by drawing the court in different colors or by adding images to the squares!

What you’ll need:

• Sidewalk chalk
• A small stone

You can play a jump rope game with multiple players where two players swing each end of the rope (in the same direction!) and a third player jumps over the swinging rope. Children can also play by themselves. If there are more than four players, each player can switch turns when the player gets caught in the rope. Jump ropes are great for childrens’ staminas!

What you’ll need:

• A jump rope

Football with bottles requires at least three players and works as follows. Each player fills up a bottle with water and places it down anywhere on the field. The players should then gather in the middle of the field and form a circle around the ball - each player should be at least 10 steps away from the ball. Once a signal is given for the game to start, the players should run to get possession of the ball and try to knock over other players’ bottles with it, by kicking the ball into their bottles. Players whose bottles have been kicked over can only straighten them once they get possession of the ball. The aim of the game is to have the most water left in your bottle at the end of the game. The game can stop naturally once every players’ but one bottles have spilled all their contents, or can be stopped by a neutral player that calls the end of the game after a certain amount of time.

What you’ll need:

• One bottle per person
• Water
• A ball

As you can see, there are a lot of different fun activities for children that they can do outdoors. Remember to protect children from the sun in the summer by applying sunscreen, giving them hats to wear and keeping them hydrated!