The Free Outdoors
Posted by Shop Pompom on
The Free Outdoors: a great investment
The best adventure playground on earth is outdoors. However, children in Britain spend just 16 minutes a day playing or exploring in parks and other open spaces.
Kids are drawn to the outside, it’s grubby and exciting and can offer the calculated risk, exercise and adventure that is needed to increase independence, health and fine and gross motor skills. It is also free!
However, with increasing dependence on technology, both caregivers and children sometimes need a little encouragement to get outside. Enter the #150hoursoutside project.
This fun challenge, launched by mother and Educator, Leah McDermott has swept the globe with its determined hashtag to encourage adults and children to spend 150 hours outside in 2019. It sounds like a lot but it’s only 3 hours a week, less than 30 minutes a day, yet double the national average.
Through social media, the project has inspired caregivers the world over to share ideas of activities, games and walks so children can enjoy the beauty of nature.
This has been taken one step further by children’s illustrator, Ginny, for the 1,000 hours outside project, calling for parents to match the time spent with a screen time with time spent in nature.
We picked our top 10 favourite things to do outside:
- Paint your body in mud – grab a paintbrush and tattoo your designs
- Have a picnic and roast marshmallows
- Grab a magnifying glass and hunt for bugs
- Pick up rubbish
- Get creative, make a stick a sword, Make a log a train.
- Pull weeds from the garden
- Set up an obstacle course
- Teach yourself a new game
- Play sardines
- Dig for worms