Outdoor Summer Holiday Activities – August Blog

The summer holidays have arrived and what a perfect time to get your little ones in the garden! Wondering how to keep them active and entertained over the coming weeks? Look no further, we have you covered.

We may be slightly biased in saying that gardening is a great and fun activity, but it has been researched that being out in the garden can make a positive impact on our health and well-being. For our little oaks these benefits can include:

• Building self-esteem
• Making them feel happy
• Good for socialising with family / develops social skills
• Boosts Vitamin D
• Growing their own food, encouraging healthy eating

It’s also a great learning curve and point of discussion. Sensory development is a further benefit of being outdoors. Gardening will engage all sorts of senses and helps children recognise them without even realising! Who knew learning could be so fun?

 So, without further ado, here are 3 ideas to get stuck into throughout August:

 1. Make a miniature garden!

This is such a fun activity to get stuck into and will allow so much room for creativity. All you need to do is have a hunt around the garden (or a local park area) and find some interesting bits and bobs to put into your mini garden. Psst, that unwanted moss in the garden could be great as grass in the mini gardens.

Once you’ve got a little haul from the garden, find some unused plant pots (or perhaps a sturdy cardboard box that’s going out for recycling) and fill them with soil. From here, the kids can go off into their own creative world and come up with a miniature garden that reflects their own interests! This is a great exercise, perfect for all ages, as it can be as simple or as complicated as they like! It could also encourage further crafts if they want to really take their gardens to the next level with particular themes such as fairies, football, dinosaurs or a safari.

A simple, laid-back nature craft, no rules or fiddly crafting involved; just lots of imagination.

 2. DIY Recycled Bottle Greenhouse

A slightly fiddlier exercise, one for the older children; making a DIY Bottle Greenhouse. Here at the Old Railway Line, we’re passionate about re-using and recycling so we love this activity. You can use the DIY greenhouse to grow seeds in the windowsill. This will teach our little oaks the art of patience when it comes to growing your own plants and will give them the satisfaction of knowing they’ve grown and nurtured something all on their own in a house that they’ve made themselves.

For this activity you will need:

• A clear plastic bottle
• Scissors
• A skewer
• Compost
• Seeds

First, you will need to remove the lid from the bottle. Rather than discarding the lid, maybe it could be used as a mini pond for a mini garden from activity 1! After removing the lid, make a few holes in the bottom of the bottle with a skewer and then cut off the top half of the bottle with scissors. Now that the bottle is in 2 halves, add compost to the bottom half, plant some seeds and water! Best type of seeds to plant in your DIY greenhouse are beetroot, celery, lettuce, basil, parsley.

Once the seeds are planted and watered, fit the top half back on over the bottom half of the bottle, place on a dish or tray to catch any drips and pop it onto a sunny windowsill! Make sure to keep the seeds well-watered and watch them grow!

When they get big enough to handle, transplant the seedlings into pots or plant in the garden. You can then start the process all over again with your DIY Greenhouse!

 3. 5 Senses Scavenger Hunt

Finally, we’re onto activity number 3, another fun one for all ages. This can be done in the garden or out in a wider area if you’re feeling adventurous! This could, actually, tie into activity number 1 if you do this activity first.

For this activity, all you’ll need to do is set up a checklist beforehand including anything you like for the children to have to find. Here we have an example of a checklist that you can download and print out:

The checklist can be as long or as short as you like and you could challenge them by asking for 2 or 3 objects for each bullet point. This activity, as the name suggests, gets all 5 senses involved and is fun for the kids to go off and explore to see what they can find.

Since this activity involves finding objects, it might be a nice idea to do this activity and then go straight into activity number 1 and see what sort of garden they can create with the objects they find.

 There we have 3 garden activities that you and your little ones can get stuck into over the summer holidays. If you decide to give any of them a go, feel free to send us a picture of your creations over on our social media channels as we’d love to see them!

Stay safe and enjoy your summer together in the garden!