Outdoor Activities for Primary School
Happy new year!
This pandemic has really taken its toll and put huge pressure on our schools and teachers and we at GAP just want to say a huge thank you for all you've done and continue to do to support our young people and families.
As we know, the outdoors is one of the safest places to be right now, so wrap up and get out when you can. Read on for some easy, accessible, and prep-light activities to bring outdoors with your class.
Despite the cold and dark, this is still a great time of year to enjoy nature, you might just try shorter, more frequent sessions. Keep moving, keep the blood pumping and you’ll stay nice and warm!
Game time: Frost Giants
(inspired by Fly, Robin, Fly from The Children’s Forest, Casey, Richardson, d’Ascoli)
What you need:
- Sticks or rope to make a circle
- 5 Brightly coloured ribbons/beanbags/scraps of cloth/balls
How to play:
- Make a circle.
- Half of the class are Robins and the other half are frost giants.
- The robins count to 30 inside the circle with their eyes shut.
- The frost sprites hide or hang the brightly coloured items somewhere within the boundary.
- When they wake up, the robins hunt for the colourful items and try to return with them to the circle.
- The Frost Giants try to catch the robins, ‘freeze’ them and steal the item to hide again. Only robins can unfreeze each other.
The game ends when all the robins have been frozen or all the items have been collected by the robins. Alternatively, the teacher can time the game and several “rounds” can be played.
Activities
Younger students might enjoy taking numeracy and literacy lessons outside.
Shape spotting:
Go on a shape hunt! You could look for curves, angles, patterns, or heart-shapes on the run-up to Valentine’s Day in February!
Nature phonics:
- Use twigs to make letter shapes and practice letter recognition with infant classes.
- Go on a hunt to find things that begin or end with the sound you’re working on this week. Play eye-spy!
Nature numbers:
- Make twig or pinecone numbers.
- Collect twigs and arrange them from smallest to biggest.
- Find clusters of berries and catkins, then count or sort them. Alder, hazel and holly are great for this.
Have fun!
Thanks again, and keep up the amazing work, from Emer and all the team at Global Action Plan.