Outdoor Autumn Games for Parents and Kids

Acorn Toss

This is a bit like Bocce with acorns. Of course, if you can’t find acorns, you can use small pebbles. This is a game of control; not wild tossing movements.

Materials: Acorns, pinecones, sticks, marking pens

You can play this game between you and one child; two children can play opposite one another. If you have a group of kids with you, then divide players into pairs or two teams with two players each. As you are walking you can collect game markers. For fairness, opposing teams should use similar game pieces (acorns or pebbles) and color a dot on their team’s pieces with a marker.

You will need to find a playing area that is clear of shrubs, trees, and small plants for a distance at least as long as three times the tallest child’s height. Use sticks to mark a starting point, where players will stand. One player (or the adult) tosses a pinecone or another object onto the ground. The other players then try to toss their marker as close to that pinecone as they can. Each team gets four tries with four acorns. The player or team that gets closest wins.

Target Practice

Help kids develop hand-eye coordination while focusing their urge to randomly pick up and toss small objects.

Materials: Acorns, pebbles, pine cones, and sticks gathered on the walk.

Some kids just want to pick up and throw things. Sometimes they don’t grasp the implications of their actions and it can become tiresome to continuously say, “Sticks and rocks stay on the ground,” (because you’re opening yourself to all those acorn and pinecone loopholes).

Like Acorn Toss, this game directs kids’ energy. Make it clear, “If I don’t have to tell anyone to keep the things on the ground on the ground, then for 90 seconds you can play a game that involves tossing acorns.” I’ve found this technique works with kids I’ve just met on a field trip and they will monitor one another so to reach the promised activity near the end of the walk.

Look for a clear area where kids can throw things without endangering things or other people. Gather some acorns and pinecones in a large pile so players don’t go wandering around during the activity or feel frustrated that they are losing out on game time by collecting game pieces.

For one game, place a stick to indicate where kids should stand. Then kids take turns trying to toss their acorn further than other players. Another option is to try to land their acorn as close as possible to another player’s game piece.

For another version, construct different sized and shaped boxes with the sticks and set them at different distances from the starting point. Toss the acorns in these targets

Nature Observation Games – A New Way of Seeing

It is easy to get caught up in walking and talking and looking straight ahead in the direction you’re headed. If we hear a noise, we may look up. If the footing is uneven, we may glance down. However, what do we miss by not looking up, down, and side-to-side as we walk? What do we miss by not noticing some of the smaller details along the way?

These two activities will get you and your children looking at those smaller details with a couple of games. ‘Angles’ can be played with any age. With young children, you may need to hold the object at the item you want them to describe. ‘Camera’ is appropriate if you are with one child or you have an even number of children who are at least seven years old and up so they can safely lead a partner wearing a blindfold. As always, you best know the children you are with.

Angles
You can do this activity one of two ways depending on if you want to use something small that you can hold or something large that you can stand next to. With a small object, you can either stop to pass it around or you can pass it among the children you are will as you walk along.

If you find something small, you hold it and describe it. The next person takes the object and describes it in a different way. Recommend that the child turn the object so she can look at it from a different angle. Continue passing the object around, each child describing it in a different way.

Remind children that they can use senses other than sight. How does the object sound if they run their finger down it? What does the item smell like? What is the object’s texture? (The children should avoid using their sense of taste.)

If the object is too large to hold – say a building or a statue, stop to gather around the object. Again, each person describes a different detail that they see, hear, smell, or feel. If the group is large, this may seem too challenging, but look at it as a way for the kids to use their creativity and imagination.

Large or small object, because children can’t repeat something else that someone else has said, they must not only use their observation skills but also pay attention to what the other children in the group have said.

Camera
Look for an area that offers a variety of things for individuals to observe. Since one player will have his eyes closed during much of the game, you may want to select terrain that the children with you will be able to physically manipulate.

One player (the photographer) leads another player (the camera) with her/his eyes closed to an interesting object. The photographer aims the camera and taps the camera’s shoulder or gently tugs on the camera’s ear. The camera opens its shutter (eyes) for 3-to-5 seconds then closes its shutter. After a few exposures, switch positions. Afterward, you could have students draw a picture of the most memorable thing they saw.

Introduce one of these games on a walk and save the other for another time. Both of these activities can easily work into your repertoire of walking games as they require no planning or supplies, just an awareness of the place around you.

Exploring Color in the Outdoors – Activities with Children

Color activities aren’t limited to preschoolers who are learning their colors. Color hunts and matching games can help young artists notice how the variety of hues around them goes beyond what a box of crayons or paint palette offers. Color activities work on observation skills and help children and adults become more aware of their surroundings. For more art-oriented activities, see my book, Art in Nature, Nature in Art.

Color Hunt
Go to the paint department of your local hardware store and gather an assortment of paint chip samples. Cut the paint strips into individual colors. For younger children who may be overwhelmed by the subtle variations of color offered by paint manufacturer’s, use a box of crayons so the children can stick with general colors.

On a walk, give each child one-to-three of the color chips. While walking, they should watch for items that are a close match to the examples. When they find a match, they can trade that color sample for another. You can also stop along the way and hand out color chips for the children to match while at that particular location.

Quick Colors
While walking, the adult stops and calls out “quick colors.” Everyone freezes for a count of ten and then starts calling out the different colors they see. Although younger children can be satisfied calling out colors like “green” or “blue,” older children can try to be more specific and imaginative and name colors as “blue-gray,” “cheddar cheese,” or “grape jelly.”

Just One Color
At any point during the walk, ask the children to look for items that share one particular color. Make the walk a challenge and select a color that doesn’t seem to be predominant in the area. Objects can be natural or manmade and can be any size. Depending on where you are walking, look for yellow in a swirl of a ball, the frame of a trampoline, a flower. If you are taking this walk with young children who are still learning their colors, bring along a crayon or piece of construction paper to show the color.

Nature Investigation and Imagination

When walking with your child or children you can keep a few games in mind to play along the way. The games help to focus both you and your children on your surroundings. It is easy to get caught up in conversations, which, although valuable to your relationship, can move you out of the present moment. Instead of noticing where you are walking at the moment you are busy talking about going to the mall and selecting a birthday present for the child’s friend.

You can still talk, but every so often try to bring everyone’s awareness to the moment with sensory activities. The following game starts off with observation and works its ways to a (sometimes wild) imagination activity. Whether your child is a preschooler or a preteen, this word game allows kids to stretch their creativity.

One person starts this game by looking around and selecting something fairly large that is within view, such as a mountain or a tree, and says, “I see a tree.” The next person then picks something big on the tree, and says, “I see bark on the tree.” The next person has to pick a thing that’s on the bark, “I see a branch on the bark.” (If two people are playing, then you would go back-and-forth with your child.)

Participants continue in this fashion, noticing smaller and more specific details until they can no longer actually see anything to mention. Then they are free to make up details, such as, “I see a bug on the leaf,” and the next person might say, “I see a baby bug on the back of the big bug,” and so on until players can’t think of anything smaller. Move down the trail and have a different individual start another round.

Backyard Nature Fun

Whether your child loves collecting rocks or looking at insects, you don't have to travel far to encourage their interest in nature. By looking at the nature in their backyard, kids learn that nature is all around them and that it isn't limited to rainforests and polar bears that they can watch on television.

Below are links to explorations, games, and craft projects that kids can do in their own backyard, some on their own and other activities with at least one other child (or adult).

Play This Magic Square Nature Collection Game
Go Bug Collecting for Outdoor Fun
Make a Stone Cairn
Nature Memory Games
Backyard Games that Get Kids Playing in Nature
Activities for Kids Who Collect Rocks
How to Discover What Worms Need to Survive

Backyard Summer Fun

Although summer brings family vacations and camp experiences for some children, kids may best enjoy the simplicity of spending time in their own backyard. Whether kids are getting together with siblings, neighbors, or friends and relatives who are over the house for a play date or a party, there are an endless number of ways kids can have fun right at home.

Cool Summer Fun with Icy Kids' Activities

Backyard Games for Active Kids

Games Played with Sticks for Indoor and Outdoor Fun

How Kids Can Invent Fun Games to Play Outdoors

How to Make Bubble Blowers

Water Balloon Games

Backyard Camping for Kids and Families

Pick up that Stick!

When walking along with a group of children, you’ll almost never hear me tell children to pick up sticks. Usually, I’m trying to avert having one child accidently hitting another child with a stick so you’ll hear me say one (or ten) times, “Stick down.” Kids always want hiking sticks, which I tell them are fine if they are walking with their family but not in a group of twelve-to-fifteen individuals. I can just envision some kid tripping over someone else’s walking staff. (On occasion, when I know the kids better than those on a two-hour field trip, I have allowed hiking sticks.)

Kids can play a lot of games with small sticks, those as long as the child’s forearm from wrist to elbow. Children can pick up fallen sticks and use them to build log cabin-like structures on a clear patch of ground. Natural sticks also provide a greater challenge for a game of pick-up sticks. Kids will think it’s silly to use real sticks as Lincoln Logs or pick-up sticks.

Children can also “write” their names or words with sticks or try creating other images with an assortment of branches so to get some different colors. Place two sticks opposite one another and encourage children to pretend they are jumping over a stream, as defined by the sticks. Keep moving apart the sticks, as the child continues to challenge himself. Try other Games Played with Sticks for Indoor and Outdoor Fun. Sticks are a free toy that are a bit like the boxes that house presents … they are an open-ended toy that supports a variety of creative play opportunities.

Take Your Teddy Bear for a Walk

Chances are that your kids have indoor toys and outdoor toys. However, they can liven up their outdoor play by taking some of those indoor toys outside. This may actually encourage children to play outside, particularly if they thought that the only way they could play with certain items was to do so inside.

If your child likes playing dress up, then dressing up like a fairy or a knight takes on a whole new level when the child can bestow fairy magic to the flowers in the garden or the child can sneak among the trees and shrubs in search of dragons and evildoers.

Barbie may enjoy a boating expedition down a slow-moving stream. Invite stuffed animals to a picnic under the backyard tree instead of keeping them cooped up inside waiting for high tea. Action figures may encounter more action among grass and fallen branches than they’d ever come across in the land of carpeting and dining room chair legs.

Okay, building toys like K’nex or Lego probably won’t manage grass and dirt without a number of pieces going missing. However, if your child hasn’t played with a toy for months, see if taking it outside gives the item a second life.

Work jigsaw puzzles on a piece of plywood. Draw, color, paint, or work on activity books outside at a picnic table.

Taking indoor toys outside just might spark your children’s imaginations and creativity.

Easter Games and Passover Activities that Welcome the Return of Spring

What is it about spring holidays that encourage a tradition of hide-and-seek? Those who celebrate Easter hide real eggs or plastic treat-filled eggs; and, a Passover custom is to hide a piece of matzo and then send the children to go look for it – the finder gets a treat. Is it that flowers are popping out of the ground where nothing but dirt was for months and leaves are starting to crack open the tight buds that hid them for so long that games of hiding and revealing seem appropriate?

Celebrate the season with a game of hide-and-go-seek. For variety, try the game probably best known as Sardines, in which everyone goes searching for “It” and then joins her when they find her. The challenge is for the increasingly larger group to remain hidden from those who are yet to find “It.”

Plan a scavenger hunt – there’s no reason it has to be for eggs. Theme Walks with Children describes six different scavenger hunts that you can do in nature or in an urban or suburban neighborhood. Or, play a game of Hot and Cold. Hide something, indoors or outdoors, and as seekers get closer to the object, call out, “tepid, warm, warmer” and as they move away from the item tell them, “cool, colder, icy.”

Although children might not care for the symbolism of these games, they are a reminder that Nature is revealing herself throughout this season.

A Teeny Tiny Nature Hunt

This hike requires kids to look for small items in nature and therefore forces them to walk more slowly. I find that one of the hardest challenges with taking kids into nature – convincing them that they can only really see things in nature if they move slow, giving them the opportunity to look around at their surroundings. If they are dawdling it’s either because they are deep in conversation or they are tired from charging along earlier.

For this nature hunt, give each child a penny. As they walk along, they try to look for things that fit, whole, on the penny. Rocks, seeds, nuts, evergreen needles, buds, grass heads, clover, moss, flowers, ants, millipedes, etc. can all fit on this small surface. If you feel a penny is too small for a child, you could use a yogurt lid, a poker chip, or any other flat surface (it doesn’t have to be round).

Children can do this activity in their backyard as well as any other location in nature. You can play this while walking along a trail or when you stop for a break and the kids want to wander around and explore the area where you’ve paused.

Because the items are so small, you can tell children that they can pluck a bud from a tree branch or a needle from a spruce tree; although, if you’d rather they not damage living plants you can ask kids to hold their penny up to an object in order to confirm the size.

Kids may want to play this game for five minutes or thirty minutes. If the children aren’t inclined to continue moving slowly after finding one or two tiny items, you can randomly call out, “Penny Hunt” while walking and give the children thirty seconds to find as many small objects as they can within that time.

However you play the game, it encourages everyone to notice things that they may have missed while walking along at top speed.

Nature Trail Code Game

This game requires two teams of at least two players each – one of the players on each team can be an adult. You can play this in a large, forested backyard or along the trail in a state forest. Avoid playing this in a wide open space because one team will be setting trail markers that tell the other team where to go.

You can make the patterns below with sticks or stones (or leaves, but they can get blown away). Of course, you can create your own codes, but both teams should do this together so the teams speak a common language. A representative of each team should record the codes on index cards or in a nature notebook so they don’t forget their stick and stone language.

One team heads out, laying trail codes that the other team will follow. Set the markers in the center of the trail. Although the sticks or stones should be large enough to be easily seen, there is no need to make them so large that they become a tripping hazard. After a ten minute or so head start, the second team sets out, reading the codes and following the team.

The first team continues laying markers for another ten minutes and then they can find an ending spot, just off the trail, where they can wait, perhaps with some snacks to share with the second team. For the trip back, the second team heads out first, laying new trail markers for the other team to follow.

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Go Straight

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Turn Right (reverse the direction of the arrow to indicate “Turn Left”)

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Turn around and Go Back


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Not This Way

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Cross the Stream

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Gone Home