Nature – The Greatest Playground for Kids

Posted by Mary Babiez on Jun 26 2017

Every year parents spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on toys, gadgets, electronics, and other store bought activities for their kids. While many of these items and activities are beneficial for keeping young minds and bodies active, they also can be over-stimulating and unnecessary expenses. While there is a time and a place for structured play, kids also need unstructured play time to develop imagination. This is easy to accommodate when the world’s largest playground is right outside your back door.

Every toy, book, TV program, and movie that comes out has been designed and redesigned several times to make it educational and entertaining for children. The great thing about nature is that, while being entertaining and stimulating, it is also educational and constantly changing. Nature can teach children about life and sciences; and simply being outdoors without artificial stimulation encourages the use of imagination.

The great outdoors is also great for your wallet! Depending on where you live, exploring nature is usually pretty inexpensive, if not free. You can go as simple as your own backyard or local park, or perhaps spend a day at a local nature center or state park (which usually has low cost fee or membership). This way, you don’t have to pay for expensive toys, jungle gyms, or expensive entertainment centers, but you still get the benefit of stimulating and educational play.

The great outdoors stimulates independent thinking! Lately there’s been a trend in education towards inquiry based learning. Researchers have found that if young people use exploration and experimentation to figure out answers on their own, they learn better, and retain information longer. This also helps them develop skills to enhance learning later in life. What better learning environment than nature! There are lessons for kids of all ages to discover about the world around them.

Spending time in the great outdoors is eco-friendly! Everyone these days is trying to be green and environmentally conscious. What better way to do your part than to get your children interested in their own planet right now when they’re young and impressionable? Their time outside may seem nothing more than simple outdoor play right now, but it can easily turn into a future hobby, career, or world saving invention.

While it’s easy to forget, childhood isn’t just for learning about how to be an adult, it’s also about having fun. Nature gives kids a chance to use their imagination and be free to just be kids.

While unstructured play outside is great for kids, you can also find a lot of places offering structured classes and learning sessions for kids that focus on the natural world. Check your local park, zoo, or museum. There’s a good chance they have classes you can sign up for, and since many of these places are not for profit, they’re usually affordable as well as informative.

So get outside with your kids and enjoy the ultimate playground – for kids and adults alike!